Urban Gadabout: Last call for Jack Eichenbaum's big day on the L train (this Saturday!)

With the rapid gentrification of Williamsburg, then Bushwick, and continuing farther out on the line, NYC's L train has gone from a forlorn stepchild of the subway system to its "boom" line.

by Ken

I'm hoping that by now urban geographer Jack Eichenbaum -- who's also the Queens borough historian -- needs no introduction to readers, and if he does, just click on the tag below. As I've noted, Jack's wide-ranging tours around NYC (I've toured all five boroughs except Staten Island with him), with their emphasis on the evolving forces of urban geography, have done more than I could tell to enable me to see how and why the city has developed and continues to develop.

One of Jack's choice tour modes is to devote an entire day to a single subway line, usually involving a half-dozen off-the-subway mini-walking tours along the route, giving urban gadders a sense of how variously the urban fabric both absorbed and was shaped by the line. He's probably best-known for what he calls his "signature" tour, "The World of the #7 Train," showcasing the diversity of what may be the world's most "international" rail line. But with Jack I've also toured the J train (from Lower Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn and then Queens) and the Brighton line in Brooklyn (revisiting Howie's and my old lifeline into "the City").

Now, as I've noted here previously, Jack is taking on the L train, in advance of the year-and-a-half shutdown of its connection from Williamsburg to Manhattan, to make possible desperately needed reconstruction and repair of damage caused by the ravages of time and Superstorm Sandy.


The Subway Nut's caption: "A Manhattan-bound R143 L train leaves Atlantic Avenue passing the tracks that lead from the L to the East New York L. (29 May, 2007)"

Life and Art Along the L Train
Saturday, October 22, 10am - 5:30pm

Since its expansion to 8th Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930s, the L line has stimulated gentrification along its route which traverses three boroughs. We explore the West Village and meatpacking district -- including a portion of the new Highline Park— and on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood noting the continuous transformation of each of these neighborhoods, stimulated by the movement of artists.

This tour requires registration and payment in advance and is restricted to 25 participants. Fee $49 

For a complete prospectus, email: jaconet@aol.com

The L train will soon be shut down for repairs; join this tour prior to that.

Obviously, it isn't going to be possible to do this tour again at least until the L line reopens, and even then, who knows? So if this sounds like something you might be interested in, now is the time to get on board. At last word from Jack, there's still space, but since we're talking about this coming Saturday, you need to contact Jack ASAP, either by e-mail or by phone (if you e-mail me at dwtkeninny@aol.com, I'll send you the number).



While the Manhattan connection is still operational, before it closes for post-Sandy reconstruction and repairs, rhe L train runs from Eighth Avenue and 14th Street crosstown under 14th Street, then under the East River to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) and then eastward, eventually hooking southeastward to Canarsie, within bus range of Canarsie's Jamaica Bay shore. [Click to enlarge.]

#

Urban Gadabout NYC: Exploring Calvary Cemetery and the L train -- plus fall schedules from the NY Transit Museum and MAS

First Calvary Cemetery occupies a commanding position on the Queens side of the borough's western border with Brooklyn. (Click to enlarge.) Mitch Waxman will be leading a Calvary walking tour on Saturday, August 22, 11am to (approx.) 1pm.

by Ken

Awhile back Mitch Waxman devoted a Newtown Pentacle post to Queens's First Calvary Cemetery ("ordinary interpretation," August 5), when he called it "my favorite place in Queens." That post has taken such root in my head that I was delighted when he mentioned during his recent walking tour of Newtown Creek's Dutch Kills tributary that he'd cleared a date for a walking tour there: Saturday, August 22. The date left me with a bad feeling, and sure enough, when I was able to check my calendar, I was reminded that that's already my date from scheduling hell.

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW, ON THE 22ND --

I'll first be LIRR-ing it out to Port Washington, on the eastern shore of Long Island's Manhasset Bay, for a 2pm "Great Gatsby Boat Tour" with the Art Deco Society of New York, which you better believe I signed up for as soon as I saw the announcement. (And wisely so. ADSNY has a waiting list for the event.) I have been to Port Washington, and fairly recently; it was our lunch stop on a bus tour with Justin Ferate, en route between visits to two noteworthy Long Island estates. But I've never been out on a boat in Manhasset Bay.

Where things get crazy is that from there I absolutely must catch the 4:39pm train out of Port Washington, which, if everything goes right, should get me to the LIRR Woodside (Queens) station in time to get to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria for a 6pm screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm. (Lawrence is also being screened at 4pm Sunday the 23rd, but in order to do that I would have to leave an MAS tour of Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza with Francis Morrone after an hour or even less.)

If I were really crazy, I could top the day off with a wild overnight (10pm-1am) Obscura Society of New York outing to "a hidden Chinatown den of iniquity" for "The Cheaters Party -- A School for Scoundrels," where participants will be given demonstrations in the art of card-playing sleight of hand, including, yes, full-fledged cheating, with opportunities (and, yes, permission) to try out this newly acquired, er, skill, not to mention indulging an open bar dispensing "Rat Pack-inspired cocktails"! Actually, what's holding me back isn't so much a lack of craziness as a lack of any known gambling instinct. And even that open bar isn't the lure it might once have been. Also, music is promised, and I would expect that to be both deafening and horrible.)

First Calvary Cemetery, with a view! Photo by Mitch W (click to enlarge)

By the way, Mitch -- wearing his hat as official historian of the Newtown Creek Alliance -- will also be participating in a pair of Open House New York boat trips up his "beloved" creek, along with NCA program manager Will Elkins and representatives of the NYC Department of Environmental Preservation (and I think I read somewhere of the EPA) on Thursday, September 3, at 5pm and 7pm. Scroll down to "Newtown Creek Boat Tour" on the OHNY programs page, or go directly to the ticket and booking info.


"LIFE ON THE L TRAIN" WITH JACK EICHENBAUM

The L train has a fascinating history -- and a booming present and near-term future, as ridership has been undergoing huge increases. (Click to enlarge.)

As regular readers are aware, one of my favorite genres of NYC tours is Jack Eichenbaum's day-long single-subway line explorations -- most famously his "World of the #7 Train" (the Flushing line), which he describes as his "signature" tour, and which he does pretty much every year. Over the length of the route, Jack has picked out half a dozen stops as sites for mini-walking tours of neighborhoods that not only are enormously different from one another but have rich and various histories unto themselves, all scheduled around a long lunch stop at the Flushing end of the line, with all the dining options of Flushing's flourishing Chinatown and Koreatown.

I was delighted finally to get to "do" the #7 train again in June, at which time Jack noted that by the next time he does this tour, it will undergo major changes, starting with the incorporation of the under-construction extension of the #7 from Times Square to the Javits Center at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. (Completion dates have come and gone fairly regularly since the days when then-Mayor Bloomberg liked to terrorize NYC Transit with phone calls demanding to know when it would be done. Mayor Mike really didn't have much interest in improved transit as such, but he wound up deeply immersed not just in the #7 expansion but in the massive East Side Access project that will bring Long Island Rail Road passengers into Grand Central Terminal -- because they're both crucial to multi-zillion-dollar area redevelopments, something our billionaire ex-mayor was very interested in.)

Jack does other subway lines too, though, in that same basic format: usually a half-dozen mini-walking tours along the route, visiting enormously contrasting neighborhoods with even more contrasted histories. In recent years I've had the pleasure of joining Jack in explorations of the J line, which runs from Lower Manhattan across to Brooklyn and on into Queens, and Brooklyn's Brighton Line (now the Q), the descendant of one of the original steam railroads to the resort haven of Coney Island. During the June "World of the #7 Train," Jack announced that he would soon be doing the L train, which actually functions as a crosstown subway in Manhattan, running across 14th Street from Eighth Avenue to First Avenue, then under the East River to Brooklyn's Williamsburg and Bushwick and onward, till it comes to rest in Canarsie, within bus reach of the shore of Jamaica Bay.

Somehow I missed Jack's announcement of the actual date -- Saturday, October 17 -- and by the time I learned the date, I had a schedule conflict, and now that MAS tour prices have increased to $20 for members ($30 for non-members), I'm not as quick to blow off the tour I've registered for as I might once have been. (Besides, I want to do that tour!) So it looks like I'm going to miss:

LIFE ALONG THE L TRAIN
Saturday. October 17, 10am-5:30pm

The L train has a complex history: first as a steam railroad line, later as an elevated BRT train, eventually integrated into the subway system with its expansion to Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1930’s. Beginning in the 1950’s the L train has stimulated artist-spearheaded gentrification along its route. We’ll explore the West Village and meatpacking district— including a portion of the new Highline Park— and then on to the East Village, Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, noting the status of transformation in each of these neighborhoods.

This tour is limited to 25 participants and requires registration by check of $42/pp to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St #6C, Flushing, NY 11354. For a prospectus and any questions, contact Jack at jaconet@aol.com

These days, owing in good part to its Williamsburg (and now Bushwick) connection, the L train is the city's fastest-growing, ridership-wise, and has gone from being a stepchild of the system to its proudest prodigy, with much-improved service finally catching up to the dramatic increase in use.


NEW SCHEDULES FROM MAS AND THE TRANSIT
MUSEUM -- AND SOME SURPRISES FROM MAS

I should mention too that both the New York Transit Museum and the Municipal Art Society have announced and begun booking tours for September and October.

As noted, the fall MAS offerings come with the price increase (I mentioned earlier, from $15 to $20 for members, and from $20 to $30 for non-members). On the plus side, tour registrants now get nearest-transit information for the meeting point (not exactly an innovation, since this used to be included in all tour descriptions) and also -- and this is new, and most welcome -- approximate tour end-point information.
All of this was mentioned in a covering e-mail to MAS members. What was not mentioned, and I didn't in fact learn until I registered for five tours that I knew I wanted to do and didn't want to get closed out of, is that tours have been shrunk from two hours to 90 minutes.

Of course we don't buy tours by the minute, but if we did, then the member price has increased not by 33 percent but by 78 percent, and the non-member price not by 50 percent but by a full 100 percent. It's not the price that concerns me, at least not so much, as what represents a radical change in format. A 90-minute tour isn't just shorter than a 120-minute one; it's really a different animal, especially when you consider how long it takes any tour to actually "get going." And while there are undoubtedly tour subjects that are better-suited to a 90-minute format, and would have to be padded out to fill two hours, a two-hour tour that was a proper two-hour tour to begin with is probably going to have to be reconceived to make the cut, and I can't help thinking shrunk in ways other than just time.

In fact, the two-hour format, which has become a much more rigidly enforced time limit since I began doing MAS tours not that many years ago, was really more like two and a half hours back then. I gather, though, that MAS received enough complaints to start cracking the whip about the time limit. This boggles my mind, that people would complain about getting more than they paid for. But there you are.

Clearly the people in charge believe that this is what people want. (I'm pretty sure that I don't count among the "people" they're concerned about.) And the September-October list contains lots of interesting-looking offerings -- I jotted down 17 tours I was interested in, after allowing for known schedule conflicts. As I mentioned, I've already registered for five, and it was when I downloaded my tour info that I discovered that what I registered for are 90-minute tours. Suddenly I found myself thinking that maybe the five tours I've registered for will do it for me.

Like I said, at some point we should probably talk about this. But not now.

#

As Mitch Waxman prepares to tramp around his beloved Newtown Creek, we look at a blogpost that shows what blogposts can do

As recently as two years ago, when binary_bob took the top photo, posted on Reddit (click to enlarge), the once-mighty but long-doomed-following-abandonment Domino Sugar plant on Brooklyn's once-industrial waterfront still retained a large measure of its grandeur. The lower image, is a rendering of the redevelopment plan (click to enlarge), courtesy of SHoP Architects, looking east and slightly southward, with the Williamsburg Bridge at the right. Quick: Can you find the refinery building itself?

"One cannot help but drop his jaw whenever the former Havemeyer or Domino Sugar plant site comes into view. It is being redeveloped as a residential structure – more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within. The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask."

-- from Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages"

by Ken

All week I've been meaning to talk a bit about our pal Mitch Waxman's Monday Newtown Pentacle post, "last stages," which seems to me a textbook-worthy demonstration of what the blog format can do when it's crackling. A blogpost, after all, has two fundamental resources: pictures and words. (Videos seem to me for the most part less a resource than a brain-draining abomination.) And Mitch has a way with both. You may recall that he's a compulsive NYC urban wanderer and photographer with a deep connection to place and time.

In terms of "place," he's based in Astoria, Queens, and along the way has developed a special connection to legendarily pollluted Newtown Creek, which forms the western part of the boundary between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and which once was the industrial heartland not just of the New York City but of the U.S.A., which after all is how it got so polluted. So before we get to that blogpost, I thought I would mention that there are two immediately upcoming opportunities to take advantage of his obsession with his "beloved" Newtown Creek for anyone who might be in the New York City area tomorrow (August 2 -- kind of late notice on this one, I know; sorry!) and/or next Saturday (August 8), when Mitch is doing two of his signature Newtown Creek-related tours:

THE INSALUBRIOUS VALLEY OF THE NEWTOWN CREEK
Bushwick and Maspeth walking tour

NEWTOWN CREEK ALLIANCE
Sunday, August 2, 10am-12:30pm

Join Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman for walk through the industrial heartlands of New York City and along the Newtown Creek. Following the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens, we will be exploring the colonial, industrial, and environmental history of the borderland communities. We will encounter century old movable bridges, visit the remains of a 19th century highway, and explore two of the lesser known tributaries of the troubled Newtown Creek watershed. For the vulgarly curious, Conrad Wissell's Dead Animal and Night Soil wharf will be described.

Meet up at the corner of Grand street and Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn. Map: https://goo.gl/psdEEO The L train stops nearby at Bushwick Avenue and Grand Street, and the Q54 and Q59 bus lines stop nearby as well. Check MTA.info the morning of for last minute transit changes.



Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and hot weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

13 STEPS AROUND DUTCH KILLS
Long Island City walking tour

ATLAS OBSCURA
Saturday, August 8, 10am-1pm

In 13 steps, Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman will be showing us the then and now of Dutch Kills tributary, once known as the "workshop of the United States."

A central maritime artery of Long Island City, Dutch Kills is surrounded by hundreds of factory buildings, titan rail yards, and crossed by century old bridges - and it's found just a few blocks away from Queens Plaza. During this three hour tour, we will cover three miles of Brooklyn and Queens to see where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.

Be prepared for rough terrain and possible heavy truck traffic. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking and for weather. Closed-toe shoes are highly recommended. Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk.

Meet up at the Albert E. Short Triangle park found at the corner of Jackson Avenue and 23rd Street in Long Island City, Queens. This is the Court Square MTA station, and served by the 7, G, and M lines. Additionally, the Q39 and B62 buses have nearby stops. Drivers are encouraged to leave their vehicles near the Pulaski Bridge in either Greenpoint or Long Island City.

A "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TAKE ON THE
EMERGING BROOKLYN-QUEENS WATERFRONT

Now about that blogpost. I was talking a moment ago about Mitch's sense of "place, and for this post, our pal Mitch Waxman he was ensconced in one of his recently favorite places for wandering, the East River Ferry, taking some great shots of what's left of the once-teeming working waterfront of New York City's East River. Note that he hastens to clarify what he means by "a working waterfront," which is to say one "that is engaged in the production of something other than artisanal pickles."

However, he notes that observing "the modern day East River bums me out." And the quote at the top of this post is Mitch deep in bumnation, contemplating the finally-taking-place transformation of the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg, just north of the Williamsburg Bridge. Here are two photos he took, one with the bridge and one without (click to enlarge):





Not long ago, Open House New York -- as part of a new series, "Projects in Planning," which aims to "explore the design and planning process of a single project during its early stages of development," to give us a window on the process of a major development project still in the development stage -- offered members a presentation by Vishaan Chakrabarti of SHoP Architects on the "Domino Sugar Refinery Redevelopment" (see the photo above), for which redevelopment plans have been kicking around almost since the plant was shut down in 2004 Here was the description (scroll way down, to April 8, in the "Recent Programs" section of the OHNY programs page):

OHNY members are invited to a presentation of SHoP Architects' master plan for the redevelopment of Brooklyn's iconic Domino Sugar Refinery. With a renovated refinery building as its "nerve center," the project is expected to create a 24/7 mix of creative office space, market-rate and affordable housing, retail shops, community facilities, and public open spaces. The distinctive buildings, which will create a new skyline for Brooklyn, are designed to allow light and air to penetrate through the site into the neighborhood beyond.

Now Vishaan Chakrabarti is one heckuva presentation presenter. After all, while in this instance he was talking to a bunch of people whose only standing came from having ponied up OHNY's modest annual membership fee, he's accustomed to giving presentations to people who are contemplating spending zillions of dollars, or perhaps have the power to turn thumbs up or down on other people's expenditure of said zillions of dollars. And as he described the process that had brought the project to its present state, he persuaded me, at least, that as large-scale development projects go, this one -- which includes an array of new buildings as well as open spaces surrounding the old plant itself (which is one of three buildings on the site that have landmark protection) -- has been planned with unusual sensitivity to the site's history and to the current needs of the nearby community.

Nevertheless, it looks to be a blight on the waterfront (don't you just love that "doughnut hole" building?), and it doesn't matter, because in the end it all comes down to what it all always had to come down to: the triumph of money. Williamsburg, after all, is now NYC's hippest and perhaps also hottest neighborhood, and the whole point of hipness, at least from the commercial standpoint, and it's hard to think of any other standpoint that can be said to matter, is to create hotness, in the real-estate sense, of course. So if the shores of Long Island City (Queens) and Greenpoint (Williamsburg's Brooklyn neighbor to the north) are to be lined with sky-high and sky-high-priced giant glass boxes, and they are, you can be sure that Williamsburg is getting them even glassier and boxier. (The one concession that city has extracted from developers is parkfront development along the riverfront proper and free access to it, which is certainly very different from the waterfront in its old industrial stage.)

Now here's Mitch ruminating on the old Domino site:

Williamsburg is officially lost as a point of interest for me. Bland boxes of steel and glass will extend all along the East River soon enough, stretching from the former industrial heartland once called “America’s Workshop” in Long Island City all the way through the Gold Coast of North Brooklyn to the Williamsburg Bridge.

BUT HE ADDS "QUINTESSENTIALLY MITCH" TOUCHES

First, speaking of this span of high-priced glass-and-steel boxes rising above the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront north of the Williamsburg Bridge, he notes:

Criminals are already beginning to focus their attentions on this area, just as they did in the age of industry. Why? Because predators go where the prey is.

Then he adds another characteristic touch -- a touch, one might say, of bumnation: "It’s cliché to even comment on it anymore, one realizes."

Except that Mitch has a comment on this redevelopment of the Domino site "as a residential structure -- more luxury condos for the children of the rich to dwell within."

The question of what will happen to these structures when NYC slides backwards into an era of degeneracy and decay is one few ask.

Any historian will tell you that it’s a cyclical thing here in the megalopolis, one that flips back and forth on a roughly forty year cycle which can be directly correlated to rates of crime, and that the City’s current upswing began in the late 1990’s – reversing a decline process that started shortly after the Second World War.

Rich people tend to move away from the City center when things get hairy. The rest of us are kind of stuck here.

This, I think, is sweet. Finally, here's Mitch's sendoff for this post:

Scenes long familiar, lost. The wilderness of the oligarchs is upon us, and deep in the woods – wolves howl to celebrate and delight. The nobles will be safe in their keeps, but the peasants – we’re on our own.

WHAT DOES A WORKING WATERFRONT LOOK LIKE?



On his ferry ride, Mitch observed "the Alice Oldendorf bulk cargo ship at work, making a delivery to a concrete plant at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The ship hosts a series of cranes and conveyors which unload her holds, producing the cyclopean mounds of sand and gravel witnessed above." (Again, click to enlarge.)

#

Urban Gadabout: When east is west and north is south -- travels in the Bronx and Brooklyn

The Mott Iron Works, founded by Jordan L. Mott in 1828, and the source of the name given to the southernmost area of the Bronx, Mott Haven, is mostly forgotten and almost entirely gone -- but this sign remains.

The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.

-- from the Wikipipedia article on the Bronx

by Ken

We had just walked across the Third Avenue from Manhattan into the Bronx, and the leader of this Municipal Art Society (MAS) tour, Jack Eichenbaum (the official Queens borough historian, who's actually allowed to venture into the other boroughs), was explaining that when settlement began pushing north across the Harlem River into the neighborhood that became known as Mott Haven, where we were, notably once the Third Avenue El began offering service over the river and into the northlands, in the 1890s, the area was often referred to as Northside, since it was north of New York City proper -- of which it had been a part, you'll see from the Wikipedia note, even before Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island were merged into the city in 1898.

As you'll also see in the Wikipedia note, this area, being well west of the Bronx River, is classically "West" Bronx -- and yet, as Jack pointed out, if you look at the street signs for the numbered streets in the neighborhood, you see that they're "East," the north-south dividing line being well to the west, at Jerome Avenue. So the area can be thought of as "north," or as "east," or as "west" -- but is best known to the outside world as part of the South Bronx.

Dealing with similar challenges of urban disinvestment and blight, the neighborhoods of Mott Haven, Melrose, Morrisania were often referred to dismissively as simply ‘the South Bronx’. In recent decades, planning and new buildings have begun to restore their livability. This walking tours stresses renewal in response to basic urban geography.

I've written a number of times about Jack and his unusual perspective as a tour leader a number of times. The unusual perspective is that he is an academic and practical georgrapher. (His website, called "The Georgraphy of New York City with Jack Eichenbaum," can be found at geognyc.com), And his overall description of the three Bronx walking tours he's doing for MAS, which began Saturday with "Mott Haven: From the Harlem River to the Bronx Hub," reads:

Dealing with similar challenges of urban disinvestment and blight, the neighborhoods of Mott Haven, Melrose, Morrisania were often referred to dismissively as simply ‘the South Bronx’. In recent decades, planning and new buildings have begun to restore their livability. This walking tours stresses renewal in response to basic urban geography. Please be prepared to walk two miles and at a brisk pace.

And sure enough, by walking across the Harlem River to Mott Haven, we got to see how Jordan Mott came to locate his iron works there -- on the Bronx side of the river, where the amount of land he needed could be had less expensively, with that easy access to the Harlem and East Rivers for shipping materials in and goods out in the era before railroads. Later we got to see the development boom that came with the coming of the Third Avenue El, and then some of the factors that caused the neighborhood to go into decline in the 1920s. And then how the decline of the area made it an obvious place to locate some of the city's largest public-housing projects in the '50s and '60s boom of such projects.

At the tour's northern end, 149th Street, the area known as "the Hub," still an important shopping district but no longer, as it once was, the central commercial district of the Bronx, we even got a glimpse of the next tour in the series: Melrose. As it turned out, Jack had been so efficient about keeping the unexpectedly large group -- thanks apparently to a mention in the Times -- moving (his tours tend to cover a lot of ground, so he tends to keep his people moving smartly) that we arrived well ahead of schedule, and the "add-on" walk that Jack had planned for those interested in continuing, across 149th Street from Third Avenue to the Grand Concourse, wound up fitting comfortably into the tour's scheduled two hours.

FROM THE BRONX TO BROOKLYN, ON THE CLOCK

Which was great for me, because I had scheduled myself, probably foolishly, for a tour in Brooklyn scheduled to start a mere hour after the official finish of the Mott Haven walk. I'd done it partly because I know Jack is good about keeping to schedule times, and partly because I'd worked out that I really could get from Third Avenue and 149th Street in the Bronx to Park Slope in Brooklyn in the allotted time via the IRT no. 2 train, provided I made the right connection.

And so I peeled off of the group en route to the Grand Concourse and headed back to Third Avenue, which showed my ignorance of Bronx geography. I was so conscious of needing to head south, and not wanting to be diverted in the westward diversion of the tour "supplement," that I remained blissfully unaware, until I got to the train platform, that the no. 2 train in fact heads westward from Third Avenue. The next stop, in fact, is 149th and Grand Concourse!

Nevertheless, I made my train connection and made it to the sidewalk in front of the Montauk Club, once the social haunt of the cream of the cream of Brooklyn society, which was as prosperous as any in the country, comfortably in time for the second part of a three-part series led by another MAS stalwart, Francis Morrone, "Three Ways of Looking at Park Slope, Part 2: Park Slope Northeast."

It was a heavily sentimental day for me, because both Jack and Francis have been so important to my late-dawning fascination with and budding awareness of how the city has developed. As I've written before, I was lucky enough to do a tour that Jack did for the New York Transit Museum back in the fall of 2010 focusing on three subway nodes (Times Square in Manhattan and Queens Plaza and Jackson Heights in Queens), where the crossing of two or more different subway lines played such a vital role in the area's development.

It was Jack that day who turned me on to MAS, and it's no exaggeration to say that the MAS tours have changed my life. (As I think I've mentioned, I was lucky enough to have a chance to say just this to the outgoing MAS tour director, Tamara Coombs. I was pleased and unsurprised to hear that it wasn't the first time she'd heard this.) Since then I've done a huge number of tours with Jack, both for MAS and under other auspices, including tours of his own, notably what he calls is "signature" tour, "The World of the #7 Train" (of which he's announced a 2012 edition, scheduled for April 28; see below).

PARK SLOPE AND DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

And among my early MAS tours, which became my first with Francis, was the last incarnation of this very tour: of the "gold coast," the northeast, of Brooklyn's Park Slope. Actually, it should have been my second tour with Francis, because I'd signed up for the first tour in the series, which covered the low-rent, still-developing northwest part of Park Slope. But I wound up going out of town and missing that tour.

So I pounced when the Park Slope series was announced to begin again with Part 1, the one I'd missed, in January. By the time Part 2 was slipped into the schedule, on a preregistration basis (for the last several months most of Francis's tours have been scheduled on a walk-up, pay-at-tour basis, and he draws such crowds that I've just been passing on them), I had done so many walking tours in Park Slope and surrounding areas of Brooklyn, many of them with Francis (I've now done so many tours with him, and many of them have remained cherished memories), that I couldn't resist signing up to do Part 2 again, even with the potential scheduling nightmare of the time-sensitive Bronx-to-Brooklyn trek. I certainly wasn't going to miss the Mott Haven walk -- anytime MAS has asked what kinds of tours we might like to see happen, my first answer has always been the Bronx, the borough I know least well.

As it turned out, my legs didn't hold out (I won't bore you with that story) for the whole of the Park Slope Northeast walk, but it jogged a lot of memories and filled in a number of points. One point that Francis made fit in with Jack's point about directionality in Mott Haven: that a number of the neighborhoods in the southern part of the part of Brooklyn that lies west of Prospect Park are still called "South Brooklyn," even though anyone who looks at a map can see that they're fairly far north in the modern-day borough of Brooklyn, as it has existed since shortly before the combined Brooklyn merged with NYC in 1898, they are in the southern part of the original town, then city, of Brooklyn, as established under Dutch and English rule -- consisting basically of that area to the west and a bit to the north of what's now Prospect Park.

I was happy to find my legs back in condition Sunday for another tour with Francis that seemed to have been slipped onto the schedule, again by preregistration, "Downtown Brooklyn Now." It's an area I've wanted to be exposed to for some time now, and I can't imagine it being done better than Francis did it, giving us not only a picture of the area's odd development patterns and the visible changes, but a sense of how it was in older times. I haven't mentioned it yet this time out, but Francis (a bona fide architectural historian), in addition to being vastly knowledgeable over a remarkably wide range of subjects, is very funny, in an ingratiatingly quiet, droll way. In lovely sunny pre-spring weather, it was a grand outing (though I've been on tours with him in ghastly weather, and that worked out just as well). Advice: The next time Francis schedules the Downtown Brooklyn walk, don't miss it.

AS NOTED, JACK HAS SCHEDULED A NEW OUTING
OF HIS DAYLONG "WORLD OF THE #7 TRAIN" TOUR

I wrote a lot about this tour along the Flushing line last year, when I was excited out of my mind for months before it actually happened -- and lived up to all my expectations. It's scheduled for Saturday, April 28, from 10am to 5:30pm, and I'm all but sure I'm going to do it again. Here's Jack's description:

This series of six walks and connecting rides along North Queens’ transportation corridor is my signature tour. We focus on what the #7 train has done to and for surrounding neighborhoods since it began service in 1914. Walks take place in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Flushing, Corona, Woodside and Jackson Heights and lunch is in Flushing’s Asiatown. Tour fee is $39 and you need to preregister by check to Jack Eichenbaum, 36-20 Bowne St. #6C, Flushing, NY 11354 (include name, phone and email address) The full day’s program and other info is available by email jaconet@aol.com The tour is limited to 25 people. Don’t get left out!

Last year the pace of registration was pretty slow for a long time after Jack announced the date, but as it approached, that pace picked up rapidly, and he wound up having to turn a number of people away.

#