Celebrating Community
Family, friends, neighbors, and appreciative members of the Red Hook community gathered to celebrate Nancy Kearse Gooding at a barbecue on Coffey St on July 20. Last December the corner of Visitation Place and Van Brunt was renamed after her. Kearse Gooding was a force in Red Hook starting in the 1970’s. She ran an organization that helped local people […]
While many Brooklynites associate Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest or fireworks with the Fourth of July, the holiday is also an opportunity to celebrate Fort Defiance. The solid land we know as Red Hook was once pretty much a swamp. In the 1630s Dutch settled in the area and began to turn the marshes into farmland. When the Revolutionary War […]
I opened an old friend’s email the other day. It read, “That was a time it was…wasn’t it?” Attached was a copy of the Brooklyn DA’s felony complaint against David Berkowitz, sworn to by Detective John Falotico, dated August 11, 1977. Back then, I was a Brooklyn probation officer again. My first go-round ended on July 1 of 1975, when […]
New – the Phoenix is now online! https://www.digifind-it.com/phoenix/views/home.php COVID takes a Brooklyn newspaper pioneer by George Fiala Michael A. Armstrong, originally from the state of Washington, but who spent the majority of his 79 years in Boerum Hill, passed away last month after spending 17 days on a ventilator at Methodist Hospital. Dnynia, his wife and publishing partner, succumbed a […]
In late December 2019, the east side of Conover Street between Coffey & Dikeman Streets was sold to the Diamond Development Group (the exception is a 20-foot wide strip at the corner of Coffey Street). The price tag was $8.1 million, with Diamond committing an additional $10 million via a loan from S3 Capital for “development of a condo building.” […]
If you never saw Columbia Street before 1960, you missed a lot. The street is still there; the sidewalks, the street sign, but the stores, the people, the charm are all gone. That strip of avenue is unrecognizable, now lined with barrack type housing and no character at all. The house where I was born no longer stands. 11 Woodhull Street. […]
Of all of the mystery items scheduled for extraction from the Gowanus canal at the end October, perhaps the most interesting piece comes in the form of a sunken ship at the fourth street turning basin, beside the Gowanus Whole Foods. Locals may recognize the boat, which pokes out from the canal’s dark waters when water levels are low, along […]
Rooms without windows and poor ventilation cited by Board Brooklyn Eagle, March 22, 1927 Substition of the All-Day Club for the All-Night Club was seen as a remedy for any crime menace in Red Hook by Mrs. Ida Wambold, superintendent of the Flatbush Boys Club, who today advocated the establishment of a community center for the whole family in […]
Vito Parente has good reason to be celebrating these days. The president of Carroll Garden’s Van Westerhout Cittidini Molesi Cultural and Social Club is breathing new life into the organization. He is navigating the Italian social club scene onto new turf at a time when change is not just inevitable, but almost necessary as it faces an aging membership. Parente, who […]
The story of the Revolutionary War redoubt, Fort Defiance has been told in the pages of this newspaper before, so while it isn’t necessarily worth retelling the story of the role it played in the early days of the Revolution, it might be worth visiting its more recent past – that is, the curious tale of it’s debated location. Van […]