I've written about, and posted about, the lost West New Brighton neighborhood now squatted on by the West Brighton Houses. It was several blocks of homes, a church (the original St. Benedicta), and was served by theaters and stores along Broadway and Castleton Avenue. Nearby where the factories and dockyards where the people made their livings. It must have been something until the City decided packing thousands of people in like ants was a better alternative than small tenements and a vibrant neighborhood.
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Shiloh AME Zion Church, Henderson Avenue between Broadway and Richmond Street (no longer exists) June 29, 1931 - This pretty little wooden church has been long replaced with a larger brick one.
St.Benedicata, northwest corner of Staten and Market Streets, August 7, 1930. The intersection no longer exists.
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St. Benedicata stood on the ground behind the seniors apartments on Broadway.
PS 18, northeast corner of Market Street - March 24, 1930
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This beautiful, ornate structure was torn down and replaced with a fairly generic box of brick and cement a block to the north. The cigar store in the pictures left was where the Broadway senior houses shown above are now located.
North side of Richmond Terrace west of Alaska Street, November 4, 1931
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These two buildings (found at the left of the 1931 picture)are the sole survivors from the five originally shown. I'm sure a featureless brick box (the one on the right) is a much better neighbor that stores with apartments overhead.
3 comments:
another great post. I always look
forward to these great photos
of my old home town
Actually, the "new" PS 18 was built in 1963 as an annex to the old one. When I started kindergarten in 1970 the old PS 18 was still standing next door (about halfway up the block south of Henderson Ave, where those ugly box homes are now). The annex was used for grades K-3, while grades 4 and 5 were held in the old PS 18. The old building finally fell into disrepair and burned down in a spectacular fire around 1980 or so.
Fires sure did a number on old schools. PS 17 over on Prospect and York was done in by one in the late seventies.
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