Brooklyn: Then and now

If you were to step out from Brooklyn Rapid Transit station at Coney Island onto Surf Avenue in 1922 and head toward the Boardwalk, you might take Stratton Walk to get there. There were nearly a dozen such “walks,” basically streets, that led to the beach. Now most are gone, with different amusements taking up the land. Stillwell Avenue was extended through Stratton Walk and widened.

Long before it was a haven for hipsters — say, back in the early 1900s as seen in the black-and-white photo showing 19-25 Central Ave. — Bushwick was all dirt roads and trolley tracks. Nowadays, of course, the neighborhood is best known as a setting for HBO’s “Girls” and its concentration of hip restaurants, coffee shops and galleries.

This street scene in Greenpoint hasn’t changed much since 1959, when the black-and-white photo on the left was taken by a photographer with the Department of Public Works.

In 1914, you could take a trolley down Flatbush Avenue or look down on it from the elevated tracks. What hasn’t changed in the years since: What is now considered Atlantic Yards, with Barclays Center as its anchor, is still a bustling nexus of commerce and society.

The picture on the left shows the historic RKO Albee movie theater in downtown Brooklyn’s Albee Square. Demolished in 1977, the AIA Guide to New York City described it as “a neo-Renaissance fantasy of columns and star-twinkling ceilings, a vast place of 2,000 seats.” Today the old RKO Albee site is home to City Point, one of the largest new developments in downtown.

A horse-drawn carriage is plainly visible in the black-and-white 1912 photograph of Fourth Avenue and 77th Street in Bay Ridge. Today’s Fourth Avenue is one of the busiest thoroughfares in the neighborhood.