This undated photo, with streetcars and automobiles shuttling along slender Manhattan Avenue, looks to be from the 1910s. The spire of St. Anthony’s church is easily recognizable, as is the curve in the road on the left. Was Greenpoint the dental capital of Brooklyn? I’ve counted three dentist offices in the photo.
Today the street looks similar, though without the telephone polls, streetcars, American flags, and hustle and bustle of bodies on the sidewalk. St. Anthony’s is still the tallest structure in the neighborhood, but if you enlarge the current photo, you’ll see a Manhattan skyscraper looming from across the river.
Tags: Greenpoint, Manhattan Ave., Milton Street, St. Anthony of Padua church
July 6, 2008 at 4:14 am |
Thanks for this. The dentist on the left corner is, well, still a dentist, and further up, it confirms what I’ve always thought, that the Rainbow shoppe WAS a theater (the entrance on manhattan and the larger space around the corner on calyer).
June 15, 2009 at 10:34 pm |
This was a GREAT old picture of my neighborhood. I grew up in Greenpoint and St. Anthony’s was my home parish. The sad thing is you can’t tell anymore that Greenpoint was an old and bustling little city of its own, with a lot of class. When I was a kid you could still see the old tracks along manhattan ave. (They were flush with the pavement). There were other signs of just how far back the neighborhood goes–I won’t go into it all–but now the developers have raped the neighborhood and you can’t see much of its old character. And greedy landlords are making it impossible for home-grown people to stay there, and impossible to raise a family there. Anyway, let me get off my soap box lol. Loved this picture. And I dig the other posts of yours that I saw Really nice idea for a blog! Thanks for this.
June 16, 2009 at 3:41 am |
Thanks! Greenpoint is one of my favorite places to just walk around and take in all the great old buildings and parks and old factories. But it is changing rapidly, like so many other true neighborhoods in NYC. The city’s loss.