An Exit Marked Memory Lane

Do you want to look like a hero and everybody wins? It's so easy. Just take a friend or two on a trip down THEIR memory lane, touring the special places of their youth. On January 11, 2012, I went on such a trip through East New York, Brooklyn, driven by an old friend. But now, I was to be the driver and guide.

This was my unplanned agenda for Easter Sunday (after the Easter Parade), when I accompanied a friend and her mother to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, for Easter dinner. Before dinner, we decided to take advantage of the extraordinary weather in the mid-60s and see the places of my friend and her mother's where they were born and had grown up.

This type of mission is not about efficient driving, nor will it necessarily be a tour of the scenic or architectural wonders of New York City. It will be punctuated by stops that have deep meaning only for your guests being toured and for the small number of others who at one time shared the same addresses.

I accommodated every twist and turn, circling and back tracking, zigging and zagging, providing chauffeur services - convenient for them and enjoyable for me, since I was at one time a New York City taxi cab driver. Patience is required for such a mission, since often only foggy or partial memories are available as a guide to locating addresses. There were places which were of zero difficulty to locate, such as my friend's former grade school, P.S. 102, and the church where her parents married, Our Lady of Angels.

A special treat was Owl's Head Park, a place which I had heard about and driven by but never actually walked in. This was special for my company, too, since my friend's mother had taken her there as young as when she was one year old, their residence only one-half block away. The waterside park affords vistas of the bay of New York, the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island, Memorial Pier, and the skyline of Manhattan. We took in the views while basking in the warm afternoon sun setting over the bay.

Other stops were the former homes of parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters - this is an Italian family with deep roots in this section of Brooklyn. Some exact addresses were known. For others, we became Big Game hunters, tracking our quarry. Details of buildings were examined, proximity to other buildings and shops, all with a singular goal - to identify with absolute certainty that, yes, THAT'S the place.

Like a modern African safari, our trip through the urban jungle was to see and shoot our game with eyes and cameras only. Once positively identified, we would sit and look as my guests would ooh, aah, and reminisce. And that is how I spent my Easter afternoon. Starting on the highways of New York City, I watched the sign posts, looking for An Exit Marked Memory Lane :)

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Childhood Dream

She said she wanted to find the "mushroom house" she knew as a child, a very special place where her father often took her growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The memories of childhood are clouded and skewed, and I doubted that we would find such a house or, if we did, how long it would take. But her instincts were good, and what I truly anticipated to be a long and likely fruitless search mission turned out to be a very quick drive, almost like she was guided by a secret hand straight to our destination. 

But nothing would prepare either of us for what we saw. As I turned up 83rd Street and pointed out a "nice" house, she cried for joy, "That's it." It was much larger than her memory served her, and she was elated, to say the least. The home is extraordinary and, as I surmised, no secret at all. It was designated a historic landmark by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission. It is known internationally and referred to variously as the Mushroom House, the Witch's House, the Hansel and Gretel House, and, most commonly, The Gingerbread House. The AIA Guide to New York City calls it:

A mansion disguised as a witch's hideaway. Black Forest Art Nouveau. Bumpety stone and pseudothatchery make this Arts and Crafts revival one of Brooklyn's greatest fantasies.

The mansion sports 6 bedrooms and 6 baths and is 5743 square feet and sits on 10 acres - unfathomable for New York City. It is constructed of uncut stone. The roof, with its rolled edges, is covered in special asphalt shingles the color of thatch, recalling the thatched roofs of English country manors. Inside, it exudes old world charm with beautiful woodwork, pictorials set into walls, enormous fireplaces, and decorative elements using medieval stained glass from Europe.

The home is located at 8220 Narrows Avenue and spans between 82nd and 83rd Street. It was built between 1916-17 for Howard E. and Jesse Jones House and designed by James Sarsfield Kennedy. Howard Jones was a shipping tycoon, president of James W. Elwell & Co. and also a director and later vice president of the Maritime Association Board of New York. The house has changed hands only a few times and made big news when it was put up for sale in 2009 for $12 million dollars by the owners, Jerry and Diane Fishman, who lived there for 25 years. From the New York Post:

But Jerry Fishman said it has held a fairy-tale-like spell over him his entire life growing up in the neighborhood, where he was born and raised. "My mother used to push me in my stroller past the house and one time I got out of the stroller and tried to get into the house," recalled Fishman, 62.

When he was a student at Fort Hamilton HS -- across the street from the Gingerbread House -- Fishman said he would sit in his English class staring out the window at the house as if in a trance. "My grades suffered," he recalled. And on his first date with Diane, Jerry remembers driving her by the home and telling her, "One day I'm going to own that house."

And he did. From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Fishman, who grew up two blocks away from the house in the Bay Ridge neighborhood, had his eye on the house all his life. “As the legend goes,” he says, “I knew of this house when I was six months old, and I was attracted to it like it was candy.” As he got older, his fascination with the Arts and Crafts-style house only grew. “I would walk by it, drive by it on purpose just to look at it,” he says. His first date with his future wife, Diane, included a drive past the house and a vow. “I told her, ‘I’m going to own this house,” says Mr. Fishman, now 61.

Built around 1917 when Bay Ridge was, as the New York Post puts it, “an oceanfront getaway for the city’s rich and famous,”  the Gingerbread House has only changed hands a few times. In 1980, just after the Fishmans bought a home nearby, it came on the market. “We ran over here, and we looked at the house,” Mr. Fishman says, But he was disappointed. Two elderly women had lived in the home since the 1930s, Mr. Fishman says, and many sections of the home needed extensive work that he and his wife could not afford at that time.

When the home came on the market again in 1985, they pounced, even entering a bidding war. The day the Fishmans closed on the house, paying under $1 million, “was the most memorable day of my life,” Mr. Fishman says. “We had the Gingerbread House.”

The Fishmans sold the house in order to relocate near their parents in Florida. The fairy tale home that cast a spell on at least two people from childhood. For them, the chapter is finally closed - Jerry Fishman and my friend both found their Childhood Dream :)

More homes: Big Secret on Little Street,  Love Is All Around, Part 1, Grisly Business, Todt Hill, The Feeling Passes, Head for the Hills, All the Way..., Affront to Dignity, Manhattan Beach, Itsy Bitsy, Bloomberg, Terrapin Chelsea Art Gallery

A Furrowed Brow

I was walking with two friends, touring them by what I felt was the most beautiful prewar building in Greenwich Village: 43 Fifth Avenue. This architectural gem is a grand and elegant 1903 Beaux-Arts building which sports a distinctive mansard roof. The property just screams PARIS. I have learned that this building is not just my little secret but also, in fact, highly coveted. There is little turnover/availability of apartments, and a number of celebrities, past and present, have called it home.

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High Noon

My tagline for this blog avoids a few very applicable cliches. It could easily read something like "New York City - a place of contrasts and juxtaposition." True or not, it's one of those claims that many want to make. I cannot argue that New York City leads the world in contrasts; travelers to places like Egypt speak of the extreme contrasts unknown in the United States, such as disembarking from a plane and seeing the pyramids of Giza, or camels and limos in the streets of Cairo.

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Pirate, Part 2

When I arrived at the Sailors Snug Harbor (see Part 1 here), it was late afternoon. It was quiet, with no rush or crush of visitors. I was virtually alone on the 83-acre property. There was a sense of authenticity, much like Richmond Town, another historic site on Staten Island which had come as a huge surprise to me.
There is collection of historic buildings on the site, however, time was fleeting. I made a quick tour by car, parked, and walked to the Noble Museum.

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Good That's Olde Too

At one time, modern high-rise buildings were marketed as "luxury." The apartments were sterile and devoid of character, with the most boring cookie-cutter layouts imaginable. They sported only the basic modcons, nothing luxurious at all. In New York City, luxury really just meant the absence of squalor. Not roach- or rat-infested, not a tenement, not a railroad flat, not dilapidated, not in a ghetto. In short, luxury was about what a place was NOT.

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Lover's Lane

East New York, Brooklyn, is one of the worst neighborhoods in the five boroughs of New York City. It is unlikely that you have ever visited or will ever visit. You won't find it in your not-for-tourists or secret New York guides. But, perhaps you are like me and don't trust what people tell you without corroboration. This is what garnered me respect with Mark Birnbaum (see here and here), when I asked him if he would be kind enough to show me documentation for his claims.

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Europe?

I have not been to many book signings, but one which I did attend was that of Terry Miller for Greenwich Village and How it Got That Way, published in 1990. I do love the Village, but like many New Yorkers, I do find that it can, at times, be a love-hate relationship. When I met Terry for the signing, I complained to him about things I disliked about the Village. He dismissed it immediately, saying, "Where are you going to go? Europe?" He was right. I had found no urban enclave in the United States that had the ambiance and charm of the West Village in New York City.

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Sundey

I was a vegetarian for decades and quickly learned that for good vegetarian food, it is better to find ethnic cuisines that have large concentrations of vegetarian dishes than to eat at vegetarian or natural food restaurants. Historically, the establishments of these restaurants are driven more by what the food is NOT than by the desire to offer great cuisine. Of course, taste is a consideration, but not the primary raison d'etre.

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Dyker Heights, 2011

As this website has evolved, I have added more video. I have created a YouTube channel for New York Daily Photo where all the videos can be seen in one place. Looking into the future, I intend to create more videos and short documentary films of New York City.
Recently, I took another excursion to Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, with a friend. Although the displays are relatively the same from year to year, I enjoy the ritual, as I do the Christmas window displays on Fifth Avenue.
This year, I shot and compiled a short video of my tour of 84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues - see below. This block is literally the show stopper, with bumper-to-bumper car traffic during the holiday season. Recommended to all who have not toured the area. Enjoy Dyker Heights 2011 !



Related Post: Simple, But Effective

ATM $10 Bills

This was somewhat a replay of my experience in Harlem visiting the churches known for gospel singing. People, places, and things are not zoo specimens for the voyeur. I always feel conflicted when visiting areas where I am clearly the outsider. Worse with a camera. I am sure that even my sincerest efforts to be part of another's world for a short time is perceived as slumming. And to some extent, it is.

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Last Resort

Growing up at the time and place that I did, there was not much to do as a teenager and very little that was approved by adults. No Starbucks for us. One of the few activities that was considered "good, clean fun" was bowling. Of course, to bring a girlfriend meant no privacy, which is what made it good and clean, but not much fun.

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Sorry About That

On September 21, 2011, I wrote Not Under the Gowanus about a church which had nagged me as an enigma for years. Or so I thought. Our Lady Of Czestochowa / St Casimir, located at 183 25th Street in Brooklyn, can be seen from the Gowanus Expressway.
However, on a recent excursion through Brooklyn, I realized that a much more imposing structure closer to a highway is what I had seen so many times on this stretch of highway and that this was the image that was stored in the recesses of my mind: the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary – St. Stephen Church, located at Summit Street and Hicks Street, fronting the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway before the Gowanus Expressway.

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They're All Around

No one likes liars, but I have been assured that everyone lies a little bit some of the time. Fine. But I prefer not to do business with someone whose factory is a shrine to lies and deception. I was attempting to "keep it at home" and design and manufacture carrying bags for my product line right here in the United States. Specifically, New Jersey. The company I targeted looked very promising. Their webpage showed bags with the logos of many well-known companies. Certainly if it was good enough for the Wall Street Journal, Revlon, and Ferrari, it would be good enough for us. Or so I thought.

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None of Us Go

You can read tomes about Italy, look at photos, see videos and films, and speak to native Italians, but you will never know Italy until you finally get on that plane for the first time and go there. When you arrive, you will have that Aha! experience that I am sure you have had in other ways before - so this is Italy.

Like an old friend not seen in decades, you will recognize many familiar things in his face, but the essence of the man himself is much more than a few big pieces. The image you have conjured prior to visiting Italy will be seriously devoid of the many, many things which will never be written of - the mundane, the inconsequential, the trivial, the ubiquitous, the details, the customary - yet these are the things which comprise the bulk of day-to-day existence.

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Man Peruses Queens Confuses

For ease of navigation, it does behoove a large city to establish a numbered grid. However, this does come at an expense - the lack of soul or identity. It will be difficult for a numbered street to carry panache or to conjure images or historical links. (There are notable exceptions, such as Fifth Avenue.) This is why, when the street grid for Queens was developed in 1911 by Charles U. Powell, it was met with resistance, and many named streets remain, mixed in with numbered streets.

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Not Under the Gowanus, Part 2

I have driven the roadways around this metropolis for decades and, like anyone else who drives highways repeatedly, there are a myriad of familiar structures, most of which one has never actually visited. Over the years, a number of buildings have intrigued me, such as the enigmatic property with illuminated triangular trusses as seen from the Manhattan Bridge. This rooftop haunted me for decades until if finally occurred to me: why not get off the roadway one day, investigate and see what this landmark actually is about? You can find the mystery solved here.

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Not Under the Gowanus

There's romance to the classic song Under the Boardwalk - the lyrics describe a tryst under the boardwalk in beloved Coney Island. But not every hiding place under an elevated structure is so romantic, particularly in New York City. I certainly would not want to meet anyone under the Gowanus Expressway, a highway elevated above 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn.

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Moonrise Over Hernandez

It took a trip to Italy to learn that the desire for respite from city life and the countryside was not unique to our time or to New York City. Romans built villas millennia ago. These lavish homes were built by the wealthy elite and were used to escape the city and summer heat. In Florence, the Medicis built villas - country homes that served as alternate living spaces to their urban palazzo. Not so much is new under the sun, particularly in the realm of basic human desires, and I suppose it was rather foolish and ethnocentric of me as a New Yorker to expect that escape from the stresses of urban life and the desire for a more spacious country home with grounds, etc., would be limited to recent times.

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Even the Worst Is Good

On Wednesday, June 28, 2008, I wrote Insult to Injury. I had found what was to me one of the worst insults in the New York City dining experience - I enumerated 7 points outlining the transgressions.

But there is always room for improvement.

MacDougal Street is my least favorite street in the Village. It has a distinctly touristy feel and is gritty, dirty and congested. The shops typically cater to the lowest common denominator. There are a few things worthwhile, such as the Olive Tree Cafe and Mamoun's. But dining al fresco is an abomination and unthinkable.

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