I enjoy a few blogs around the internet. This afternoon while visiting one of my favorite blogs, Brooklynometry I came across a couple of pictures of Holy Name.
The first picture gives us a view through the black bars from Prospect Avenue. And as you know, Container Diaries is all about memories of the neighborhood.
Staring at this picture, how can you not think of all the time you spent in the schoolyard as a youngster? The Summer league at night. Pitching in, punch ball and of course Intramural football.
It’s surreal.
I’m sorry, but I still have a hard time seeing those cars in there and not a human being in sight!
I wrote a blog entry a few weeks back on the schoolyard. Click here to go back if you never had the chance to read it.
It bugs me big time that my youger cousins and their generation never got to pay summer league, pitch it in and double wall. I think the summer
league and the schoolyards kept us busy and out of trouble. It’s`a`disgrace that now when the area is on such an upswing, that these
kids don’t have a place to go to play or let off team.
I can tell you that after they closed the schoolyard the houses on Howard Place doubled in price,so its the “upswing” in the neighborhood that is partly to blame for the loss of these schoolyards. The “new” residents are no longer homegrown and are more into nanny’s or whatever that fancy french name is for them and “play dates” for their kids. And probably personal trainers to teach them basketball. Its a different world today. I’m not judging them or anything just pointing out the difference.
K, Molloy,
It’s different but kids are still kids. Whenver we play stickball at theblock parties, the kids have a blast. The same with egg tossing. A couple of years back, I had a group playing red light green light 123.
I think the adults are way different. When we were kids, we played in the street, jumped on cars, hit spaldings and threw footbalss of the roofs of the cars. I wsnt to take this opportunity to thank all the old timers for being kind to us and letting us play iinstead of calling the cops.
By te way, I think the houses quadrupled in price.. everyhing is going for about a mill or more…
Does anyone know what ever happened to that other spire on top of the school? A lightning strike, maybe?
Yes they were all struck by lightning many times over the years. I was sitting on my porch watching a particularly nasty thunder storm when one of them was struck, it was a big explosion and we all ran inside. We never did last very long on the porch when the big storms came in but we would sit and watch the lightning flashes as long as our courage would last and then run inside when it got bad(or mom ordered us inside). Just another childhood memory to share on the blog
K. Molloy, thanks for sharing that memory. We did get some pretty bad thunderstorms in the neighborhood. Do you remember the big hurricane , around 1954, that took down the heavy metal signs over the stores on the Avenue. And took down 200-year-old trees in the park?
I thought about that recently when that tornado hit Bay Ridge a couple of months ago.