Greenpoint

Ever since Henry Ford’s assembly line made it possible for the average American to purchase a car, we’ve been in love with the automobile. But Ford was not the only automaker around, and no sooner than the first cars started to appear, than it seemed that every inventor and blacksmith with a knack for engines and enough money to go into business, was becoming a car maker. The beginning of the 20th century was a marvelous time for the automobile, and there were dozens of companies, long before the “Big Three” took over the industry. Most of these names are long forgotten. Some of the cars produced by these smaller companies no longer exist outside of photographs and drawings. But back then, they were all here, rolling down the streets of Brooklyn.

Although there were dealerships, garages and suppliers all over the borough, Bedford Avenue, especially between Malbone Street (now Empire Boulevard) and Fulton Street, a long stretch of road starting in Flatbush, through the entirety of Crown Heights, and on into Bedford Stuyvesant, became known as “Automobile Row.” Residential development in this area had been slowed down by the looming and forbidding presence of the Brooklyn Penitentiary on Bedford and Union, but as soon as that structure was torn down in 1907, things started to take off. (more…)