Today, Dean Street between Carlton and Sixth Avenues appears to be a pretty decent stretch of Prospect Heights, mostly lined with restored row houses and brownstones.
Could it really have been so horrible in February 1947, when a priest charged that it was “probably the worst block in Brooklyn” in terms of its concentration of “juvenile delinquents”?
The New York Times articles chronicling the charge don’t provide a lot of details, mainly noting that police say they’ve “tried to interest the 350 children and youths living on the block in a wide variety of sports programs” to no avail.
Apparently not all the residents of the block thought the kids were so bad. According to the Times, “some [residents] believed it was no better and no worse than other slum streets.”
That “slum street” has some awfully pricey real estate, even with Atlantic Yards going up at the other end.
Tags: Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn in the 1940s, Brooklyn slum street, brownstone Brooklyn, Carlton Avenue Brooklyn, Dean Street Brooklyn, Prospect Heights Brooklyn, slums in Brooklyn, worst block in Brooklyn
October 24, 2011 at 3:33 pm |
I know the priest who made that statement about Dean Street being the worst block: Father Edward Lodge Curran, a grandiose, pompous and bombastic person if there ever was one. He was the pastor of my church, St. Joseph’s, on Dean Street, when I was an altar boy there in the 50s. We all feared to serve mass with him. He was so authoritarian and cranky, unlike the other priests who were quite pleasant.
Yeah, Dean Street had its share of hooligans (nothing like the gangstas of today, btw) but as a cop in the news article stated, “no worse than any other slum block”.
I would walk down there many times and was never hassled. The kids who lived there were poorer than most of us working-class families in Prospect Heights, and it was near some factories, so was low rent and seemed a bit threatening
As for Curran, you may want to do a post on him alone.
He was a Coughlinite, a real anti-communist in the McCarthy vein. If he were anti-Semitic (as Coughlin certainly was), he kept it to himself during Sunday sermons, instead reserving his tirades as much for politics than religion, railing against communism, Dorothy Schiff’s NY Post (left-wing back then), City College (full of commies), JFK (false, left-wing Catholic), and the British occupation of Ireland (OK, he has a point there!). I can’t recall if he attacked bankers and the banking system, as Coughlin did.
He was quite intelligent and a brilliant orator, so he got lots of press quotes. That is likely why his ludicrous comments were picked up by the press in this case. That I can remember so much of his sermons reflects his oratorical skills and intelligence. He was also a lawyer, besides being a priest. Perhaps that is why he was in court that day.
In the 8th grade, our school had an essay contest on “Americanism”, in which we had to expand on that jingoistic theme. I won and got a medal from Curran, which I still may have. Nevertheless, I never lost my family’s leftist orientation.
Read more about the controversial Curran: http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/father-charles-coughlin-and-edward-lod
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,931261,00.html
http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lodge_Curran
October 24, 2011 at 4:12 pm |
“Dorothy Schiff’s NY Post (left-wing back then)”
i never knew it in those days, it’s hard to imagine
October 24, 2011 at 3:51 pm |
Thanks Sean for all the background info. What a windbag this Father Curran was. Too bad the Times story didn’t make light of that.
October 27, 2011 at 3:11 pm |
I love this block! Today I think it’s somewhat of an island within the more gentrified and white surrounding neighborhood, with a much higher concentration of working class black and hispanic residents, but I’ve never felt un-safe on it. During the warm months there’s always a crowd of kids and parents at the water fountain in the playground, and the long-time residents are always warm towards somewhat hipster-ish people like myself. Definitely hard to imagine this block the way Curran described it.
October 27, 2011 at 3:18 pm |
And so many of the houses have halloween decorations up! What’s not to love? Though I guess a guy like Curran would not have approved.
October 27, 2011 at 8:57 pm |
in the early 90s I lived on dean st between 4-5 ave. I loved my little ground floor 2 room apt, and my landloards were the nicest people in the world they had bought the house in the early 80 before anyone thought the area could be gentrified.
Across the street was a large scale pot operation but strictly wholesale so it was quiet and there were always Handsome young men with braids on the porch day and night. They let me know that a perve had been peeking in my windows regularly and helped me catch him.
The area is so different now, I always wondered what it was like when it was built.