history through home

My Grandfather who arrived here from Poland in the early 1900’s settled in Brooklyn.  He was a mild-mannered, repetitive-storytelling gent who had a great widow’s peak.  I never met my dad’s mother but she looked tough.  They worked in the textile industry and were comfortable, but not wealthy.  My dad grew up in the Sheepshead Bay part of Brooklyn.  He became a designer by trade and a collector of beautiful objects.  I could go on about how my dad and his obsessive aesthetic, and Jewish-Brooklynese philosophy influenced me but instead I’ll encapsulate him as a true artist and character.

My mom was the daughter of an impoverished, depressed and sickly couple who moved back and forth from California to Michigan.  They were Irish, English and Sicilian, collectively.  She left Michigan to move to NY in her late teens and worked at various magazines as a Copy Editor.  Though I remember her as a lamb, she had some tenacity to move to NY so young, knowing no one.

She and my dad met working at the same magazine in the mid sixties and married in ‘67.  They lived in Greenwich Village together.  I was born in ‘69 at Mt. Sinai.  

In the first year of my life we outgrew our Greenwich Village apartment and moved to what is now the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn, which at that time had no name other than “bad neighborhood”.  I spent my first 4 years in apt 12A at 41 Eastern Parkway, The Copley Plaza, a once opulent 1920’s apartment building directly across from the Brooklyn public Library, that still had a hand operated elevator run by a man named Chris who actually wore an Elevator Operator’s hat.  Apartment 12A was a sweeping 2000 square foot, 3 bdrm 2 1/2 bath with a formal dining room and maid’s room, numerous closets and a view that reached the Verrazano Bridge.  It was my dad’s pride and joy.  He envisioned grandeur restored to the once dignified address and worked diligently to return the building to it’s splendor, regularly polishing the lobby banisters, mirrors and sconces.  Unfortunately in the ‘70’s, the notoriously rundown neighborhood competed with my dad to win over The Copley Plaza.  

My mom and dad divorced in 1974.  I was five.  My mother wanted freedom and a brownstone in the neighboring community of Park Slope.  She had caught wind that the majestic trees, ornate 1890’s brownstones and 585-acre Prospect Park made it a popular nesting destination for young professionals seeking more everything for less money.  The area culled an attractive balance of affluence and earthiness while maintaining it’s diverse demographic foundation, and she was smitten.  My dad would not leave The Copley Plaza.  In 2003, 28 years later, he died there.  Years after my dad’s death, a golden plaque he had engraved still graces the marble wall between the elevators in the lobby.  It boasts “The Copley Plaza, 1926, One of Brooklyn’s treasures”.

After the divorce in 1974, my mom and I inhabited a 1-bedroom brownstone basement apartment in Park Slope on 2nd St btwn 7th and 6th Avenue less than a block off of the main drag of 7th Avenue and across from the PS 321 schoolyard (the zoned public school for Central Park Slope dwellers).  Our upstairs neighbors were lesbians who imparted unto us guinea pigs and taught me that “nothing in nature is gross” after I squealed in disgust at a large slug trolling our shared backyard.  My mom romanticized the brownstone cache and while the apt was small and modest, it had an iconic charm I still relate to the particular aesthetics of mid 70’s divorced Brooklyn--the weathered hardwood floors, the inoperable fireplace, the paint-chipped bay windows, the challengingly narrow floor-through kitchen, the one bathroom off the only bedroom which looked out onto the communal backyard which begged for someone to plant some basil, and a ghastly linoleum-floored workroom leading out back.  

In 1976 my mom decided that we needed more space.  We moved to 75 Prospect Park West, apt. 4C. The building was an average looking prewar, in fact one of two average looking prewars that flanked the mouth of Prospect Park at 3rd street.  The lobby had the wrong shade of yellow paint lit by fluorescents, and felt unloved.  The apartment was a larger one-bedroom with sizeable rooms including a generous formal dining room. It had a flowy layout with abundant light.  Though it had shameful bright polka-dotted yellow linoleum in the kitchen and an original 1920’s bathroom which would not be renovated for another 35 years, it was a good space.  Over my mom’s 31-yr residence at 75 PPW she redid the kitchen linoleum, finished the hardwood floors, replaced the kitchen countertop and eventually favored French-ish country decor to 1970’s bohemian, but the space stayed essentially the same--the light, the smells, the sounds remained and felt the same.  

I stayed at 75 PPW until I left for College in 1988.  

I returned to Bklyn with my fiance in 1995.  We rented an 800 sq ft loft on the corner of Wythe and North 4th.  It was a sheet rock dream come true and the area was in its pre-renaissance stage--raw but burgeoning.  We were both visual artists and word had it that we must move to the region called Williamsburg (where I used to shop at used clothing mecca “Domsey International” in the ‘80’s).  It was a very ugly area, no denying and I’ll spar with anyone who says differently.  The building stock felt cheap in comparison to the Brooklyn I was used to.  That said, it was an exceptionally vital place to be at that time in the mid 90’s.

Btwn 1999 and 2001, I briefly separated from my husband and moved to a very small studio apartment in Carroll Gardens.  Separated from Park Slope by the Gowanus Canal, Carroll Gardens, a once predominantly Italian-American area still retains plenty of flavor in Italian-American pork stores and specialty shops that pepper the two main drags of Smith and Court Streets.  The home stock of Carroll Gardens is more architecturally similar to the ever illustrious Brooklyn Heights, (across Atlantic Avenue), than to Park Slope, with townhouses sporting flat facades and a more stately countenance.  Unique to Carroll Gardens is the “front garden”, creating a setback of 30-40 feet from the sidewalk to the stairwell up to the front entrance in which residents grow flora.  Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens’ more elegant neighbor, and Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens’ more urban neighbor are to the West and East respectively.  These communities are all contributors to “brownstone Brooklyn” and compare to Park Slope in that their assets were unearthed by potential residents of NYC riding the alternative wave to Brooklyn in the 1970’s, ‘80’s and 90’s.  

Meanwhile, back at the Park Slope Food Coop, founded in 1973, the authentic, scrappy and dogged community of Park Slope attracted more of it’s kind through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s gaining momentum towards it’s next mutation.  

My husband and I eventually reunited in 2002 and moved together to Clinton Hill Brooklyn, another institution of Brownstone Brooklyn.  We lived in a fine bright apartment in what I consider to be, (along with neighboring Fort Greene), among the most beautiful neighborhoods in Brooklyn.  Very disgustingly though, the elevator smelled so heavily of piss that I alternately gagged and seethed every ride I took.  I can still feel the amonia in my nostrils and marvel at the extreme juxtaposition of gorgeous abundance and nasty negligence that befalls the area.

My father passed in 2003.  With inheritance we purchased a humble one-bedroom coop on Montgomery Place in Park Slope.  As a parlour floor apartment in a brownstone it took well to renovation.  Then came a first baby in 2006.  We traded my mom her 75 PPW one-bedroom apartment with formal dining room (aka second bedroom) only 4 blocks away, for our Montgomery place apt.

On a nice ride of fate we lived at 75 PPW, apt. 4C, from 2007 to 2011. The apartment that I had spent the majority of my youth in was none other than that which I introduced my (2) sons to life in. Eventually, They were bouncing off the walls. We sold the apartment to move with my mom, who fell ill and needed help taking care of herself, to Maplewood NJ.  I followed many other Brooklyn families there and felt the safety of a trodden path.

I joke about three generations of Brooklyn washed out in one fell swoop to New Jersey.  I miss my friends but haven’t looked back.