This time, we'll take a look at the alleys in Western Brooklyn, which encompasses the neighborhoods of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. These are old sections of Brooklyn that were first a part of the town of New Utrecht. When Giovanni Verrazano sailed into New York Harbor, he passed by what was to become Bay Ridge on the Brooklyn side, and what would be Rosebank and Tompkinsville on the Staten Island side. Verrazano was later captured and cannibalized by Indians, but he was the first European to see the territory. He is remembered by a bridge that I saw get built and by a Manhattan street that never existed .
Bay Ridge is full of little dead ends, old and new.
Roosevelt and Woodrow Courts are directly opposite each other on 30th Street just west of 5th Avenue near Greenwood Cemetery, in a quiet area that's not quite Park Slope, and not quite Sunset Park. Both courts are probably the fruits of a real estate development in the 1920s and took the names of the two more successful Presidents of the previous two decades. There once were other small alleys in this area with names like DeGaray Court, but they are long gone. Hamilton and Lafayette Walks , on 94th Street west of 4th Avenue in Bay Ridge, are similar in concept and execution to Woodrow and Roosevelt Courts. Small, tidy brick buildings set off the side street.