Past and Present: Fulton Street at Ashland Place

A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.

Like Manhattan, Brooklyn once had a large theater district, with clusters of legitimate and vaudeville theaters, even an opera house or two, surrounded by restaurants, clubs and social establishments. This district centered around the blocks near the intersection of Fulton Street and Flatbush Avenue, with theaters on both sides of Flatbush. Take a look at this 1921 photo of the streetscape of Fulton Street at Ashland Place, looking towards Flatbush Avenue and Downtown Brooklyn. From what I can see, amazingly, there are only two in this photo that are still here; the Majestic Theatre, on the right side of Fulton Street, today the Harvey Lichtenstein/Bam Majestic Theater, and the Strand Theater, which is now home to BRIC Arts and Urban Glass, which can barely be glimpsed, next door to the Majestic.

Nothing else in this photo remains. The Fulton Street El is gone. The trolleys are gone, as well, although the tracks still remain, buried under the street by countless layers of blacktop. On the right side of Fulton, today’s high-rise Forte apartment building looms high on this corner; nothing else between the corner and the Majestic Theater survives.

Across the street, the story is the same, at least for what we can actually see. The parking lot, at 35 cents is gone, as is impresario B. F. Keith’s large Orpheum Theater. The tower looming behind it belonged to the Smith, Gray & Company store, which stands on Nevins Place, right before Flatbush Avenue. The base of this building, and a few stories of the tower remain, but they can’t be seen in the more modern Google photograph, which was taken several years ago. The clock tower, which was rebuilt after a devastating fire in 1892, was reduced to its base sometime during the 1940’s. And who says nothing changes in Brooklyn? GMAP