Though springtime is so often hailed as the season of new beginnings, autumn can play much the same role. Whether it’s back to school or the workaday grind after summer’s offering of respite, relaxation, and recreation, September offers up the chance to re-enter the fray, recharged for the new challenges and opportunities that await. “Autumn is the second spring,” French author Albert Camus once wrote, the moment “when every leaf is a flower.” In other words, it’s a time when the normal and everyday can take on a new, even unexpected, beauty.
Seeing what lies near through fresh eyes is a central goal of my book, 111 Places in Brooklyn That You Must Not Miss(Emons Publishing). For this issue, I’ve chosen three chapters that offer the opportunity to do just that.
Along Flushing Avenue, the Brooklyn Navy Yard can seem like an industrial residue from another time. But step into BLDG 92, and you’ll have offers the opportunity to transform your appreciation of this space through a deeper understanding of its fascinating history. Located over three floors in the beautifully restored Marine Commandant’s House, museum exhibits tell not just the story of the ships built there and their centrality to national historical chapters, but also the men and women whose toil animated mammoth vessels like the USS Arizona.
Kings Theatre provides the opportunity to experience first-hand, in Camus’ terms, an architectural “flower.” Located along Brooklyn’s central artery, Flatbush Avenue, the theatre is living proof that age is no barrier to beauty – or vitality – with well-positioned resources and imagination. Lying dormant and in decay for decades, the historic Loew’s show palace has been beautifully preserved and renewed. A wide range of programming – including Tchaikowsky’s “Nutcracker” performed by the Moscow Ballet in early December – offers the opportunity to take in shows with the jaw-dropping beauty of the Kings as their stunning backdrop.
Finally, a visit to the Salt Marsh Nature Center, adjacent to Marine Park, provides a chance to experience the borough as the indigenous Lenape and the immigrant Dutch might have in centuries past. High grasses, tidal flows and migrating birds all add to the atmosphere. Brooklyn moves at a fast and furious pace, often causing us to focus our energies on the here-and-now as it unfolds in constantly changing constructed landscapes. How exhilarating it can be, then, to pause and take in a parcel of earth in our midst that preserves a sense of our home from another time.
Salt Marsh Birdwatching
Gold medal nature center
When most people think of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, it’s Jesse Owens who comes to mind. Only a few, however, know that the first American medal of those games came in the “Municipal Planning” portion of the “Arts” competitions: a silver medal for architect Charles Downing Lay for his redesign of the Marine Park neighborhood.
It’s true – from 1912 to 1948, athletics-inspired art and poetry were also Olympic competitions, probably inspired by the ancient Roman games. Emperor Nero added singing and poetry to the competition in 66 a.d. He won gold medals in both, no surprise to anyone.
Marine Park is home to the largest public park in Brooklyn, and more than half of its 798 acres consists of salt marshes like those that served as hunting and fishing grounds for the earliest Native American settlers. (Fire pits have been discovered that date from 800 to 1400 a.d.) Later, Dutch settlers also settled here, the marshland closely resembling the coastal plains of their homeland.
Though more than three-quarters of Jamaica Bay’s large estuary wetland has disappeared (mostly due to development in the 1950s through 1970s), the remaining 18,000 acres play host to more than 325 species of birds and 50 species of butterflies, including many migratory birds passing through on their seasonal flights.
Formed in 2000, the Salt Marsh Nature Center is one of 10 Urban Park Ranger nature centers, making it ideal as a weekend activity spot for families. Pack a camera, binoculars, and a water bottle, and head out onto one of the well-groomed trails, offering a chance to experience the fragile ecosystem close up. Ramble through the grasslands alongside briny Gerritsen Creek. Well-placed benches provide perfect viewing spots to observe the herons, cormorants, egrets, ducks, and geese as they make their way among the shallow waters, as red-winged blackbirds and marsh hawks soar overhead.
Kings Theatre
Movie palace grandeur returns to Flatbush
A magnificent vaudeville and movie palace that formed part of a traveling MGM entertainment circuit in the New York City area, the Kings Theatre opened in Flatbush on September 7, 1929 as one of the original five Loew’s “Wonder Theatres.” Changing economic fortunes for the neighborhood brought gradual decay until, in 1977, the Kings was closed and abandoned. Left to the ravages of nature and looters, the Kings lay largely neglected until 2010, when Houston-based ACE Theatrical Group, LLC was chosen to lead what eventually became a $95-million restoration project. Vintage architectural elements, including ornate plaster moldings, pink marble staircases, and the sumptuous honeycomb ceiling, have been meticulously restored and recreated, and the original pipe organ console, removed and preserved during the closure by enthusiasts, is on display.
State-of-the-art stage and sound elements installed have transformed the Kings into a 3,200-seat theatrical and musical venue without peer. Largely still undiscovered by Manhattanites, the Kings offers intimate and smartly curated concerts that will satisfy baby boomers (The Temptations, The O’Jays), Gen Xers (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Pixies), and millennials (Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver) alike. Historic “happy hour” tours offer visitors a chance to explore the Kings in more detail with a glass of wine in hand.
Just up the street, near Church Avenue, are two additional local landmarks. Erasmus Hall High School (899 – 925 Flatbush Avenue), founded in 1786, boasts a long list of notable alumni, including singers Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand, actress Mae West, opera star Beverly Sills, and chess champion Bobby Fischer. Meanwhile, the Tiffany-studio stained-glass windows of Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church (890 Flatbush), founded in 1654, commemorate the many early Dutch families who worshipped there. The landmarked Art Deco Sears building sits just behind the Kings on Bedford Avenue.
BLDG 92
Local ships that sailed the world
The area along Brooklyn’s East River waterfront can seem to the uninitiated like a drab expanse of warehouses and docks cut off from the rest of the borough. Dubbed Vinegar Hill back in the 19th century, an allusion (in this largely Irish neighborhood) to the Battle of Vinegar Hill that was part of the Irish Rebellion, the area’s first commercial shipyards were established just after the Revolutionary War. In 1801, the US government purchased 40 acres and established shipbuilding operations that were central to the Navy for the next 160-plus years.
BLDG 92 offers a gateway to this fascinating history via a free exhibit over three floors in the restored Marine Commandant’s House. As you enter the Navy Yard through a pedestrian gate along Flushing Avenue, pause to look at this red-bricked gem originally built in 1857 and designed by Thomas U. Walter, fourth architect of the US Capitol and responsible for the central dome.
A comprehensive timeline on the exhibition’s first floor frames the Navy Yard’s history against the nation’s political and social history. Production here ebbed and flowed alongside the intermittent winds of war, and several craft help tell that story. Though built in nearby
Greenpoint, the USS Monitor, the first ironclad steamship built for the Navy fleet, was outiftted and commissioned here in 1862. Built at the Navy Yard, the USS Maine was an armored cruiser commissioned in 1895 but famously sunk during an explosion in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898. The battleship USS Arizona, sunk in the attack on Pearl Harbor, was built in Brooklyn over a 15 month period in 1915 – 16, as was the USS Missouri, built 1941 – 44, where the treaty
to end war with Japan was signed in August 1945.
Don’t miss the third-floor displays, which tell the important story of the men and women who worked at the Navy Yard. That spirit of industry and innovation continues today with the 400 businesses now located there.
Photography by Ed Lefkowicz
John Major
John Major writes about art and culture, especially events and places in Brooklyn, his home for the last 12 years. He is also writing a memoir about life as a stay-at-home father of three managing a divorce and international relocation, uniquely told through pilgrimages to paintings by the Italian artist, Caravaggio. Originally from southern Ohio, John is dedicated explorer of cities. Among his favorites are London (which he called him for a dozen years), Barcelona, Rome, and Paris. He is determined to never lose the sense of wonder from being a curious explorer, both at hime and abroad.