Canarsie

Escape from Hipsterville on the L train to Canarsie: Part Two

Eye On Real Estate

April 15, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The quirkiest building in Canarsie is this log cabin on Flatlands Avenue. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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Need a break from Hipsterville, AKA Williamsburg?

The neighborhood’s favorite train line, the L, can transport you to Canarsie in 27 minutes.

The change of scenery will prove entertaining, and clear your head.

Here is a list of some interesting things to see, continued from Part One of this story.

A fishing pier for fluke and the Rock Garden Chateau

* Canarsie’s quirkiest building, at 9301 Flatlands Ave., is a log cabin built in the 1930s, which was formerly used as an ice cream parlor and luncheonette.

It’s now a Fillmore Real Estate office — and as such, was firebombed twice in July 1991, when the neighborhood was fraught with racial tensions, according to a New York Times story from that era.

Nobody was injured in the bombings, the Times reported.

The owner of the log cabin is a Reinhardt family company, city Finance Department records indicate. The late William Reinhardt Sr. founded Fillmore Real Estate.

* Canarsie Pier is at the very end of Rockaway Parkway, just past the Belt Parkway. It’s easily reached on foot, but the B42 bus stops by its parking lot.

Canarsie Pier is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, which is run by the National Park Service.

The pier, originally built in the 1920s, was later reconstructed as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, in the waters close by the site of an amusement park that operated from 1907 to 1934.

Too bad Golden City Amusement Park is no more. It had a roller coaster, a fun house, a Tunnel of Love, two carousels and all kinds of other entertaining things.

By the way, if you want to watch people fishing on the pier, go when it’s warm and sunny. We visited on a day that was neither. Nobody was fishing.

Our only companions were a flock of seagulls that congregated in the parking lot and a group of skateboarding teenagers — which was completely kosher because this was during the city schools’ Spring Recess.

The pier is considered a good place to catch blue fish and fluke.

* If you time your visit right, you can watch cricket being played at nearby Canarsie Park, which is near the pier.

The city park at Seaview Avenue and Remsen Avenue has a regulation-sized cricket field.

* While we’re on the subject of recreation, the Sebago Canoe Club is located on Paerdegat Basin, which is one of the boundaries of Canarsie. The address is 1400 Paerdegat Avenue North.

If you visit Canarsie in the summertime, the club, which has been around since 1933, conducts kayaking trips on Jamaica Bay.

* Off Paerdegat Avenue North, a wide street with spaces for diagonal parking in the middle of it, there are one-block-long streets with addresses from Paerdegat 1st Street through Paerdegat 15th Street.

These mini-streets, for the most part, are lined with 20th-Century attached brick houses with porches and steep front staircases. Similar houses can be seen in many other parts of the neighborhood.

* Canarsie’s suburban-style houses are at the other end of the neighborhood near Fresh Creek Basin, which separates Canarsie from Starrett City.

They are concentrated especially on Flatlands 1st Street through Flatlands 10th Street, which are short little roads running between E. 105th and E. 108th Streets.

Among these properties with their discreet suburban charm, the house at 10577 Flatlands 10th St. offers a touch of whimsy. There is a model of the Eiffel Tower out front and a sign declaring the house’s name to be Rock Garden Chateau.

* At some moment during your visit, you’ll need to nosh. Original Pizza at 9514 Avenue L has been feeding the neighborhood since 1970. If you’re in the mood for Caribbean food, the stew chicken at Richard’s Diner at 9606 Avenue L is tasty.

Want to know more? See Part One of this story.

 

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