Past and Present: Fulton at Flatbush

A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.

Today, the intersection of Fulton Street and Flatbush Avenue is a busy place. It’s one of those nexuses (nexii??) where not only do two major streets intersect, but there are also busy side streets that begin at Flatbush, as well. It’s a traffic nightmare, and if you don’t know where you are going, and get into the wrong lane, you are in trouble. But if you think this is bad now, look at 1908!

The vintage photo, circa 1908, shows that same intersection of Flatbush and Fulton Street. But has it ever changed! The elevated Fulton Street line runs over head. Behind it you can see the 5th Avenue line curving around the intersection, on its way past the Long Island Railroad Station and Times Plaza, to the southeast and in the opposite direction, on to the Brooklyn Bridge. Below the el lines run the trolleys, their tracks wending their way along Flatbush as well as Fulton Streets.

There is road construction going on as well, with construction materials, cobblestone, and surveying equipment visible along Flatbush, in fact, it looks as if much of Flatbush has been torn up. Today, of course, there would be much more heavy equipment in the street, reminding us of how labor intensive building our city was one hundred years ago.

Remarkably, some of 1908 is still with us. Gone are the el and the trolley tracks, replaced by subways and buses. But the building festooned with flags is still there. It’s the Smith, Gray, and Company store, Brooklyn’s very successful purveyor of men’s and boy’s clothing. This is their flagship store, which once had one of Downtown Brooklyn’s tallest towers. Today, that tower has been truncated down to only a few now useless stories. You can just see the “Smi” of “Smith” in the right side of the photo, just underneath the El tracks.

But how the rest of this area has changed. Gone are the elegant brownstone storefronts along Flatbush, with only a couple of the buildings in the far background, on the left, still standing. There is still a corner building at Flatbush and Fulton, but it’s been altered so many times in my lifetime alone, it’s hard to tell from the photo if it’s the same building. The rather banal office building on Flatbush replaced the Fox Theater, which replaced the brownstone storefronts. Change is always happening here in Brooklyn. GMAP