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...And 135 Would Be the Number of the Dead — Brooklynian

...And 135 Would Be the Number of the Dead

qtrain
qtrain
edited November -1 in Prospect Heights
Last night I ordered dinner at Wing Wagon, and while I was waiting noticed a black and white picture of a plane crash, marked 7th ave and Sterling Place... here's the full story:

Pillar of Fire
Recalling the Day the Sky Fell, December 16, 1960

From the article:
Though scars from the crash still can be seen on some of the buildings and a vacant lot remains where Pillar of Fire Church and an apartment house once stood on Sterling Place, few would recognize the quiet intersection as a scene of the nation’s worst aircraft disaster.
Has anyone here seen any marks of the crash?

Comments

  • emily
    emily
    Once, my mother, husband, and I were doing a book-guided walking tour that mentioned this event. We were standing around looking like touristy idiots, and someone came up to us and asked if we were reading about the crash. Turns out, he had lived around the corner at the time, and was able to point out various things to us. The vacant lot is pretty easy to spot, obviously. IIRC, the plane was making for Prospect Park, and it landed around the middle of that block of Sterling and then skidded east to the intersection with 7th.

    PS. This definitely took place on the Park Slope side...possible we should move this thread...
  • qtrain
    qtrain
    Park Slope scares me.
  • rah
    rah
    On a side note... there is an antique store (on 5th I think, I can't remember the name) that has pictures of the crash for sale and copies of the NYT from that day.
  • bluedove
    bluedove
    Wow, that was a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing!
  • anonymous
    anonymous
    Here's a related article in today's NYTimes.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/nyregion/18gone.html
  • axel foley
    axel foley
    That was a strangely written article.
  • qtrain
    qtrain
    article wrote: ...and 135 would be the number of the dead.
    It's a little overwrought. And what's with the Dostoyevsky non-sequitur?
  • bluedove
    bluedove
    That is one of the most strangely written articles I've ever read. And, I mean, just bizarre in every aspect. Way to wring two pages out of absolutely no information:
    In the 1959 Brooklyn telephone directory, behind a stately cover portrait of the library at Grand Army Plaza, Mr. Moy listed his home number, MAin 2-1446, at the shop's address, 26 Seventh Avenue. There he was on the page below Elsie Moxter from Shore Parkway.
  • emily
    emily
    "I didn't go to the Chinese place," said Robert M. Nevin, who in 1960 lived at 126 Sterling Place, around the corner from the laundry. "I used a different tailor."
    So...you could have skipped this paragraph, right?

    This may be the dumbest Times article I've ever read, and that's saying something.
  • bluedove
    bluedove
    I mean...I'm just at a loss. This article is so bad as to almost make me love it in a cult worst-article-ever kind of way.

    It's essentially two pages of overwrought prose about...a Chinese laundry guy who moved to Manhattan after a plane crashed in his Brooklyn neighborhood. I mean, why would it even occur to anyone to WRITE this article, to say nothing of printing it. "The Man Who Walked Away"? You mean some guy who moved? Like thousands of people in this city do every day?

    What I want to know is what this reporter was on when he conceived and wrote this.
  • emily
    emily
    Plus, was that substance supplied by the NYT, or did he obtain it himself?
  • qtrain
    qtrain
    I sexed up the post title in honor of our newfound object of ridicule.
  • bluedove
    bluedove
    Good call! I think I might need that on a T-shirt.
  • anonymous
    anonymous
    A year or so ago (don't remember when exactly) the Sunday Times had a long article about the crash, the boy who survived and the nurse who was with him at Methodist. She was a young woman and a Park Slope local and it was very nicely written about the neighborhood in those days, the tragedy of the crash and its effect on the people in Park Slope. I don't know whether its available in the archives.
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