Brooklyn’s lost village of Cripplebush

This map of the borough’s original five Dutch towns and one English town depicts a Brooklyn with the same geographic place names used today.

Bushwick, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Gravesend—they still go by their 17th century monikers. And the smaller villages within them, like Williamsburgh and New Lots, remain local names as well.

Then there’s Cripplebush, in the town of Brooklyn. What’s the deal with Cripplebush?

The Eastern District of Brooklyn, published in 1912, explains that Dutch residents of nearby Wallabout were granted a patent in 1654 to incorporate Cripplebush, “at the intersection of the Cripplebush Road and the Wallabout and Newtown Road or about Flushing and Nostrand Avenues of to-day.

“In 1830 Wallabout Village was started, including within its limits the Cripplebush settlement, and still later the section became known as East Brooklyn.”

Cripplebush Road no longer exists. And Cripplebush settlement, which other sources have described as a swamp, must have been quietly absorbed into Wallabout in the 19th century.

Vintage store signs: faded and falling apart

Some of the letters in this Gertel’s sign don’t look like they light up, yet that’s okay. Seeing the words “bakery” and “luncheon” one on top of the other in that old-time font more than makes up for it.

Luncheon: This old-school word is disappearing fast from the New York vocabulary.

Gertel’s home had been Hester Street since 1914. They relocated near Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill in 2008, taking the iconic sign with them.

I have no idea how long G&M Variety Discounts House has been on Broadway in Washington Heights. But judging from the shape of the sign, I’d say since the 1960s.

What happened to a Bed-Stuy dress form factory?

The Ellanam Adjustable Form Company made a name for itself with its “adjustable” dress form—a three-dimensional headless, limbless female mannequin used for sewing.

The breakthrough adjustable model, heavily advertised to housewives in the early 20th century, could be easily altered to accommodate clothes of any shape or size.

They must have been pretty novel; several of these dress forms command a decent amount of cash on online auction sites.

 But what happened to Ellanam? They seem to have vanished, and their former home at 378 Throop Avenue near Tompkins Park looks residential. Another reminder of Brooklyn’s days as a manufacturing hub.

Walkin’ about Wallabout

Wallabout is either a dressed-up name for the gritty area abutting the Brooklyn Navy Yard and sliced by the BQE. Or it’s a true neighborhood with a vibe distinct from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill to the south.

Whatever your take, Wallabout is a stronghold of Brooklyn history that’s worth a look. The name comes from the Dutch word Waal-bogt, which means a bend in the river. This bend is Wallabout Bay. Here, the British docked 12 prison ships holding captured Revolutionary War soldiers.

More than 11,000 men died on ships like the one in the engraving above. Some of their remains are entombed in the haunting Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in nearby Fort Greene Park.

Wallabout grew into a residential district in the mid-19th century, housing workers who toiled along Brooklyn’s thriving waterfront. These workers lived in wood frame houses, some of which still stand.

These 2- and 3-story houses, with lovely porches, are modest and charming—especially compared to the mansions up the hill closer to the Pratt campus.

In fact, historic Wallabout, which the Historic District Council defines as eight blocks roughly between Myrtle and Park Avenues, has the largest concentration of pre-Civil War wood frame homes in the city.

Wallabout has literary cred as well. Walt Whitman is believed to have lived in the nabe; his former home is supposedly 99 Ryerson Street (not pictured, since it’s covered in cheap siding).

More old-school phone exchanges

This old-timey sign belongs to a store on Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill. the UL exchange stood for Ulster.

But what was Ulster? It’s a mystery. A New York Times article from February 1947 announced that 4,200 households in Flatbush “who have wanted telephone installations since the beginning of the war” would be getting UL numbers.

Strangely, Joe’s Superette, on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, also has a UL number. That’s a bit of a hike from Myrtle Avenue.

Meanwhile, on a residential building in Harlem, the “In Case of Emergency” number above still stands next to an elevator shaft. LE for Lenox Avenue.

The horse heads left behind on old stables

Regal horse head statues like these still dot old buildings in every borough in the city, and it’s kind of a thrill to be out on a walk and discover new ones right in your own neighborhood.

They’re stately reminders that New York City was built on the backs of horses. Almost every block had stables where working horses were fed and allowed to rest.

This one above is affixed to an old stable on a side street in Clinton Hill.

An entirely different horse head watches over a building off Madison Street on the Lower East Side.

A sumptuous 22-room mansion on the East River

The breathtaking house looks like it belongs in Newport, Rhode Island, or on Long Island’s North Shore.

Instead, here it is at the quiet junction of Evans and Little Streets in Brooklyn’s tiny Vinegar Hill neighborhood, on several bucolic, rolling acres along the East River.

So what’s it doing there? Called the Commandant’s Mansion, Matthew C. Perry House, or just “Quarters A,” it was built in 1806 to house Commanders of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, right up the East River. Perry and his family resided there in the 1840s.

It’s a pretty impressive house, particularly for a former working-class Brooklyn nabe: Federal-style, with three floors, fireplaces in every room, a White House-like oval room, plus a widow’s walk.

Sealed off from onlookers by a tall iron fence, it may be one of the most hidden homes in New York City. It was sold by the Navy after the Navy Yard was shut down in the 1960s and is now privately owned.

Brooklyn’s champion ice hockey team

Meet the men of the Crescents, also known as the New Mooners, an ice hockey team affiliated with Brooklyn’s Crescent Athletic Club.

They bagged several New York Amateur Hockey League championship titles between 1896 and 1918, when the team (and the league) disbanded in the wake of America’s involvement in World War I.

This is the 1911 crew. No helmets or padding for these guys. They played at an ice rink on Claremont Avenue in Brooklyn as well as at the St. Nicholas Rink on the Upper West Side, where they battled their chief rival, the wonderfully named New York Wanderers.

When Miss Rheingold ruled New York City

Miss Harlem. Miss subways. Miss Brooklyn. The list of long-gone local beauty contests is filled with small-time titles and pageants. 

But one mattered so much to residents, it reportedly attracted almost as many city voters as a presidential election at the time did: Miss Rheingold.

A promotional jackpot for Brooklyn’s Rheingold Brewing Company, the Miss Rheingold pageant ran from 1941 to 1964. 

Every summer, grocery stores would be stocked with ballots featuring six finalists. The winner spent the following year on Rheingold billboards and in magazine ads. (Tippi Hendren, a 1953 finalist, above, didn’t snag the title.)

Miss Rheingold helped make the beer New York’s most popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Rheingold goes way back in the city; it opened in 1883 in Bushwick on the nabe’s famed “Brewers Row,” which earned its moniker because so many German-American beer companies began there.

Alas, they shut down in 1976, but the brand was revived in the 1990s. A new Miss Rheingold contest was also reinstated recently, but the contestants are all female bartenders.

A Brooklyn art exhibit for the Statue of Liberty

Too bad this poster doesn’t provide any details on what, exactly, was being exhibited by this now-extinct arts group. The Brooklyn Art Association galleries stood at 174 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights.

The Fund for the Pedestal, launched in 1884, helped bring the Statue of Liberty—the “Bartholdi Statue,” as the poster calls it—to New York Harbor in 1886.