Bocce

[3705 Fort Hamilton, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last Sunday I stood before 3717 Fort Hamilton Parkway. Today we’re moving a little bit up the block. The Green-Wood Cemetery is cater-corner across the street from 3705, whatever 3705 was.

Notice the punched-out hole (or in Treasure Island argot, the black spot): perhaps this tax photograph was deemed useless because there is no identifiable building in it. There is a billboard for Schaefer beer (a brand that occasioned a memorable incident in my youth). And there’s the Culver Shuttle up above, shut down in 1975. The El tracks were demolished in 1985.

The reason I chose this photograph: when I was a boy, we traveled by car under these El tracks many a time on the way to and from my grandparents’ house. To: on Fort Hamilton Parkway. From: on 12th Avenue. What made it interesting: the already defunct or nearly defunct rail tracks on the ground below the El had been repurposed as bocce courts. On a weekend afternoon, there would always be groups of men playing the game.

Here, from The New York Times, is a celebration of bocce in New York: “A City’s Simple Joy.” And here, from Anthony Catalano, are three photographs of bocce players beneath the El: 1, 2, 3. The ground-level tracks, like the El above, are long gone.

And yes, that is a punched-out hole, not a bocce ball.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives