Dutch names are fun to say, especially the ones in the New York City area. There’s Onderdonk, Yonkers, Kill Van Kull, Spuyten Duyvil, and the one NYC sports fans are talking about this month… Knickerbocker. Knickerbocker Ave. is the main shopping drag in its corner of Bushwick (Bushwick Ave. itself is mostly residential).
At 13 letters, “Knickerbocker” is the longest street name in Brooklyn (that consists of one word): Schermerhorn St., you’re a letter short. Though you don’t see him around much anymore compared to, say, Uncle Sam, in previous decades the personification of New York City was “Father Knickerbocker,” a representation of the city’s original Dutch settlers, who wore a cotton wig, three-cornered hat, buckled shoes, and “knickered” pants. The pants rolled up just below the knee and remained in use as boys wear well into the 20th century; on the golf course, they’re known as “plus fours,” with the late Payne Stewart one of the few latter-day golfers maintaining the style. The New York Knicks’ formal name is the Knickerbockers, with the name drawn from a hat soon after the club’s founding in 1946.
But why does the street name turn up here? The answer may lie in the name of the next avenue to the northeast, Irving Ave. A number of streets in the area evoke Washington Irving, the famed author of the early-19th century, and a character in his 1809 spoof History of New York is named Dietrich Knickerbocker. Bleecker St., which also runs through Bushwick and Ridgewood, is likely named for an Irving crony, Anthony Bleecker, a wealthy merchant. The Dutch theme continues with sister avenues Wyckoff and St. Nicholas. Knickerbocker Ave. had attained its name, at least on maps, by 1855.
I’ve been riding the Long Island Rail Road from Queens to Manhattan since 1992 and on each trip on the north side of the tracks, you could always see what had been Knickerbocker Laundry. The 1936 building was an exaggerated streamline design, a side category of Art Deco called Streamline Moderne. (Other examples are the Triborough Bridge approaches and the set design of 1936 H.G. Wells adaptation, Things To Come.)
Curvilinear lines, perfectly symmetrical design, and a huge clock above the front entrance earned the “Beautiful Building” accolade from the Queens Chamber of Commerce soon after its opening. It was modernistic for its time and its design would be echoed in the futuristic buildings featured in the 1939-40 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows.
An expansion of the Knickerbocker Ice business, which was seeking to expand into other ways to make money, the Knickerbocker Laundry was constructed in 1931 with a design by architect Irving Fenichel. “Inside were huge washing, pressing, ironing, steam, dry-cleaning and other machines, and a separate boiler room. Huge windows and tiled surfaces made the interior appear as clean as a hospital. Everything from fragile linens to great rugs were cleaned in a carefully air-conditioned, dust-free atmosphere, but the most striking quality of the Knickerbocker Laundry building was its near-public character.” —the late Christopher Gray, New York Times]
The Knickerbocker Laundry, and later, Naarden Fragrances, occupied the structure until 1986 when it began a slow slide into oblivion and disrepair, which is how I encountered it in 1992. But just a couple of years later, there was a renaissance as the New York Presbyterian Church, with a primarily Korean congregation, purchased the building, and as you can see, renovated it from stem to stern. Very few of its original Streamline Moderne Le Corbusier-ish touches remain.
In the heart of Bushwick is a green block named in honor of Maria Hernandez, a neighborhood activist who lived across from the park on Starr St. Hernandez organized block parties, athletic activities, and social and cultural gatherings, and provided information to police about drug trafficking. She was murdered by gunfire at her apartment on nearby Starr St. on August 8, 1989.
This is a park for active recreation with a playground, dog run, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, soccer, basketball, and handball. But the layout of its paths dates to 1896, when this park opened to the public with the landscape design of McGolrick (formerly Winthrop) Park in Greenpoint and Washington Square Park in Manhattan.
#92-96 Knickerbocker Ave., NW corner of Thames, is another one of the area’s many massive brick, many-windowed buildings that was probably used for manufacturing as its original purpose but now is populated by small businesses and perhaps some artists’ lofts, that include Knickerbocker BBQ Bar, Stems Florist and Standard Grooming.
Last time I was on Knickerbocker Ave. the Golden Hour was in full swing and illuminated PS 116, in flaming red brick, Knickerbocker between Grove and Menahan, Bushwick’s truly great public school building, on Knickerbocker Ave. between Menahan and Grove Sts. It’s a brick and terra cotta Romanesque Revival building designed by James W. Naughton and opened in 1899, a year after his death. In 2002 it was named an official NYC Landmark.
There’s a locked door at the west end of the north Times Square Shuttle platform, with the mysterious word “Knickerbocker” embossed over it. This was a direct connection from the old Knickerbocker Hotel to what was, when the platform was opened in 1904, the Times Square subway station. It was demoted to “shuttle” when additional lines were opened by 1918 and a shuttle was created between the 7th Ave. and Lexington Ave. lines. In 1904, subway admission was by ticket, not tokens.
In the summer of 2014, The New York Times did an excellent story on this mysterious passageway’s lore and legend, including a coveted glimpse of what’s behind the door.
—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).