Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.
The dedication.
That includes Grandpa, 309th Engineer Regiment, U.S. Army.
Armistice Day 2025
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Delaware 9
Coincidence or synchronicity? In September, as I was leaving Colorado Springs, I noticed an equestrian statue near a major street: William Jackson Palmer, railroad developer and Union Army officer. Stopped at a traffic light, I had a little time to look at the statue. Soon I forgot about it.
Palmer had one of those remarkable 19th-century careers, not only as a railroad man and military officer, but also a town planner, hotelier, publisher and philanthropist. He founded the towns of Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, and Durango, among others. Though he grew up near Philadelphia, he was born on a farm near Leipsic, Delaware. Barely a month after I’d spent time in some of the towns that Palmer founded, I found myself in Leipsic, Delaware.
I still wouldn’t have make the connection if I hadn’t looked up Leipsic on Wiki. I noted that the entire list of notable people from that town had exactly one name: William Jackson Palmer. Leipsic has never been a very big place, and certainly isn’t now. I looked him up, and when I saw the picture of the statue, I remembered seeing it.
I’m going with coincidence. I have a fairly high bar when it comes to synchronicity, especially since I don’t really understand the concept. Does anyone?
Before I left Delaware last month – and believe me, it doesn’t take long to leave Delaware – I drove a section of Delaware 9, a two-lane, north-south highway that parallels the coast of Delaware Bay, running east of places like Dover, Smyrna and Odessa. An intriguing squiggle on the map, made more intriguing by the fact that part of it is also known as the Delaware Bayshore Byway, which is a National Scenic Byway. Experience has taught me that those kinds of designations are usually accorded for good reasons.
After the traffic-jammed day before, I thoroughly enjoyed the nearly empty Delaware 9.
One of the few towns along Delaware 9 is Leipsic, pop. 178. I might not have stopped but for the cemetery, one so obscure that Google Maps doesn’t have a name for it, and I didn’t see evidence of a name on the ground either.
Leipsic Cemetery, perhaps. Whatever the name, it has clearly been a burial ground for a long time.
With the sort of heartbreakers you find in cemeteries of this vintage.
Three children, same family, buried in the same decade in the 19th century.
The road passes mostly through farmland, though woods and the western edge of Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge also mark its course. Delaware’s main crops are corn and soybeans, and I’m pretty sure I was in time to see the soybean leaves changing their color. Quite a sight.
You’d think I’d have seen that in Illinois or Indiana or any of the other states chock-a-block with soybeans, but I wasn’t sure I had. Driving on a two-lane road, you’re practically driving through the color, as opposed to the distance of a four-lane highway.
Corn and soy may be the main plant crops in Delaware, but the main livestock is chickens. Some 276,700,000 head of chickens were raised in Delaware in 2024, according to the USDA. That’s an impressive number, considering how small Delaware is: almost the same number as in much larger states such as Tennessee, Kentucky or Missouri. I’m not going to crunch the numbers (I have a life to live), but I’ll bet per square unit of territory, Delaware is the nation’s chicken champ.
First State, Last State
The Avalon Project, run by Yale Law School, has a remarkable trove of “documents in law, history and diplomacy,” as the site says. If you’re looking for a translation of the Code of Hammurabi or the Athenian Constitution, there are links. You can also find the annotated text of Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, and the many founding documents of the United States, just to mention some of the more famous ones.
If you’re after something less well known, try The Combinations of the Inhabitants Upon the Piscataqua River for Government, October 22, 1641 or Money and Trade Considered With a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money by John Law 1705 or Agreement Concerning Trade-Marks Between Brazil and the United States (1878).
Also within the Avalon Project is the text of the Ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the State of Delaware, December 7, 1787. To wit:
We the Deputies of the People of the Delaware State, in Convention met, having taken into our serious consideration the Federal Constitution proposed and agreed upon by the Deputies of the United States in a General Convention held at the City of Philadelphia on the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven, Have approved, assented to, ratified, and confirmed, and by these Presents, Do, in virtue of the Power and Authority to us given for that purpose, for and in behalf of ourselves and our Constituents, fully, freely, and entirely approve of, assent to, ratify, and confirm the said Constitution.
Delaware ratified before any other state, and so claims “First State” as its nickname. I have my own private nickname for Delaware. At least I do now, since waking up on the morning of October 25 in my rented room in Dover: “Last State.” As in, the 50th state I’ve spent the night in. That isn’t an achievement of any kind, just a reflection of the fact that I’ve been fortunate enough to have the time and resources necessary to go that many places. Also, that I’m eccentric enough to keep track.
After dallying in Concord on the 23rd, and spending some time in Attleboro, Massachusetts, I arrived in East Providence, Rhode Island for the night. The point of that stop was entirely to spend the night in Rhode Island, since I’d never done that either. So RI was number 49. My hotel was just barely in that state.
I noticed the Honey Dew Donuts even closer to the border. I’d seen other locations driving in. The breakfast at my “3-star” hotel was meager, so I went to Honey Dew for a second breakfast. I wish I could say I’d discovered a great regional doughnut shop along the lines of Tim Horton’s, but it was only OK. Maybe I’ll give the brand another chance sometime.
Since I’d wanted to go from eastern Massachusetts to central Delaware, I should have broken that day’s journey somewhere in New Jersey. But that wouldn’t have involved stopping for the night in Rhode Island, which had been a short stop back in the summer of ’91 – a few hours to look around Providence, and especially the capitol – and the destination of a day trip in ’95, to Newport.
As for Delaware, my entire previous experience with the state was the Wilmington interstate bus station, a break in a bus ride from Washington DC to Boston, which was a leg of the Great Bus Loop of 1982. I’m not even sure I got off the bus, though I usually did when it stopped for long enough.
Getting to Delaware last month involved an aggravating day’s drive, mostly on I-95, spending a lot of time in traffic jams. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, bah: more than grains of sand on a beach or stars in the sky.
Even so, there were a few worthwhile moments. I finally got to see (from the turnpike) the enormous American Dream mall, adjacent to the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Reportedly now second largest in the nation, after only the Mall of America. I’d been reading about American Dream for years, since “chronic delays” always figured in real estate reporting on the project, but now it’s more or less complete. (If the developers had asked me, they’d have kept the much cooler earlier name: Meadowlands Xanadu.)
At the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the NJ Turnpike, I parked in the very large parking lot and headed for the very large building and its very large men’s room. As I walked along, a small group of Hasidim went around me, not running but at a brisk pace, headed the same direction. By the time I got to the bathroom, they were almost done with their business, and off they went. Nothing unusual about seeing Hasidim, certainly not in New Jersey, but I have to note that October 24 was a Friday, and it was mid-afternoon. So they were racing the clock. Or, more accurately, the sun.
A digression: service areas on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway are named for famed New Jerseyans. A list is here. I suppose it’s fine that musicians such as Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Jon Bon Jovi and Celia Cruz are honored, but where’s Bruce Springsteen? It isn’t a matter of posthumous naming, since Bon Jovi is still alive – as is Bruce Willis, who also gets an area, and Connie Chung, who does as well, though she isn’t actually from New Jersey. The ways of the NJ Turnpike Authority are mysterious.
I arrived in Dover late on the October 24. The next morning, a Saturday, I left fairly early. First stop: the Delaware State House. It was closed for the weekend. My reaction: what kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? I got a good look at the exterior, at least.
A fairly new sculpture, in front of the capitol: The Delaware Continentals.
The plaque is long on functionaries’ names, short on information about the Delaware Continentals. An historic plaque up in Wilmington says of them:
Commanded by Colonel John Haslet, the Delaware Regiment consisted of more than 500 battle-ready troops when they marched northward to join the Continental Army in August 1776. After expiration of enlistments and Haslet’s death, the Regiment was reorganized in the winter of 1776-77 under the leadership of Colonel David Hall. Participants in many of the major battles of the Revolution, their conduct earned the praise of their superiors and the respect of their enemies. Forced to endure great hardship, the Regiment was widely acclaimed for its discipline and bravery. Greatly depleted in number, they returned to Delaware victorious in January 1783.
That was hardly the end for the regiment. The 198th Signal Battalion in the Delaware Army National Guard traces itself directly to the Delaware Regiment.
Not far from the current capitol is the former state house, now a museum. It was open.
In fact, I got a tour.
I was happy to learn that here, in this very room, the delegates to the Constitutional ratifying convention met, and made their quick and unanimous decision.
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord
Concord naturally follows Lexington. That’s just the way it is. I made the short hop between Lexington and Concord on the morning of October 23, ahead of the day’s ultimate destination in Rhode Island. The first thing I needed to know was the status of the men’s room at the Concord Visitor Center, there on Main Street. I’m glad to report I didn’t run into any “closed for the season” nonsense.
I can also report that the South Burying Place is half a block away, an irregular slice of land wedged between Main, a side street, and some basic apartments.
Notably similar in style to Lexington, and why would they be any different?
One detail on the latter stone caught my attention. It took me a few minutes to work it out.
Deacon Joseph Dakin happened to depart this life on March 13, 1744/3. Ahead of the British switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, there were competing ideas of when New Year’s Day should be: January 1 or March 25. Most of the rest of Europe had gone to January by the 1740s, but England clung to its traditional date. He died March 13, 1743 by the the traditional reckoning; March 13, 1744 if January 1 is the first day of the year. Besides switching to Gregorian, the ’52 change fixed January 1 as New Year’s Day in the English-speaking world.
That’s the kind of detail that can make my day. A lagniappe of the visit. South Burying Place itself was a lagniappe to my travels that day. The cemetery I had in mind to see was Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a short drive from Concord’s main retail street. Not to be confused with the one of the same name in New York state, though I have to say that one looks like it would be worth a visit.
Sleepy Hollow in Massachusetts is in a wooded hollow.
A wooded hollow. That’s a good place for a cemetery. Better yet, Sleepy Hollow is a cemetery of some age, by North American standards. Even better yet, autumn colors.
When I got there, I found I wasn’t alone among the living. A rare thing at a cemetery. A trickle of people came and went to pay their respects to a clutch of famed authors who are buried at Sleepy Hollow. They’re up on Authors Ridge. The cemetery thoughtfully built a small parking lot at the base of the ridge, to facilitate that trickle of literary pilgrims.
A path from the lot leads upward. At the crest of the ridge, the authors are found with other family members. In alphabetical order:
Louisa May Alcott.
Here visitors don’t leave stones or small coins, but pencils, pens and paper. She wasn’t the only one to attract writing instruments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Where’s Waldo? Right there. Interesting that his memory attracted pine cones.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Henry David Thoreau.
When I parked at the small lot, I noticed a group of four girls, college students would be my guess, heading up the path to Authors Ridge. I waited a few minutes in my car, since I didn’t want to interrupt their pilgrimage. Also, I wanted the ridge to myself, if possible. I guessed they wouldn’t be long, and soon they came down the path, got in their car and left.
About an hour later, when I had finished my own cemetery stroll, I was checking my maps in the car, when a middle-woman pulled up, parked, and headed up Authors Ridge, walking her small dog. The trickle was continuing.
I preferred a more leisurely inspection of the authors’ stones, and the rest of the cemetery, for that matter. Such excellent contour.
There’s also a large selection of stones for non-famous residents of this part of the world.
Besides, the authors aren’t the only notable burials. Here’s Daniel Chester French, sculptor of renown.
If the seated Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial was the only thing he ever did, he’d still be remembered. But of course he did a lot more. The smaller version of “The Republic,” bright gold in color and standing even now in Chicago, is one that comes to mind. So do the allegories at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House at the southern tip of Manhattan. And Gen. Oglethorpe in Savannah.
But you don’t have to go so far to find one of French’s works. Elsewhere in Sleepy Hollow is the Melvin Memorial, honoring three Concord brothers named Melvin (Asa, John and Samuel), who each gave their last full measure of devotion for the Union in ways that represent the spectrum of soldier death in that war: died in combat, of disease, and in a prison camp.
The figure is known as Mourning Victory, a version of which is held by the Met.
Another famed work of French’s is in Concord: namely, “The Minute Man” at Minute Man National Historical Park.
I didn’t bother with that historical park this time, since I knew it would be closed. But I did see it 30 years ago, and it’s stuck with me. Just example of French’s work standing the test — and literally standing the test — of time.
More Lexington
Cute, Lexington. Cute.
I didn’t visit Massachusetts last month to do sightseeing, but rather to see old friends – Rich, Lisa and Steve. They are the latest in my visits to old friends in ’25, which took me to Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and New York before I arrived in Massachusetts, where I stayed with Rich and Lisa, whose home is in Lexington.
Being a mid-week visit, my Massachusetts friends had work to do during much of the day on October 22, which is how I ended up at Battle Green that morning. I wasn’t about to sit around at Rich and Lisa’s when I could go see nearby places. Even places I’d been before, such as Battle Green. But it had been about 30 years, so (as usual) it was like I’d never been there before.
Near Battle Green is Buckman Tavern.
I didn’t remember visiting before. It’s a small museum these days, dedicated to the part it played in the Battle of Lexington – militiamen gathered there ahead of the battle, not knowing what to expect – but also its existence as a tavern in colonial and early Republic days.
Wandering through, I couldn’t help being impressed by how much effort running a tavern must have involved in those days, which not only included work in the building itself, but also running a nearby farm, since 18th-century tavern keepers weren’t going to get their food and drink from wholesalers, shipped in by truck.
Of course, just staying alive in the 18th century, or really most anytime before the 20th century, seems like it would have been a lot of grinding effort for most people a lot of the time. But they had their recreation, too (and of course drinking).
Not far from Battle Green, on the fittingly named Hancock Street, is Hancock-Clarke Parsonage, another Lexington museum these days, and one I didn’t recall visiting before. It was close enough to the green to walk there. I took the noon tour.
I’m glad William Dawes gets this due on the sign. As my one-armed 8th grade history teacher told us, Listen my children and you shall hear/ of the midnight ride of William Dawes just doesn’t work. (He wasn’t the first to notice.) I see that he has a memorial at King’s Chapel Burial Ground in downtown Boston. If I ever make it back there, to visit Hopestill Barns, and I should, I’ll look for Dawes.
Also mentioned at Hancock-Clarke: the slaves that worked at the house during the pre-Revolutionary period, Jack and Dinah. Their names appear on small plaques near the museum entrance.
As the longstanding residence of Lexington’s minister, Hancock-Clarke has a rather different feeling than the tavern down the road. That is, austere yet well-furnished due to the wealth of the Hancock family. John Hancock’s grandfather, Rev. John Hancock (d. 1752), lived there, and afterwards Rev. Jonas Clarke (d. 1805) and his passel of children lived there during the Revolution. So it was entirely reasonable that John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying there on the night of April 18, 1775. As a visitor in modern times, you can see the very place where those two sat and drank (tea, the docent claimed) in front of one of the house’s large windows.
That evening, I had dinner with Rich and Lisa and Steve at Field & Vine in Somerville, which made for that most excellent combination: a good meal and convivial conversation. In 30 years since I spent any time in Somerville, the town has apparently become a foodie destination. Who knew?
On the morning of 23rd, I left Massachusetts to begin my drive home. True to character, not a direct drive. But I didn’t want to leave Lexington without a visit to the Old Burial Ground, which I hadn’t had time for the day before. “Ye” Old Burial Ground, as the town puts it. At least there isn’t an “e” tacked onto “Old,” but I doubt that whoever did the sign was thinking, let’s use a thorn.
That aside, it’s a fine old cemetery.
The building in the background, incidentally, is the Church of St. Brigid. One wonders how most of the permanent residents of the Old Burial Ground would react to a Catholic church in the vicinity. Not too well, I suspect.
Memorials from a time before the Victorians came along and ennobled them a bit.
Or we moderns came along with our “celebration of life” euphemisms. It’s right there on the stone: As time doth fly, our death draws nigh.
Not many tombs like this. Locke might have been the only one, come to think of it.
Something of a surprise.
Maybe not. However they felt about Regulars, the townspeople surely must have felt that a dead one deserved a Christian burial, and it wasn’t like they could ship him back home. The stone clearly came later, long after the passions of the war had cooled.
Indeed: Joseph Fiske, Lexington’s town doctor, recorded a bill for seven wounded soldiers he treated at Buckman Tavern the day after the battle [did he get paid?]. This soldier was likely one of them, but succumbed to his wounds in the following days. The simple granite slab was erected by the Lexington Historical Society in 1905.
The wonder is that anyone knew where the Regular was buried at all. Unless they were guessing in 1905. After all, militia commander John Parker – who died of TB only months after the Battle of Lexington – is known to be in the Old Burial Ground, but his exact location is unknown.
Battle Green, Lexington
Too bad about iconic. If there ever were a time to use iconic to describe sometime distinctive and revered, John Parker in bronze would be it.
Icons are no accidents. The pose captures the Battle of Lexington as we, Americans, want to remember it: the resoluteness of an ordinary man in the face of the enemy. What the militiamen experienced that morning is partly enshrouded in mystery like a battlefield of the time might be with gun smoke. No one knows who fired the first shot, for instance, but that doesn’t keep the Shot Heard Around the World from having its own name during later generations — a remarkable thing for a simple firearm discharge to have.
Lore has encrusted the story. Even so, the Patriot soldiers in the Revolution, collectively, can’t be said to have lacked resoluteness over the long years of conflict.
The Parker bronze stands on the edge of Battle Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, and across the street from Buckman Tavern, where the militiamen of the town waited the night before the battle. Among their number on April 19, 1775, was a young man named Jonathan Harrington, a fifer in the militia. About 75 years later, he’s thought to have posed for a photograph, now on display at Buckman Tavern.
Said to be the last survivor of the battle, and the only one to be photographed. The American Battlefield Trust cites a Harrington family history: He said he was aroused early that morning by a cry from his mother, who said: ‘Jonathan, get up, the regulars are coming, and something must be done.’ Jonathan was a fifer. He arose, went to the place where the patriots were gathering, and was with the company on the approach of the British.
It had rained during the early hours of October 22, 2025 in Lexington, but by late morning the sun was out and only a scattering of puddles remained. Battle Green stretched out behind the bronze John Parker. For a time, I was the only person on the green, though a steady stream of car traffic was the be seen on the roads edging the grounds.
John Parker, originally “Minuteman Statue” by the prolific sculptor and public monument specialist Henry Hudson Kitson, is a latecomer to the green, erected in 1900.
The Battle Green flagpole is newest of all, erected only in 1962. Even so, the pole is on the National Register of Historic Places, and an act of Congress specifies that a flag will always be flown there.
Well within living memory of the battle itself (1799), the town – fully aware of its role as spark of the Revolution – erected a memorial, and relocated the bones of the militiamen killed in the battle to a spot in front of it.
Though not formally part of the green, First Parish Unitarian-Universalist is distinctly part of the place, and looks about as New England as a church can.
It might as well be part of the green, considering the history of the congregation. The present church is a 19th-century structure near the site of Lexington’s only church in 1775, which was a hotbed of Revolutionary sentiment at the time.
Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven
By the afternoon of October 21, New York City was in my rearview mirror, but I wasn’t that far away: New Haven, Connecticut. I wanted to made a short stop at Yale University. During the tedious minutes spent looking for a legal parking place close enough to campus to make that doable, I doubted the wisdom of my idea, but eventually I found a spot. Also, I was ready: I had a roll of quarters for parking meters. Most of them can be paid by app or some such these days, but they also take quarters (most of them), and I’m a traditionalist when in comes to parking meters.
Yale is sprawling, leafy and picturesque in a collegiate sort of way. Digression: The centennial of Fred Waring’s recording of “Collegiate” passed earlier this year, and no one mentioned it. That’s almost as important a musical anniversary as that of “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
Good to see a prominent memorial to the Yale men who didn’t return from the Great War. RIP, gentlemen.
Adjacent to the Yale campus is the Grove Street Cemetery, sporting a fine Egyptian Revival entrance. Not something you see often.
That’s what Vanderbilt needed, a cemetery across the street. All we ever had across the street was the fast food that’s now found on campuses: Krystal, Bojangles, Popeyes, Pizza Hut (Inn?), Wendy’s, etc.
Grove Street owes its founding to pestilence. “After severe yellow fever epidemics in 1794 and 1795, the [New Haven] Green was simply too crowded to continue as the city’s chief burial ground,” the cemetery’s web site says. “In 1796 a group of New Haven citizens led by U.S. Senator James Hillhouse planned a new cemetery on a location at the edge of town. Their efforts were officially recognized in October 1797 when the State of Connecticut incorporated the cemetery as the New Burying Ground in New Haven.”
Since then, the population of the cemetery has grown, with stones of various shapes recalling the dead, and trees to provide them shade.
In October, the trees also provide color.
I didn’t go looking for anyone in particular, though there are a lot of notables here. Such as Eli Whitney, inventor; Noah Webster, lexicographer; Josiah Willard Gibbs Jr., scientist; Lyman Beecher, abolitionist and prohibitionist; and O.C. Marsh, paleontologist, among many others.
A scattering of stones mark veterans.
Including one with a GAR star that’s obviously a replacement for something older.
Being so close to Yale, a fair number of academics rest at Grove Street.
Including this fellow. It’s a little hard to see, but his memorial is inscribed in Latin.
Kingman Brewster was president of Yale from 1963 to 1977, at a time of considerable hubbub on campus, and changes in university policy. Such as going coed in 1969, relatively late for an Ivy League school. No doubt cemeteries are well populated these days by Yale alumni angered by that decision.
A surprise find: a memorial to captives from La Amistad who died in New Haven, waiting for the adjudication of their case. Waiting for their freedom, that is.
Elsewhere in the cemetery reposes Roger Sherman Baldwin, who argued the case for the Amistad captives, and Professor Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr., who deciphered their language (Mende).
Remarkably, the names of the captives aren’t forgotten. RIP, Fa, Tua, Weluwa, Kapeli, Yammoni and Kaba.
Prospect Park Ramble ’25
Put this in the Those Were Different Times file: “In the early evening, I made it to the beginning of the National Association of Real Estate Editors convention. I mentioned to some colleagues of mine, who happened to be Manhattanites, that I’d spent part of the afternoon in Prospect Park — you know, in Brooklyn. Judging by their reaction, I might as well have said that I’d popped over to Outer Mongolia for a quick visit.”
I wrote that my June 2002 visit to New York included, as mentioned, time in Prospect Park. It is every bit a great park as Central Park, and I knew I wanted to return someday for a longer walk. After lunch in Chinatown in Manhattan on October 19, that’s what Yuriko and I decided to do. We took the subway to the Prospect Park station on the east side of the park, and began our wander.
Near that entrance was the Diwali Festival of Bites.
Despite the name, the food tents had a large international variety for sale, not just Indian food. Not important for us anyway, since we’d just eaten.
We headed deeper into the park. Maybe it was a matter of species choice, but there seemed to be more coloration than in Central Park the day before.
The handsome Prospect Park Boathouse.
A popular setting for weddings, and in fact one was taking place when we visited. Two women were exchanging vows.
The Prospect Park Waterfall.
Not a vast torrent, but a pleasant gurgling. It is a slice of the park’s interior waterways. Prospect Park’s watercourse is a beautiful collection of waterfalls, pools, streams and a 60-acre Lake, and is one of the shining achievements of Park designers Olmsted and Vaux’s design, says the Prospect Park Alliance.
The deeper in, the fewer people.
So few, sometimes, to almost make you forget you’re in a metro surrounded by about 20 million people.
But not for long.
Dog walkers and their tethered dogs roamed the park in numbers. Some come to the Prospect Park Dog Beach.
I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d been in 2002, but near the northern edge of the park, we came across what was probably the field, the sort of mildly rolling terrain, open short grassland ringed by wooded areas, that exists throughout the park. A summer Saturday in these fields draws a crowd, but a generally cheerful one, playing volleyball, attending to grills, picnicking, throwing frisbees or just lying around. An autumn Sunday is a little less active.
Fall has a more scattered vibe, but no less congenial than summer to the thinned out crowd.
Across the Brooklyn Bridge ’25
On May 24, 1983, I flew from San Antonio to New York City, since in those days the way to get to Europe was via NY. I remember only one thing about that flight, which I assume took me to LaGuardia. As we made our final approach, the plane banked over the East River and I happened to be on the correct side, in a window seat, for a terrific view of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The captain might have even mentioned the bridge, because it so happened that the Brooklyn Bridge was celebrating its centennial that very day. A hundred years earlier, on May 24, 1883, the bridge had opened with great festivities, including attendance by President Chester Arthur and NY Gov. Grover Cleveland.
I’d never seen the bridge with my own eyes before then, either, since my brief layover in the city a year earlier mostly involved time at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Yet I recognized the bridge at once, from TV and movies. Such as the time, in one movie, when Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller, accept no substitutes) went to the Brooklyn Bridge, did a Brodie off of it, and of course survived, unlike some real divers.
One day in August ’83, having returned to New York and with more time on my hands, I decided to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot toward Brooklyn, to facilitate my first-ever visit to that borough. Except for that fact that it was blazing hot, it was a good idea. The bridge itself is a work of industrial beauty and the views are great.
After leaving Fort Greene Park, Yuriko expressed the idea that she wanted to see the Brooklyn Bridge — which she hadn’t up close — and I couldn’t begrudge her a visit, especially since we weren’t far away. We walked from Myrtle Ave. to Flatbush Ave. (actually the “Flatbush Avenue Extension”) to Tillary St., where you can find the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade. At that point, it’s both pedestrians and bicyclists.
I didn’t realize at first that the promenade leads directly to crossing the bridge, though it takes about 20 minutes to get there. I imagined, at first, that it would lead to Dumbo and a view below the bridge. An excellent spot, which I most recently visited in 2014.
Soon I realized that we were headed for the bridge itself. Not only that, I saw that pedestrians were soon separated from bicyclists, beginning fairly far away from the bridge.
What an amazingly good idea, only done in 2021. Considering the crowds that the Brooklyn Bridge attracts, it probably should have been done years ago.
We walked from Tillary St., but the more popular Brooklyn-side pedestrian entrance is stairs at Washington Street and Prospect Street, seen below.
I didn’t remember the bridge being that crowded my first time, though at a remove of 40+ years, the details are a little hard to remember. It was hot, and probably a weekday, so that might have thinned out the pedestrian traffic.
That wasn’t the case on a pleasant October Sunday. New Yorkers and tourists were out in force.
Mostly the bridge holds its crowds well. From the many wooden planks, you still get a closeup of the web-like intricacies and gray hulking towers created by the Roeblings and thousands of workmen.
Credits.
Love locks. I understand the city frowns on their attachment to critical infrastructure. That doesn’t change a thing.
Provided you pay attention that there isn’t someone walking right behind you, it’s easy enough to stop to take in the famed views of Manhattan.
Soon enough you’re approaching Manhattan.
Yuriko had fulfilled her wish to walk the bridge, and it occurred to me that not only have I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge twice, I’ve done it once each way. Guess I need to visit San Francisco again and walk across to (near) Sausalito, then take a bus back, which would be the reverse of 1990. Or for that matter, visit the Ohio Bridge in Cincinnati again (another Roebling work), though I don’t remember which way I crossed it. Or visit the Roebling Museum. Ah, so many bridges to cross.
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
On the morning of October 19, Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn was still pretty green.
Of course, the 30-acre park was named for the talented Revolutionary War general, not for the hues of its 50-plus species of trees, very many of which seemed to be ginkgoes. Whatever the coloration, the park proved to be a nice place for a stroll that day, offering a more manageable size than either Central Park the day before, or Prospect Park would later that day (as great as those two are).
My idea for attending Open House New York was Manhattan on Saturday, Brooklyn on Sunday, planning that took us – by this time, just the two of us – to Atlantic Terminal by way of the LIRR on Sunday morning. From there, Fort Greene Park is a short walk, though once you get there, it’s something of a hustle to climb the park’s central hill. A fort had been on the site, active during the Revolution and again for the War of 1812, for a reason.
As a park, Fort Greene came of age at roughly the same time as the idea of municipal parks themselves, that is during the mid-19th century, with some agitation on the part of Walt Whitman – editor of the Brooklyn Eagle in the late 1840s – helping facilitate its creation.
In 1857, Whitman wrote about the place, known at the time as Washington Park: This beautiful ground is now covered with rich verdure, and is one of the pleasantest resorts anywhere around. On its lofty tops you feel the breeze, and from them behold one of the finest views in the world. Most of the trees are yet too young to cast much shade, but they are growing finely.
We recollect there was a very obstinate and indignant opposition to the securing of these noble grounds, some twelve years since, when the project was mooted before the Common Council and the public. It was argued that Brooklyn was not rich enough to stand the expense of purchase; and that it would be better to let the “old fort” be dug away, and blocked up with buildings.
Fortunately these counsels did not prevail. A more far-sighted policy… carried the day.
Is there any one left of those who so furiously opposed Washington Park, who is not now glad that his opposition did not succeed?
I’m also glad there’s a park, though leaving the ruins of the fort might have been an interesting approach to creating one. As Whitman would surely have appreciated, 21st-century Brooklynites were out in numbers (but not crowds) to enjoy the park on a warmish fall day, walking their dogs and turning their kids loose to play. A scattering of other people had come for Open House.
The green space and trees were only the first layer. Come 1867, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux applied their considerable talents into making Fort Greene into their vision of an urban park, a small-scale version of Central Park or Prospect Park. That’s reason enough to visit.
One of their additions: grand outdoor stairs.
It wasn’t until 1908 that those stairs led to the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, memorializing the more than 11,500 POWs who died in wretched conditions aboard British prison ships during the Revolution.
The column isn’t usually open, but Fort Greene Park was an Open House site, so we were able to go inside after waiting in line a short time. I was expecting stairs inside. But there was just a rusty iron ladder, which the park ranger who led us into the column called “scary.” I agree.
There had been a spiral staircase in the memorial’s early days, but it is long gone. I wasn’t in a stair-climbing mood at that moment anyway, so for me it was just as well. If the city ever comes up with the scratch, there might be stairs again, the ranger said.
She also told us about the formation of the park, the long delay in setting up the memorial, and the tomb on the grounds that holds bones of some of the prisoners. The tomb isn’t open to the public.
A newer memorial, plaque-on-rock style and in place almost 50 years now, was dedicated by a young King Juan Carlos in memory of the Spaniards who fought for American independence.
French assistance to the nascent United States was mentioned prominently in school but not, that I remember, Spanish efforts, which were nothing to sneeze at. Maybe by 1898, Spaniards who gave the matter any thought considered the U.S. a pack of ingrates, but such is geopolitics. By 1976 and later, it was high time to acknowledge the likes of Bernardo de Gálvez and his men, and I was glad to find out that Pensacola still celebrates Gálvez Day (May 8).