Lew Fidler Park, Brooklyn

The spot where Emmons Avenue becomes the eastbound ramp to the Belt Parkway, where Sheepshead Bay ends and Plumb Beach begins has one of New York’s newest playgrounds, named after a popular local politician. It marks a scenic start to the Jamaica Bay Greenway, a bike route that runs along the northern side of this lagoon.

From the playground’s highest point looking south, we see Sheepshead Bay widening onto the Rockaway Inlet. The tip of Kingsborough Community College is across the bay and in the background is Breezy Point. Behind it is the open water of the Atlantic Ocean.

Photo of the Week

Among the public beaches of Brooklyn, Plumb Beach is the least known, tucked behind the dunes on the eastbound Belt Parkway between exits 9 and 11. The beach was once an island, separated from mainland Brooklyn by Hog Creek.

This week’s selected photo was taken by prolific city photographer Percy Loomis Sperr and found in the NYPL Digital Collections. It shows a footbridge connecting the mainland with Plumb Beach but the tide is low enough to render the bridge redundant. It led to an independent-spirited squatter community that was razed in the 1930s to make way for Belt Parkway.

Marine Park’s Olympic Design

Among the waterways of southern Brooklyn, Gerritsen Creek has the most naturalistic appearance, lacking the waterfront mansions of nearby Mill Basin and  docks of Sheepshead Bay. It is a remnant of a much longer creek that had a tidal mill on it until 1935. At the time, there were discussions taking place on the redesign of the park. One of the designs was submitted to the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics design competition.

Charles Downing Lay‘s design for the park won the Silver Medal in the art exhibition, but as far as actual construction, it never materialized beyond the planning phase.