The name “Dyker” presents a bit of a puzzler for Brooklyn lexicologists. In “Brooklyn By Name,” Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss assert that Dutch farmers who built dikes to drain the area’s wetlands in the colonial era gave it its name. However Van Dyke is a common Dutch name and a family of that name did have a hand in its development in the mid-1700s. Dyker Heights was more strictly defined when the Gowanus Expressway was completed in 1964, as the neighborhood’s boundaries can be set at 86th St. (and the Dyker Park Golf Course) the expressway, 65th St., and 14th Ave. It’s overwhelmingly residential and the only business streets are Fort Hamilton Parkway, 13th Ave., and parts of 11th. The neighborhood’s best-known and most heavily chronicled during the Christmas season, when many locals construct extravagant Christmas displays, especially along 84th St. between 11th and 12th Aves.
Above is the rococo Parkway Towers, at #901 80th St., just east of 7th Ave. It’s a long story why there would be a #901 just east of 7th Ave., but a complicated street grid in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights devised in the late-1800s left no intermediate avenues between 7th and 10th Aves. south of 73rd St. Fort Hamilton Parkway, one of the first roads built in the neighborhood, connects Fort Hamilton and Prospect Park and scythes through the grid, a busy truck route.
Parkway Towers is another imposing building that was left out in the open when the expressway cut was made. Residents on the top floors received pleasant views they hadn’t had before.
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church occupies the entire frontage on 11th Ave. from 80th-81st Sts. According to the church’s website, St. Philip’s was completed in 1900, with the steeple added in 1907. It’s been called “The Little Country Church on the Hill” and must’ve originally served farms and isolated homesteads in the region. According to the church, the two windows on the south side of the sanctuary are Tiffanys. Philip, whose feast day is May 11th, was one of the Twelve Apostles. He’s not often mentioned in the Gospels (mostly in John) but some there are some episodes.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “Before the miraculous feeding of the multitude, Christ turns towards Philip with the question: ‘Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ to which the Apostle answers: ‘Two hundred penny-worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little’ (John vi, 5-7). When Philip, after Christ had spoken to His apostles of knowing and seeing the Father, said to Him: ‘Lord, shew us the Father, and it is enough for us”, he received the answer: “He that seeth me, seeth the Father also’ (xiv, 8-9)
In the 1960s I was a frequent visitor to #1135 79th St., as it was home to some cousins in the Wall family, to which we were adjacently related, and my parents would bring me over. I don’t remember much about these visits, but the Walls had a black cat named Sammy Davis Jr.
FDNY Engine 284 was constructed in 1912 and was likely the first building on 79th St. between 11th and 12th Aves. The house lost one of its former firefighters, Joseph Graffagnino, on Saturday, August 18, 2007 as he fought a blaze in the condemned Deutsch Bank Building near the World Trade Center site. Graffagnino was a part of Engine 284′s deployment to the WTC on 9/11. The firehouse features large window lintels and terra cotta designs on the roofline. An affixed plaque names Fire Commissioner Joseph Johnson, who served in the Gaynor and Kline mayoral administrations. At age 113, this is one of NYC’s oldest firehouses.
At 7010 13th Ave. we find the former Endicott Theatre. This had to be a theatre at one time; what bank building would include a frieze of pan-pipe and tambourine playing fauns? According to the nonpareil cinematreasures.org, “Situated in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn, the theatre was the flagship of the Endicott Circuit, which also had its headquarters in the building. In ‘the old days,’ the circuit was never more than minor-league, running only late-run houses in Brooklyn and Queens/Long Island. In 1945, besides the Endicott, they included the Avon, Garfield, Hollywood, Metro, 16th Street, and Sun Theatres, all in Brooklyn; the Boardwalk in Arverne, the Edgemere in Edgemere, Rockaways, and the New and Rivoli in Rockaway Beach.”
The palatial Regina Pacis Catholic Church, 65th St. between 12th and 13th Aves is the tallest building in Dyker Heights. When I had an apartment on 73rd St. and 7th Ave. in Bay Ridge, more than a mile away, I’d occasionally ascend to the roof and was able to see the campanile tower (more impressive was my ability to see the downtown Williamsburg Bank Tower from there, which was about five miles away).
When I was out bicycling, I knew I was nearing home when the spire of Regina Pacis appeared in the distance if coming back via Bensonhurst. The church, whose campanile is 150 feet high, was consecrated in 1951, but was preceded by smaller church buildings. Regina Pacis was designated a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Legend has it that when several jeweled crowns at Regina Pacis were discovered missing, mob boss Joseph Profaci, who resided in the area and worshipped at the church, let it be known that the hardware was to be returned and, even though it was, it was a transgression that could not go unpunished and the thief was later strangled.
It’s surprising to find a pile of High Victorian like the Angel Guardian Home (now Mercy First) which sheltered unwed mothers and their children beginning in 1899. Then, this part of town was far removed from anything else, but there was still a certain pride and dignity placed into the construction of housing for people who, in that era, were mostly shunned by society. Given its location—you expect to find such architecture in a Park Slope or a Bedford-Stuyvesant—I enjoy this building so much that I can’t resist taking multiple photos of it whenever I’m around.
The Sisters of Mercy put the building up for sale in late 2017. After the demolition of some buildings on the site the main building, now landmarked, is in use as a school.
The N train is an outgrowth of the old Sea Beach steam railroad, which originally ended at a seaside hotel by the same name in Coney Island. In 1915 the railroad was modernized with a third rail and placed in an open cut by Brooklyn Rapid Transit, a precursor of Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, or the BMT. The line, still called the Sea Beach, would soon gain a Manhattan connection via the Manhattan Bridge. The line also gained a series of headhouses like this one at stops along the route. Despite acquiring high gate turnstiles and a large “token booth” the building still has elements of its original BRT construction such as beige “bathroom” tile and terra cotta diamonds on the exterior.
The 8th Ave. station is built on a curve and is the first of the N line’s open cut stations going south. When I lived on 73rd St. and 7th Ave. from 1982-1990 this was my home station, though I could also use the R train at 4th Avenue and 77th. I’d walk to the 8th Ave. station in the brighter and warmer months, since I worked nights and would leave the house around four p.m., earlier if I was stopping at (now gone) Zeke’s Roast Beef on 8th Ave. and 66th St. first.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)