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.

Whatever happened to Manhattan’s 13th Avenue?

It’s true, there really once was a 13th Avenue on Manhattan’s West Side—built on landfill in the 1830s starting at about 11th Street and going to 25th Street. Here’s part of it on an 1899 map from the New York Public Library digital collection.

It seemed to exist as a dreary access road to shipping piers, ferry terminals, dumping grounds, and factories, according to several articles in the New York Times archive.

“There are no sidewalks to speak of on Thirteenth-avenue and no surface indications of pavements,” one 1886 article reported. “A foot path winds through it, showing the course pedestrians take to dodge the deeper mud holes in wet weather.”

An 1883 story reported, “[Thirteenth Avenue] begins in a very humble and unpretentious way, but during its brief course of about a dozen blocks it gradually improves in width and general appearance.

“Unfortunately, however, at the very point where it begins to promise great things, and the casual pedestrian feels inclined to fancy it, the avenue ends abruptly in a high board fence, which proves an impassable barrier to all except the most accomplished acrobats.”

The article goes on to describe some of the people who hung around 13th Avenue: Italian immigrant women who pick through trash, night watchmen, and lumbermen.

Exactly when 13th Avenue was de-mapped for good is a mystery.

The murals of Washington Irving High School

If you find yourself on 17th Street and Irving Place with time to spare, it’s worth taking a look inside gorgeous, gothic Washington Irving High School. The school, built in 1913, features an enormous, 2-story wood-paneled lobby, complete with a fireplace.

A series of giant murals toward the ceiling depict scenes from New York City history. Here, the Dutch approach Long Island and New York harbor:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not the kind of painting you see in the typical high school:

Manhattan wildlife, circa 1800: birds, porcupines, squirrels, beavers, and skunks:

Washington Irving High School’s most famous graduate: Claudette Colbert, class of 1923.

It’s fun to stay at the YMCA

While leafing through a 1930s Daily News, I came across this ad for single rooms “for transient young men” at the YMCA’s William Sloane House. Intrigued, I did a little research. 

Turns out the 1600-room William Sloane Memorial WMCA, built in 1930 down the street from Penn Station, was a clean, safe, popular place for men to live upon first arriving in New York City. Soldiers frequently checked in; a military uniform acted as a free pass to stay in the 14-story building (not that 75 cents a night was going to break the bank back then).

This mid-century postcard of Sloane House comes with a handy neighborhood map.

By the 1980s, the building was mostly empty; in the early 1990s, only 20 percent of its rooms were occupied, mainly by students and tourists traveling on the cheap. The Y closed it for good in 1991. It is now an apartment building.

Minetta Brook beneath the Village

Minetta Brook, “once a placid stream dividing Manhattan Island from the North [Hudson] to the East River,” as described in a 1901 New York Times article, used to be flush with trout and surrounded by dense forest.

Native Americans named it “Manette,” or Devil’s Water. The Dutch called it “Bestevaer’s Killetje” which the British turned into “Bestavers Rivulet,” as it’s referred to in the upper right corner of this 1783 map, from The Historical Atlas of New York City. (Too bad the brook is cut off by the end of the map, so it’s tough to get a sense of where it flowed in to the East River, as the Times article states.)

As development pushed northward the brook was diverted beneath Washington Square, where it gurgled its way under the West Village. Minetta Street (below), a tiny lane intersecting little Minetta Place, bends slightly the way its namesake brook supposedly wound across the land.

In the lobby of the apartment building at 2 Fifth Avenue is a clear tube through which Minetta brook used to bubble up out of the ground. Unfortunately, the doorman told me he hasn’t seen any water in it in six years. Could the Minetta have run dry? 

The six towns of Brooklyn

It’s neat to think that Brooklyn was originally made up of six separate towns, five of them Dutch, which then united into the city of Brooklyn and eventually morphed into Kings County as we know it. This map, date unknown, also includes the names of small villages within those early towns—like New Lots, Bedford, and Williamsburgh. 

The map notes Bergen and Mill Islands, site of present-day Bergen Beach and Mill Basin. And Coney Island is two actual islands here.