park slope when

Subject: park slope of yore...

i don't know how many 'old-timers' so to speak are on this board. sounds interesting tho'. i like to hear about old park slope. hard to imagine raising pigeons being allowed now - although I would love to see it. i have only been in brooklyn the last five years. i know this becomes reason for scorn by some and applause by others.

Idlewild wrote: I thought I saw racing pigeons doing the tight circle thing near 20th stree and 5th around a month ago. Back in the late '70's I'd just look up and see them everywhere when I'd walk back from IS 88.

If my pigeon knowledge is correct them's tumblers (or sumpink) - racers don't do that flying in a group thing. I grew up in a pigeon racing community (in Europe) and they didn't do that group thing. But WTF do I know - I just used the pigeon poop from the neighborhood pigeon racer's coop as fertilizer (way more acidic than cow and pig, but with a higher nitrogen load - in case you care). 8)

Subject: Re: Park Slope long ago

Tnyc wrote: O'neil's religious articles & card shop on 11th street, Kresge's 5 & 10 on 10th street, Woolworth's on 10th.

Ask some questions to jog my memory.

I guess O'Neil's was one of the last to go (now replaced by that garish Doral Bank). We used to have a Woolworth's???!!!

I don't remember Woolworth's...Kresge's 5 & 10 yes and also Germains. There is a jewelry store on 10th st. from the 50's I believe and that record shop on fifth and ninth st. that's been there forever.

This is a great website: http://www.forgotten-ny.com/index.html

Yes - you are correct in saying "something closer." John's Bargain Stores ended up to be a partnership. There were three partners. My dad split from the partnership and took a percentage of the stores with him in the late 60's. His geographical area became Baltimore, Washington, Delaware and Virg. A few years later, I remember being about 10 or 11, at a meeting in the Empire State Building. The purpose for this meeting was to buy back the NY stores. Unfortunately, dad, and his previous two partners, could not come to a conclusion. My most vivid memory of this situation was my dad bursting out of double doors, MAD, (my dad rarely gets mad) with my mom following close behind him. I was sitting on a bench outside of this conference room being carefully watched by was what was probably a professional doorman, (we compared our white gloves and hats.) When dad came out he stated, "this is it and let's go!" What I later came to understand was the two partners overbought in NY by $1 million and needed someone to bail them out. Dad was really the only person who could do it. But they wanted extra money for the name in NY - the name was split (somehow) and dad opened more stores in Balto. & DC under Bargain Boys. Dad was not willing to pay them to clean up their mess so they went out of business in NY. Dad sold his stores off one by one. The last store was near John's Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore on Monument St. It was sold after Christmas in 1979. He lives in Maryland with my mom - they are in their late 80's. I live in Brooklyn, NY and work for a non-profit. My husband and I have a property close to my parents where we stay when we vist. I did not grow up in NY and never realized the impact of these stores until I lived here. I have had people actually save items they purchased from John's and gave them back to me as a gift. I love it! I appreciate the patronage by everyone over the years. There’s a place in my & dad’s heart for every friend, customer and employee. Many thanks and God be with you.

That was actually my question. My dad's stores were not meant to "bring the neighborhood down." They were to offer the public a quality product at a discount price, either by buying end lots, over runs, or salvage that had nearly nothing wrong with the item. We see the same today at Wal-Mart, Marshalls, T.J Maxx - I have to admit they have a nicer layout to their stores. I, coming from a discout background, only shop discount. My fav - Century 21.

Part of my childhood. An audio clip of a John's Bargain store ad
resurfaces:

http://christophergross.com/becker/audio.html

Subject: John's Bargain Store

Tnyc wrote: John's Bargain Store was very popular in it's day. At that time Park Slope was a very blue collar area, especially so below 8th Avenue. I remember a clothing store called Carter's directly across 5th avenue from John's. PS: Century 21 is my favorite today too.

You know, someone purchased the name John's Bargain Store on the Web. This has to be recent. I don't believe any original owner is involved in this because the name has been up for grabs for years. I asked dad if I should buy the name early on - he wasn't interested so I feft it alone but you can see even with the logo they are trying to repeat time. The idea of discounted shopping is the same. It's interesting.

Subject: Re: old park slope

sligo wrote: I lived on fifth street between 5 and 6th ave.Before going to the military in 1942 I remember the three bars on 5th ave near nionth street, white house, round town and smittys. Also remember Costellos on 7 street and 5ave.
Full of UK sailors during WWII.
There was another popular bar on 5 ave near 5th street named the Polacks, next to a pizza place where you could bring beer from bar.
When I was a youngster I remember going to church at st, Thomas on 9th stree and fourth avenue. There was a Higgins Ink place neat the church that looked real spooky at night hours.
Shopped at germains and Diamonds soft goods on 5th ave and 7th street.
And of course the old theatres, Prospect and Avon.
Miss all, subways too, but the weather is good here in AZ.
Best,
Jim Wilson

Jim thanks for sharing with us - there is a new section here called Brooklyn photos - if you have any old ones it would be great if you would post them for all of us to see.

Here is something printed in the NYTimes in 1998. It gives an overview.
I don't know of a comprehensive history, but I am sure there is one somewhere. The last few paragraphs of the article tells something about
the history of the brownstones.

If You're Thinking of Living In/Park Slope, Brooklyn; Where the Past Is an Abiding Presence Print Save

By JOHN RATHER
Published: February 22, 1998
FOR children raised in Park Slope, a premier Brooklyn neighborhood richly laden with advantages, impoverished beginnings can never be an excuse for later failures.

There is wealth here -- visible in blocks of polished brownstones and attested to by recent sales prices. But it is the breadth of its cultural offerings in a 19th-century architectural setting that frames the life of the community.

With its exquisite churches, stellar brownstone row houses, thriving Seventh Avenue shops and restaurants and the eclectic spirit of both its people and its neo-Renaissance and neo-Classical architectural styles, Park Slope has succeeded as much as any community in New York City in drawing in newcomers as renters and home buyers.

Its proximity to Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden adds to its desirability, and subway links to Manhattan are numerous.

And there are restaurants of many nationalities -- Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai and Japanese -- and cafes and coffee houses along Seventh Avenue.

Residents invariably speak of the small-town feeling and social cohesion of Park Slope, a tree-lined, nearly all-residential area especially attractive to families. It is a place, they said, where activities for children are unending, shopkeepers know their customers and people stop in the street to chat.

''It takes me from 20 minutes to an hour to walk to work, depending on how many people I meet,'' said Lyn Hill, a vice president at New York Methodist Hospital, a 600-bed hospital with 2,700 employees.

The population mix is all-encompassing -- whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians, and a sizable lesbian and gay community as well.

At St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, one of several magnificent Catholic and Protestant churches in Park Slope, Masses are given in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Temple Beth Elohim, a monumental neo-Classic temple completed in 1909-1910 with a Reform congregation, attests to the long Jewish presence here, which continues.

In few other parts of Brooklyn does the past so enrich the present. The 526-acre Prospect Park on the neighborhood's eastern edge is thronged on weekends by parents and children. The Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial at Grand Army Plaza, with its twin Doric columns, grand arch and crowning statute of victory in her horse-drawn chariot, is modeled after the Arc de Triomphe.

THE 19th century dwellings of the rich and near-rich, ranging from grand to substantial, make for prime housing stock. Apartment houses are also plentiful as are co-ops, many of them in brownstones.

Brownstones bought in the early 60's for less than $25,000 by brownstone pioneers, many of them teachers lured from Manhattan's Upper West Side or Greenwich Village, now cost $500,0000 to more than $1 million.

''We used to call it the schoolteacher's coup,'' said Everett Ortner, a retired editor of Popular Science magazine. ''They were living in millionaires' houses on a schoolteachers' salary.'' Mr. Ortner and his wife, Evelyn, bought their brownstone in 1963 and were early leaders of the brownstone revival movement.

John Ottavino, an actor, and his wife, Eve, an elementary school teacher, recently paid $500,000 for a three-story brownstone on 11th Street. They rent out the ground floor. ''Everyone asks did you get a good price, and I don't think there is such a thing as that any more,'' said Mr. Ottavino, a former renter. ''I paid what I had to pay.''

Rentals in Park Slope don't stay on the market long, and prices are going up. ''You have to be prepared to act fast,'' said William B. Rue, a sales agent at Marilyn A. Donahue Real Estate. ''Bring your checkbook. Be ready to pull the trigger.''

Co-ops also move briskly. Joan B. Martin, a private school administrator, and her husband, David Oppenheim, a public high school teacher, bought a two-bedroom co-op on Eighth Street off Seventh Avenue for $169,000 last year, after renting in Park Slope for 15 years. The co-op had been on the market 10 days. Recently a similar co-op in the same building sold in a day.

There are a few condominiums. A recent upper-floor renovation at the palatial Montauk Club near Grand Army Plaza created four units.

Matthew Miller, the owner-broker of Heights Berkeley Realty, said he recently sold one of them, a three-bedroom unit, for $467,000. The monthly common charge was just under $300, he said.

The club, whose exterior blends Venetian Gothic style and American Indian motifs, is in the historic district, which runs along the west side of Prospect Park and is generally the most expensive area of Park Slope.

Lower housing prices are farther from the park and to the south, in South Slope, where Patricia A. Neinast, the manager of Brooklyn Landmark's Park Slope office, said houses in the $200,000's can still be found.

Park Slope, part of District 15, has six elementary schools. One that is highly regarded locally, Public School 321, with about 1,300 pupils in prekindergarten through grade 5, tallies scores well above city averages in math and reading standardized tests.

The school has one computer lab and 20 classrooms with computers. It offers inclusion classes for general and special education students.

P.S. 39, with about 475 students in kindergarten through grade 6, also scores above average on city-wide tests. The school also has one computer lab, and computers in 18 classrooms.

The 900-student Middle School 88, where the percentage of students at or above grade level in reading and math tests was below the city average, has a gifted-and-talented program, two computer labs and 16 classrooms with computers.

M.S. 51, which is generally at or above the city average in the citywide tests, has gifted and talented programs.

The 3,500-student John Jay High School has been striving in recent years to improve academically but still has far to go. S.A.T. scores in 1996, the most recent year for which figures were available, averaged 391 in verbal and 388 in mathematics, compared with the citywide average of 448 and 465, respectively.

About two-thirds of graduates go on to higher education. The school has research and honors programs and a broad range of extracurricular activities, from sports to music.

Park Slope accounts for about two-thirds of the 750 students at the Berkeley Carroll school, an independent college preparatory day school for nursery through grade 12 and a major attraction for current and new residents. More than 90 percent of students taking Advanced Placement exams earn college credit.

Tuition ranges from $6,450 for preschool to $15,520 for grade 12. Admission is competitive.

The 150-student Poly Prep Lower School for nursery through grade 4 is a small, child-centered private school that sends graduates to 650-student Poly Prep Middle and Upper schools in Bay Ridge. Tuition at the lower school ranges from $3,000 for two mornings a week in nursery school to $12,500 for fourth grade.

St. Francis Xavier elementary school has 500 students in kindergarten through grade 8. Tuition is $1,800. There is an after-school program for children of working parents.

The Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, in a 117-year-old Victorian Gothic mansion on Seventh Avenue at Lincoln Place, is one of the oldest community music schools in the country. It offers private and group instruction for voice or instruments in styles from classical to jazz.

THE farmland and hills that are now part of Prospect Park and Park Slope were scenes of bloody engagements during the Battle of Long Island in August 1776.

In the 1850's, when its 200,000 inhabitants made Brooklyn the third largest city in the country, sentiment grew for a park to rival Manhattan's Central Park. The State Legislature appointed Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect for Central Park, and Calvert Vaux.

By then Edwin Clark Litchfield, who made a fortune in railroads, had purchased land for development in Park Slope.

The opening of the park in 1874 and completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 established Park Slope, a name that describes its parkside location and topography.

Housing construction had begun in what is now the historic district prior to the Civil War.

The pace quickened during the late 1870's and the 1880's, when mansions rose along the park and sturdy row houses marched down side streets to the west. It crested prior to World War I.

But by the 1920's, mansions were being razed for apartment houses and brownstones were going out of fashion. By the end of World War II, many had been carved up into rooming houses. Through the 50's, middle-class families moved to the suburbs and urban decay set in.

In the early 60's, brownstone pioneers, recognizing bargains, arrived to renovate and restore fading brownstones and eventually reverse the area's precipitous decline. Park Slope has been on the rise ever since.

That hardware store was Fazio's before it became Leopoldi's. Westminster Men's shop between 9th & 10th, Miracle Corner on 13th, Ginsberg's (toys or sports?) next to Germain's on 15th. The 72nd Pct on 16th street, Lincoln Appliances on 15th or 16th? The bridal shop on 9th was Henrietta's Bridal. Avon Theater where McDonald's is now. Prospect theater further up. What was the name of the restaurant that was next to the Prospect, was it Bickfords?

I remember the lunch counter and the ladies in hairnets in yellow uniforms with little white aprons. You are right, ALWAYS at least one stray parakeet flying around.

In case anyone went to St. Saviour Elementary School they are having a 50th reunion on 3/9/07 at Grand Prospect Hall. You can check out the site at stsaviouralumni.org.