FORGOTTEN HISTORY
Author examines a Brooklyn that never was
This weekend is a free-for-all!
COURIER L 48 IFE, NOV. 1-7, 2019
The best reads
— handpicked by
some of the best
Bklyn bookstores
Word’s picks:
“Kill Creek,”
by Scott Thomas
Here is another spooky
ky
en
ut
k
y
recommendation for the Halloween
season: Scott Thomas’s debut
novel “Kill Creek.” This book
is a great haunted house story
with a twisted sense of self. I
really enjoyed the slow buildup
to things going fully out of
control.
— Will Olsen, Word 126 Franklin klin St. at Milton
Milton
Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.wordbookstores.com.
Community
Bookstore’s pick:
“Eyes Bottle Dark
k
with a Mouthful
of Flowers,”
by Jake Skeets
Winner of the National Poetry
Series, Jake Skeets’ debut
collection glitters like a fistful
of mineral earth. In dizzying,
de-centering bursts of verse and prose,
at once spare and luminous, Skeets eets renders renders tangible tangible the
the
experience of a young, queer member of the Diné Nation in Gallup,
New Mexico — also known as “Drunk Town, USA,” and “The
Indian Capital Of The World.”
— Samuel Partal, Community Bookstore 43 Seventh Ave.
between Carroll Street and Garfield Place in Park Slope, (718)
783–3075, www.commu nityb ookst ore.net.
Greenlight
Bookstore’s pick:
“How We Fight to
o
Save Our Lives,”
by Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones’s memoir of
e
growing up gay and black in the
South is one of the absolute best
books to come out this year.
It is raw, honest, and brave.
Growing up, he navigated
complex relationships (with his single
ngle
mother, his conservative and religious gious grandmother grandmother, his
his
classmates) as he came of age and came to terms with his own
sexuality and identity. In parts tragic and heartbreaking, in others
wildly, wickedly funny, he shares his story with warmth, wisdom,
and grace.
— Rebecca Fitting, Greenlight Bookstore 686 Fulton St.
between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland Avenue in Fort Greene,
(718) 246–0200, www.greenlightbookstore.com.
CBy Kevin Duggan heck out the Brooklyn that
might have been!
A new book examines
the alternative and forgotten
history of Kings County.
“Brooklyn: The Once and Future
City” explores several ambitious
but never-built projects proposed
during the decades after the
vibrant city of Brooklyn was
controversially folded into New
York City, according to its author,
who will read from his book at
the Brooklyn Historical Society
on Nov 7.
“What the Manhattan
expansionists saw in Brooklyn was
this field of dreams and there’s all
sorts of fantasies about creating
this super city using Brooklyn’s
unbuilt terrain,” said Thomas
Campanella.
In his book, the urban historian
investigates several projects the
city tried to undertake in the
borough after the Great Mistake
of 1898, many of which were
near his home neighborhood of
Marine Park. The southern half
of the borough has been largely
ignored by historians, according to
Campanella.
“If northern Brooklyn was in
the shadow of Manhattan, the
southern half of Brooklyn has been
in the shadow of both,” he said.
One such plan was to turn the
shallow waters of Jamaica Bay
into a deepwater port, following
the water trade boom that followed
the digging of the Panama Canal.
“The hopes were there was
going to be a jump up in seaborne
trade and everyone was trying to
get ready for that,” he said.
City planners wanted to dredge
and excavate the shallow waters of
the bay for wharfs, and to build a
railway station to allow for heavy
manufacturing, but then Parks
Commissioner and power-brokerin
the-making Robert Moses sank
the idea because he wanted to
preserve the natural wetlands.
Not far away, in what is now
Marine Park, planners wanted to
pave the wetlands of Gerritsen Inlet
and use the space for a bicentennial
celebration of George Washington’s
birthday in 1932. That plan
eventually morphed into the
World’s Fair, which Moses again
strong-armed the city into moving
to Flushing, Queens, in 1939.
Another spectacular project in
Campanella’s book is the Globe
Tower, a 700-foot steampunklooking
orb structure designed to
house an indoor amusement park
in Coney Island, dreamt up by
early 20th century inventor Samuel
Friede.
Friede convinced the founder of
the Steeplechase, George Tilyou,
to erect the steel structure on Surf
Avenue, near the current location
of MCU Park. Friede got people
to buy stocks in the project —
and then took off for Europe with
the money. It’s hard to say now
whether he planned to swindle his
investors all along, or if he just
got in over his head, according to
Campanella.
“It’s hard to say whether Friede
was planning the scam all along
or whether he actually believed in
it,” he said.
These grand ambitions were
soon replaced by an inferiority
complex, said the author, in which
Brooklyn no longer felt like an
underdog competitor against its
Manhattan rival, but like a lesser
part of the larger city.
“What consolidation ultimately
did, in my view, in time it sucked
the moxie and ambition out of
Brooklyn,” he said. “That’s when
I start to see evidence of this toxic
self-loathing in Brooklyn, ‘Woe
is me, we’re colonized terrain,
we’re the outer borough, we’re a
lesser place’ — it’s a very different
Brooklyn from today.”
“Built and Never-Built
Brooklyn” at Brooklyn Historical
Society 128 Pierrepont St.
at Clinton Street in Brooklyn
Heights, (718) 222—4111, www.
brooklynhistory.org. Nov. 7 at
6:30 pm. $10.
TBy Bill Roundy he best things in life are
free!
Life in the big city is
expansive, but your entertainment
doesn’t have to be! This fine
borough has plenty of
free entertainment
happening all the
time, and I’ve tracked
down a bunch of it for
this week.
First up, on Friday
night you can get a a
quick dose of culture at
“He Did What?” — a free,
10-minute animated opera about
a pair of senior citizens plotting
a murder. The show will be
projected on a loop onto an outside
wall of the Brooklyn Academy
of Music’s Peter Jay Sharp
Building (at Lafayette Ave. and St.
Felix Street in Fort Greene, www.
bam.org) from 7 to 10 pm tonight.
Headphones will be available so
you can hear the music, and there
will be subtitles if you have
trouble making out the
extended operatic
vowels.
Saturday night,
take advantage of the
free First Saturday
party at the Brooklyn
Museum (200 Eastern
Pkwy. at Washington
Avenue in Prospect Heights,
www.brooklynmuseum.org). This
weekend’s event celebrates the
recent re-opening of the Museum’s
Art of China and Art of Japan
galleries, so you can take a tour
of the redesigned exhibits with the
curators at 5:30 pm, then catch a
selection of Asian rockers, poets,
and comedians all night.
And on Sunday, fleet-footed
runners with the New York City
Marathon will stream through
Brooklyn all morning. One of
the best places to watch is along
Fourth Avenue (between 92nd
Street in Bay Ridge to Atlantic
Avenue in Park Slope, www.nyrr.
org). Cheer for the runners, and be
glad you are not trekking 26 miles
across all five borough today! The
first group starts at 8:30 am, but
the final runners will not set out
until 11 am, so you have time to get
some brunch and hoist a Bloody
Mary as the runners go past.
Over the globe: Early 20th century
inventor Samuel Friede proposed
building the 700-foot Globe Tower to
house an indoor amusement park in
Coney Island.
Collection of Thomas J. Campanella
t
e
w
tr
e
v
t
f
/www.nyrr
/www.commu
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/www.brooklynhistory.org
/www.brooklynhistory.org
/www.bam.org
/www.bam.org
/www.brooklynmuseum.org
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.commu
/ore.net
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/brooklynhistory.org
/bam.org
/www.brooklynmuseum.org)
/www.nyrr
