162nd Street and Brook Avenue
I remember my first exploratory mission from my new home on 162nd Street in 1938. I was out of the house early, and the memory of the bright clarity and coolness of that early summer morning is with me now. The morning sun shone from over the Elevated station on Third Avenue and down my street. Light bounced off the gray cream-colored sandstone walls of the courthouse on Brook Avenue at the foot of the street. The sunlight split my street in two, with its bright continuity darkly split by the shadowed outlines of the El station on the apartment buildings across the street. I took an exploratory walk around the corner from my home. The buildings extended at a half bend onto Brook Avenue. I went past the front of a wide drug store and a small candy store, and then another corner. Directly in front of the drug store was a big expanse of open street. I turned the other corner and saw the expanse continue, a block in each direction. A trolley car swept around a wide curving path through this space. The bright sun struck highlights from the trolley car, the rails, the cobble stones in the street, and store windows across the openness. This space awed me, brightly lit by the morning sun and stretching out to new unexplored places. I took up my eight-year-old courage and boldly ran across the street. A bulky traffic light stanchion was my halfway safe haven, stuck way out by the trolley tracks. I crossed triumphantly to the far corner of 163rd Street and Washington Avenue and then quickly returned to my home territory, leaving further explorations to a later day. On that first day, the wide expanse in the morning brightness looked to me like a beautiful new world to explore. I became an enthusiastic early summer morning explorer enjoying the empty streets, morning cool temperature and morning sunlight. In my memory the streets and apartment houses were almost ethereal in the morning radiance.
I learned later that this wide expanse was the intersection of three avenues and several cross streets. Brook Avenue, after following a well-behaved north-south path from the south up to 162nd Street suddenly swung in a northwest direction. Washington Avenue, which started only three blocks south, ran through here. Brook Avenue crossed Washington Avenue following, no doubt, the original path of the brook for which it was named. It continued over toward Webster Avenue past Heinz's hill and some large old buildings which then housed the Sheffield Farms horse barns. Also at 162nd Street Elton Avenue merged into Washington Avenue, terminating its short ten-block run from 154th Street. A line of police traffic stanchions separated the two avenues and prevented traffic chaos for part of the expanse. It was not a pedestrian-friendly crossing area unless you were fleet of foot.
Both 162nd Street and 163rd Street crossed this intersection of avenues here, the two streets almost colliding at this point. Through this expanse, the westbound cross-town trolley made a wide swing as it traversed from 163rd Street to 161st Street. Under this wide-open area was also a subsurface crossing by some NY Central freight train tracks which followed beside Brook Ave.
This wide expanse although heavily used by autos and trucks was the site of continuous curb ball games. Along Brook Avenue, the sidewalk beside the courthouse was a constant beehive of stickball and slug ball games. The street was a city boy's heaven for playing space. There was not a blade of grass in the area but plenty of space for playing ball. Much of it was shared with traffic but until the end of WW II, traffic was never very heavy. It may seem unbelievable now but then, if a car started to park on our "field", we would ask him the driver to park in another space that would always be close by. The municipal courthouse formed the center of activity because it had wide areas of blank walls on its rear side along Brook Avenue. These walls served continually as courts for handball, slugball, and against-the-wall stickball and as a backstop for fast-pitch stickball. The sidewalk beside the courthouse along Brook Avenue also served as a punch- ball field and as a stickball field with the outfield extending into the busy 161st Street. Coexisting with this ballgame activity, the court house wall served as back stop for Johnny-on-the-pony and as home base for ring-a-levio games. It was a busy place, a cauldron of kids boiling up in every possible space in one city block.
The fast-pitch stickball games were a real trial to Mr. Barness, the super of the corner apartment house overlooking all this activity. The batter stood against the court wall and faced the house across the street. A good hit often resulted in a broken window in the house that Mr. Barness then had to repair. We considered him to be a real crank but now I appreciate his viewpoint. He died not long afterward and, according to gossip, left instructions that he was to be cremated and his ashes strewn in the harbor from the Staten Island ferry. The neighborhood was shocked by this news. Cremation was at that time prohibited to Catholics. When we kids realized that Mr.Barness was a Protestant, we felt it explained his prior crankiness.
In the middle of the courthouse sidewalk activity was the garage entrance for the motorcycle cops at the rear of the courthouse. These cops were the center of every kid's admiration in their trooper uniforms with leggings, mounted on motorcycles. The regular police car cops were very unpopular since they regularly confiscated our broom stick ball bats.
Just after the war, many of the younger vets spent their "52-20" time here and gave us young guys stiff competition in the various games. Aside from the constant ball games, the corner was also the home of Rothaus Pharmacy and, around the corner, Grasso's Restaurant, two places, which made up the social center of the neighborhood.
Two "sitting" parks contributed to the wide-open appearance. A pretty tree shaded park occupied the space bordered by Elton, Washington, 161st and 162nd Streets, covering the train tracks which ran below. Another smaller rather barren park sat in the triangle formed by Washington and Brook Avenues and 163rd Street. This confluence of streets was the sunny expanse I remember so well from my first day on 162nd Street.
Third Avenue, at the head of the street had the El train with a station at 161st Street. There was a fascinating building beside the station, which housed some very large machines. These whirred constantly and mysteriously providing, in some magic way, electric power for the El trains. News stands cuddled under the station stairs on each side. Like all El stations, for a block on either side, the avenue was lined with stores. There was the ever present United Cigar store, butcher, baker, two ice cream parlors, a large fruit and vegetable market, several small candy stores,
house wares store, hardware store, a delicatessen, a fish market, a large linoleum store, dry goods store, several bars, a bank and other stores I don't recall.
The massive old gray courthouse, gutted but still standing today, is on the triangle space bordered by Third Avenue, Brook Avenue, and 161st Street. This building, formerly the Bronx County courthouse still had criminal trials at the time. I wrote about this courthouse in another memoir.
Rothaus, Grasso's, and all the apartment houses, like the horse barns and the trolley cars are gone, as much history as the long vanished brook. Most of the buildings on 162nd street were consumed in the fires in the 1960s and only the street names and the shell of the courthouse remain.