Check out our photos from the big meltdown in Bay Ridge

Eye On Real Estate

January 17, 2018 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is one of Bay Ridge's most dazzling sights during a January thaw. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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That warm weather was great while it lasted.

The fake-spring thaw that arrived last week was a beautiful thing.

The bomb cyclone, AKA Winter Storm Grayson, dumped piles of snow in Brooklyn and brought arctic temperatures that lingered afterwards and kept everybody indoors for days.

There was much rejoicing when unseasonable warmth followed in the storm’s wake.

The Big Meltdown was messy — and glorious to behold — in Bay Ridge.

The first day we strolled around the neighborhood to check up on our favorite sights, the sun was out.

The sunshine lent special dazzle to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the waters of New York Harbor. We decided it would be churlish to complain about the snow-choked pathway from Fourth Avenue to Shore Road Promenade, which is the best place in Bay Ridge for bridge gazing.

We came back up from the shoreline to John Paul Jones Park, which everybody calls Cannonball Park because of the piles of cannonballs on display there.

The sun gleamed on the cast-iron Civil War cannon that is the park’s most unusual feature.

Did you know it’s called a Rodman gun? It was named after its designer, Thomas Jackson Rodman.

It weighs 116,497 pounds.

Up the streets and along the avenues, we saw piles of snow that had melted enough to reveal grit and filth. Yikes.

The second day we went walking around Bay Ridge, the temperature hit 48 degrees and the thaw accelerated. We heard birds chirping cheerfully in the trees on 76th Street.

Though the sun wasn’t out, a big swath of snow had melted on the lawn at 131 76th St. The 1860s neo-Georgian house stands at the entrance to the iconic pedestrian staircase that unites the two sides of 76th Street.

Over on Shore Road, houses on hilly lawns looked glamorous as ever, though the sidewalk was a slushy mess in many places.

And of course we stopped by the Gingerbread House, Bay Ridge’s most famous building.

The century-old Arts and Crafts-style house at 8220 Narrows Ave. is an individual city landmark. It’s made mostly of uncut stone and looks like something straight out of a fairy tale.