Friday, March 30, 2012

Blog Post No. 2012-6: On resurrecting downtown Brooklyn's railroad heart...

Mostly just photos this time, RTUFers. It's been a heck of a few weeks at work and it's about to get crazier. At any rate, the views below are from a trip down Memory Lane that your correspondent and the people he most loves in the world took last month to the borough of his birth (a.k.a. the County of Kings. We went by the former family homestead (1970-1981) on Third Street in Park Slope, saw my old friend Erik Engquist, wife Kris and their kids, and then HAD to stop by Atlantic Terminal for the Long Island Railroad at the junction of Flatbush and Atlantic avenues in downtown. More below, but it was supremely satisfying as a kid who grew up in the 1970s, when places like Brooklyn were simply perceived to "have no future," to come back and see the sheer level of activity. The city is just bursting at the seams. Boston is feeling something of the same resurgence, although not quite at the clip New York generally seems to be feeling it. Enjoy...

Photo 1: View from Hanson Place.

Photo 2: Flatbush Avenue facade.

Photo 3: Yes, that many subway lines go through the station.

Photo 4: Thaat's the Williamsburg Savings Bank building. THE tall building in Brooklyn and
where your correspondent had his passbook savings account as a young lad.

Photo 5: You've got to love an understated train board.

Photo 6: And then there's the new vs. the old (credit: MTA.).

P.S. Your correspondent went through the old terminal as a young child, when it felt merely decrepit. It then passed into shuttered status and ultimately demolition in 1988. - MJL