Lundys of Sheepshead Bay by Kingsborough Community College

Lundy’s Restaurant in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn has seen its fair share of good and bad times since it opened in 1935. In its heyday, the restaurant reportedly seated over 2,000 patrons. Opened by Irving Lundy, the historic seafood restaurant operated from 1935-1977, and then again from 1997-2007. This photograph depicts the restaurant in 1961 at 1901 Emmons Avenue.

Irving Lundy was born in 1895, the oldest of seven children. Lundy came from a long line of fish sellers, his grandfather and great-uncles owned several fish stores and by the turn of the century, the family had an established reputation as renowned fish sellers. Within a three year span (1917-1920), Lundy’s parents died from illness, and then his brothers, Clayton and Stanley, died tragically in a boating accident.

By 1926, the first Lundy Brothers restaurant was built on stilts over a pier in Sheepshead Bay. The restaurant closed when the city made plans to revitalize the pier and build bulkheads. The restaurant on Emmons Avenue was built across the street and opened in 1935. They served heaping portions of fresh seafood—oysters, lobsters, and clams, as well as biscuits and fresh pies. Robert Cornfield, in his book Lundy’s: Reminiscences and Recipes from Brooklyn’s Legendary Restaurant, notes, “The resort feel of Lundy’s made it a weekend destination for those from other boroughs—there was the abundance of the Shore Dinner, the walk around the bay and across the wooden bridge to the beautifully landscaped streets of Manhattan Beach, the overarching sky over the narrows.”

Despite great success and notoriety, Lundy and his restaurant faced many tragedies over the years: Lundy was kidnapped and robbed on numerous occasions, the restaurant was robbed by gunmen, his sister and brother-in-law were murdered, there were labor protests, and legal issues. Lundy died of a heart attack in 1977 and the restaurant closed shortly after. Two decades later, the restaurant was re-opened under new management, and closed permanently in 2007. Today, Lundy’s Landing Shopping Plaza has replaced the restaurant.

Lundy’s in Sheepshead Bay was the favorite restaurant of Mimi Sheraton’s family. The huge California mission-style establishment on Emmons Avenue was probably the most popular restaurant in all of Brooklyn. Sheraton’s fondest memories, however, were of the place as it was in her childhood in the late 1920s and early ’30s, a listing dining room in a small white house, one of many seafood shacks on the piers jutting over the water. She remembers snowy white linen tablecloths, huge rolled napkins and white coats worn by courtly, courteous black waiters. Her father would table hop or go up to the clam bar to schmooze with friends who gathered there. According to a story on the restaurant and its founder that ran in Newsday in 1989, Lundy’s served alcohol despite Prohibition which might account in part for its great success in that decade.

Sheepshead Bay had been a place to fish, duck hunt or buy fresh seafood since the mid-19th century. It had a racetrack back then. Big spenders and their families stayed at resort hotels or in stately Victorians on Millionaires Row. Villepigue’s and Tappen’s both still around in 1946, were the reigning seafood palaces in the olden days. By the 1920s, the racetrack and the millionaires had gone and Sheepshead Bay was largely an Irish, Italian and Jewish residential neighborhood.

In the early 1930s all of the businesses on the piers, including Lundy’s, were forced to move when the WPA undertook a major renovation of the crumbling docks. In 1934 Irving Lundy reopened on the site of the old Bayside Hotel in a building that he intended to be the largest single structure restaurant in the world, . By then Lundy’s had become the place to go in Sheepshead Bay for a family Sunday dinner or to celebrate a special occasion. The new restaurant, inspired by the buildings Lundy had seen in California, occupied a city block, was two-stories high and sat 2,700 diners at a time.

The roof was red tile, the walls sand-colored stucco. Lundy put his initials. F.W.I. L for Frederick William Irving Lundy, and the family coat of arms over the doorway. Lundy had the builders embed crushed clam shells into the cement for luck. The interior had arched ceilings, stained glass windows and wrought-iron grillwork. There were two kitchens, multiple dining areas, a patio, a clam bar, and a liquor bar. Men in pinstripe suits and ladies with hats and furs would jam the place at peak hours.. Lundy’s drew an ethnic cross-section of Brooklynites: Irish, Germans and Italians as well as the upwardly mobile Jews of Midwood, Flatbush and Borough Park.

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There wasn’t much courtly or courteous about Lundy’s at its height of popularity. Elliot Willensky wrote of the roar of a thousand conversations and the sometimes interminable wait for service. Nick Viorst wrote that it was “an exercise in patience and intimidation.” The restaurant had no maitre d’s and took no reservations. People, who usually arrived in groups, elbowed their way through the crowded restaurant to find a table where the diners were eating dessert. They would hover and glare until the table was relinquished. Sometimes when a table was vacated, it would set off a mad scramble. At times fistfights broke out.

Getting a table was only half the battle. While Lundy instructed his waiters to develop a personal relationship with regulars like the Solomons, making them feel like big shots, it could be a different story for the occasional visitor, at least in later decades. After finally finding a table, the party might have a long wait before a waiter showed up with menus. When the waiter eventually got around to handing the diners the elaborate and somewhat unusual menu, he often would return before anyone had had a chance to study it.

If the patrons weren’t ready to shout your order over the din, it might be a long time before they saw the waiter again. Then it might be another long wait before the food arrived. But most felt it was worth it. The food was fresh and arrived steaming hot and by all accounts it was excellent. The portions were generous, the prices reasonable. For all the complaints, the place had the festive atmosphere of a communal event with a certain ritual aspect such as the lobster bib, said to be a Lundy’s invention, fingerbowls at the end of the meal and the visit to the oyster bar to swallow raw littlenecks.

Lundy hired only African-American waiters and busboys well into the poswar era. At peak time he had 200 employees working the floor. Many of them formerly had worked as grooms at the racetrack or as Pullman porters. In the summer he brought in college students from Black colleges down south. Viorst noted that working at Lundy’s was a tough job for the waiters who had to keep track of many tables while transporting steaming hot trays of food through the massive, non air-conditioned dining rooms.

They sweated so much they changed their crisp white jackets several times during the course of a workday. Irving Lundy was a perfectionist and eccentric with a short fuse, Occasionally physical altercations took place in the kitchen between Lundy family members and their employees. He kept the unions out of his restaurant but he paid his employees well.

Like most patrons, the Solomons usually ordered the shore dinner, which was copied from Villepigues where it was said to have been first assembled for Diamond Jim Brady in the Gilded Age. It started with a choice of soup (usually the clam chowder), shrimp, clam, oyster or crab cocktail, followed by steamers that had been dunked in their own briny broth and then into melted butter, half a lobster with the meat picked from the shells, half a chicken, corn on the cob with more butter, and baskets of miniature, Southern-style flaky biscuits. Sheraton remembers the table holding bowls of slim French fries, relish dishes of cole slaw, and pitchers of iced tea. She insists that the well-remembered “blueberry pie” actually was huckleberry.

Sometimes the Solomons ordered watermelon instead of pie for dessert. If they were in the mood for “something different” the main course might be crab meat, lobster or shrimp au gratin under a golden brown cheese and cream sauce or a gold-pink sherry, egg and cream Newburg sauce. The Solomons loved Lundy’s so much that Joseph Solomon sometimes stopped in on his way home from work to pick up a basket of soft-shelled clams to bring home as a surprise for the family.

Frederick William Irving Lundy was an interesting transitional character in Brooklyn’s history who deserves a post of his own. By birth he was Old Brooklyn. His grandfather, also named Frederick, was brought to Brooklyn in 1838 as a 14-year-old orphan by the Van Nostrand family whose roots went back to New Amsterdam. While the Lundy family suspected they might be of Dutch and English origin, Frederick came to the US from Bremerhaven, Germany, which at the time of his birth was not yet a major port but an assemblage of small fishing villages scattered on the mudflats and islands near the mouth of the Weser River on the North Sea.

When the first Frederick Lundy started a fish business Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach were the summer resort towns for Manhattan’s elite, sort of the mid-19th century Hamptons. The original Lundy Brothers were his five sons, including Irving’s father, Frederick Jr. By then Sheepshead Bay Racetrack, Brighton Beach Race Course and Gravesend Racetrack had made South Brooklyn the horse-racing capital of the country, patronized by the millionaire sportsmen of the Gilded Age and Gay Nineties. Lundy Brothers supplied fish to the hotels and restaurants that catered to this crowd.

By 1880 they had three retail fish markets, their own clam beds, and a boat rental business in addition to their wholesale fish business. Frederick Jr. was active in the Democratic Party in Brooklyn and served as county registrar and tax commissioner. He married a judge’s daughter, bought up a lot of waterfront property in Sheepshead Bay and was recognized as one of Brooklyn’s leading citizens.

The affluent sporting crowd still frequented Sheepshead Bay in 1895 when Irving, as he preferred to be called, was born but with the closing of the racetracks the community went into decline. The red-haired, blue-eyed youngster started his first business, a chowder stand on the pier, when he was 9 years old. The business was booming when he went off to serve in the Navy during the First World War.

 

While he was away, his mother died in the great influenza pandemic of 1917. His father died a year later, making Irving the head of the family at 23. He opened a clam shack with his brothers who did much of the clamming while Irving oversaw the retail operation. In 1920 the rowboat carrying his three brothers and an employee back to their winter quarters on a mud flat in Jamaica Bay where they had an oyster bed was hit by an ice floe and sank.

 

The youngest brother, 17-year old Stanley, was separated from the others in the thick fog and drowned. Twenty-one year old Clayton died trying to save him. Allen Lundy and his employee made it to the beach. Irving was devastated and filled the Methodist church the family attended with memorials. It is said he never again got in a boat or swam.

By the time he opened his first restaurant in 1926, Irving was already a millionaire. According to an 1989 Newsday feature story on Irving and his family, the Lundys were also rum runners. Allen would take his speedboat out beyond the territorial waters to meet the supply boat and then bring the contraband ashore, sometimes with the Coast Guard in pursuit, He once took a bullet in his thigh. The two brothers and their three sisters manned barricades along the piers with shotguns to keep out any competitors. They were one tough crew of Methodists.

As a young man Irving was something of a man about town, palling around with Henry Ford and frequenting city nightclubs. He liked fine clothes and jewelry.  Although he had a few flings with women as a young man, his closest relationship was with Henry Linker, his steadfast companion for over thirty years. Linker helped manage the restaurant. They lived together. They drove around town in an aquamarine Lincoln Zephyr with brown leather seats and frequented the Cotton Club in the early days. Irving never fully recovered when Linker died in the late 1950s.

In 1926 a trio of thugs kidnapped Linker and Lundy as they were closing the restaurant. They were after the flashy diamond ring Irving often wore. He happened not to be wearing it that day and, when he refused to tell them where it was, they threatened to kill him. He stood his ground and the thieves satisfied themselves with his diamond stickpin and four thousand dollars from the restaurant safe. They left Linker and Lundy with enough money for cab fare home after telling them how much they enjoyed eating in their restaurant. They eventually were apprehended and sentenced to life in prison.

After the incident Lundy became more socially reclusive and suspicious of strangers. Allen was the brother who most often dealt with the restaurant customers after that although Irving was very much in charge. Later his nephews joined the business. Irving and Linker spent much of their free time at his estate in the Catskills, which eventually grew to 30,000 acres. Linker was a pilot and flew them up. Irving imagined himself a rancher often dressing in Stetson, cowboy boots and western clothes when he worked the land or oversaw his herd of Angus cattle. He also had two estates on Long Island, including one in Brookville that had belonged to a Vanderbilt. In town he now usually wore a threadbare camel hair coat and fedora.

The WPA renovation of the Sheepshead Bay waterfront was a disaster for most of the small businesses on the pier but an opportunity for Irving who made his mammoth new showplace the centerpiece of a reborn Sheepshead Bay reinvented as a place for Brooklyn’s emerging middle class. He and Linker lived in an adjacent house. During the ’30s and ’40s he bought up much of the property along the waterfront that he had not already inherited. But he missed the old “Clam Coast” destroyed by the renovation and was said to be a benevolent landlord to the businesses that remained and a frequent anonymous benefactor to individuals and families from the old days.

His political connections as well as those of his loyal patrons stopped the feds from permanently closing the new restaurant in 1935 for liquor violations. He was also one of the few to win a battle against Robert Moses who was ramming the Belt Parkway through the seaside communities in the 1930s.

Irving Lundy was not only a product of Old Brooklyn and the founder of a beloved institution of the New Brooklyn of the mid-twentieth century, but also a tragic victim of the borough’s disintegration in the 1970s. He had become almost a total recluse after Linker’s death, living in an apartment over the restaurant with a pack of Irish setters.

The almost unbelievably horrific and violent story of the final decade of his life and of his restaurant, including the murder of his sister and brother-in-law, his betrayal by his closest associate and the suspicious circumstances of his own death, is a tragic end to a great storied life.

From a reader:

Lundy’s
1901 Emmons Avenue, Sheepshead Bay — Lundy’s was the city’s most humongous — and one of the best — seafood restaurants. It could seat 2,800 patrons at once, making it the largest dining establishment in the country. Occupying an entire city block, the structure still stands today, a two-story building with unusual Spanish architectural flourishes, poised on the concrete lip of Sheepshead Bay. Favorite dishes included raw clams on the half shell, small buttered biscuits, tomato salads, corn on the cob, shore dinner, Manhattan clam chowder, and huckleberry pie served with Breyers ice cream.

The place evolved out of a clam bar that opened in 1907; the current premises dates to 1934. It closed in 1977, only to reopen in 1995, filling only half of its former floorspace, and persisted for an additional decade or so. Now an upscale food market occupies the space.

Lundy’s Angry Lobster
Recipe Ingredients
3 cloves roasted garlic
1/2 ounce chopped garlic
2 ounces white wine
1 rosemary sprig
1 pound lobster, cut into 6 pieces
3 ounces clam juice
1/2 teaspoon crushed pepper
1/4 ounce dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon butter
1/2 ounce chiffonade basil
8 ounces linguini
1/2 ounce chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

Method
Place sauté pan in oven to heat. When hot, add lobster and put back in oven for 3 minutes. Add garlic, dried oregano and red pepper. When garlic is lightly caramelized, deglaze with white wine and clam juice. Season, then place back in oven.

Finish lobster sauce with butter.

Heat pasta in boiling water for 1 minute, strain and place in fresh sauté pan.

Arrange lobster putting body back together. Pour sauce over all and garnish with rosemary and chiffonade basil.

Chopped Parsley – 6 bunches = 12 ounces chopped

Soak parsley in ice water. Remove and shake off excess water. Gather leaves together and twist. Julienne from top until you reach edge of stems. Dice until fine. Put wet towel and rinse. Let dry slightly. Store in refrigerator.

Cook Pasta – 1 pound = 3 portions

Place pasta in salted boiling water for 7-9 minutes or until al dente. Shock in ice water to stop cooking. Toss with blended olive oil to coat and prevent sticking.

Sources dor this post and the next:
From My Mother’s Kitchen by Mimi Sheraton
Eating My Words by Mimi Sheraton
“The Once and Future Lundy’s” by Nick Viorst in Brooklyn A State of Mind, Michael Robbins & Wendy Palitz, editors.
When Brooklyn Was the World by Eliot Willensky
Wikipedia article
It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing Up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s by Myrna and Harvey Frommer
“Historically Speaking: Lundy’s a Fishy Tale” by John Manbeck, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 8, 2007
“Lundy’s Again Center of Attention: Restaurant a Focus of Controversy” by Alexis Jetter, Newsday, February 9, 1989
“A Mistrust of Strangers: The Haunted Days of Irving Lundy,” by Annelise Orleck and Alexis Jetter, Newsday,September 24, 1989
Arthur Schwartz’s New York City Food: An Opinionated History and More Than 100 Legendary Recipes by Arthur Schwartz

Lundys of Sheepshead Bay

The Babe and the Iron Horse Visit Sheepshead Bay by Kingsborough

The ‘Iron Horse’ and ‘The Babe’ visit Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY – 1927

The year was 1927 and the New York Yankees had just completed a season where they set an American League record of 110 winning games with only 44 losses, and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs in 1927 set a single-season record, which would stand for the next 34 years. First baseman Lou Gehrig, ‘The Iron Horse’, had his first big season with a batting average of .373 and 47 home runs, and was the American League’s Most Valuable Player of the year.

After the historic baseball season concluded, both Gehrig and Ruth took advantage of the off-season to enjoy some of the fine codfishing offered by the Sheepshead Bay party boat fleet. These incredible and rare photos was taken on November 10, 1927 aboard the Sheepshead Bay party boat “ELMAR II”.

Standing from right to left are Lou Gherig, Captain Gus Rau of the “ELMAR II” and Babe Ruth. They spent the day fishing for cod at the Cholera Bank off of Kingsborough Community College and the Rockaways.,

 We are sure these two members of the Yankee’s ‘Murderer’s Row’ were true to their nickname and dropped a few fish on the deck.

Ruth at Gehrig’s Funeral

Brooklyn,Brooklyn,Brooklyn,Brooklyn-MC Lyte

The Kingsborough Beach-Brooklyn NY August 2016

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Buddah

Kingsborough Community College Path

“The Captain”-Tony DiLernia and Kingsborough

“The Captain”

Captain Tony DiLernia’s thirty-five years of chartering experience guiding some of New York’s finest fishermen guarantees your trip will be one of the most memorable you’ll ever have. The knowledge developed from a lifetime of fishing and fifteen years of operating a research vessel in New York Harbor are combined to insure your fishing success. A marine biologist by training and a member of the faculty of Kingsborough Captain DiLernia’s reputation as a charter captain and industry leader are well known and highly respected.
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Captain Anthony DiLernia ( Tony) is currently both the Director of Maritime Technology at Kingsborough Community College, a unit of The City University of New York, a charter boat operator with thirty five years experience in the Mid-Atlantic region, and an occasional outdoor writer.

His past positions have included Chairman of NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, membership on the New York Seafood Council and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, (1991-2002),  President of the New York State Marine Education Association and President of the United Boatmen of New York.  He has received awards for his work in fisheries management from, the Science Council of New York, the New York Fishing Tackle Trades Association, the Coastal Conservation Association of New York, and the Northeast region of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

As Maritime Technology Program Director and a charter boat operator with 35 years of experience in the Mid-Atlantic region, Prof. DiLernia—also an occasional outdoors writer—has directed one of the most successful community college Maritime Technology programs for more than a decade. Approximately 100 students are enrolled in KCC’s Maritime Technology program in a range of deck and engine classes on such topics as steamship piloting, marine electronics, welding, low-voltage electrical systems, safety and survival, marina operations, oceanography, and vessel repair.Kingsborough Community College – DiLernia

Born to a commercial fishing family from Brooklyn, in the 1950’s, Captain DiLernia  lived as a child a short while in southern Italy before returning to Queens, NY.

A graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School, Captain DiLernia earned his Bachelor’s, Masters and Professional Degrees from St. John’s University, specializing in Marine Science and School Administration.  He earned his Coast Guard Captain’s license in 1978.

Since high school, Captain DiLernia has been an active participant in New York’s charter-boat fishing industry and has been elected to a number of government panels designed to develop sustainable fishery practices.

He currently resides in Queens, New York, with his wife of thirty-nine years, LuAnn and has two adult children Michael and JoAnn.

 

 

Walter Winchell once referred to the Coast Guard’s Boot Camp at Manhattan Beach as the only legal “Concentration Camp” in the world. -some memories of what is now Kingsborough Community College.

On 24 April 1944, at the age of 17 years, one month, 11 days, I enlisted in the United States Coast Guard at the recruiting office in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father, Chief Boatswain Mate Earl J. Morris, officer in charge, said something about meeting his quota or shipping out.  I had graduated from high school January 1944 at the age of 16 and thought I could win the war all by myself.

At that time the Coast Guard was enlisting men only as Steward Mates Third Class (STM3/C) who would serve as permanent mess cooks wherever they were stationed.  Many went to the twenty-two AP transports and  nine APA assault transports which the Coast Guard manned for the U.S. Navy. My father, using   his 24 years of service, requested my enlistment as an Apprentice Seaman (A/S). It was approved, and off I went to Manhattan Beach Training Station, Brooklyn, New York.  I was assigned to Company “Y” as one of about forty other apprentice seamen who, for one reason or the other,  were able to stay out of the galley!

We didn’t get there all at the same time.  We sort of wandered in piece meal.  Boot camp started for me wherever everyone else was at the time. My second day there I took my physical and shots, collected my sea bag issue.  That night someone showed me how to stencil, “roll and stop” my gear.  The next morning I had a sea bag inspection from one of the Company  Y “bungalow boatswains”.

Before the war Manhattan Beach was a summer vacation spot with about sixty  duplex bungalows. When the Coast Guard took over, all the partitions were removed to make room for 30 double deck bunks, rifle racks, 4 commodes and 2 sinks.  It was crowded.  Among other facilities, barracks, training buildings, and the USCGC NEVERSAIL were built.  Included was  a  “head” with about 50 sinks and 100 shower heads and all the cold water you could use.  The hot water lasted for about the first ten people. We of course had to wear leggings, “boots”, have square hats, polished shoes.  And whatever the uniform of the day that was announced about five minutes before muster for breakfast at 0530.

Right across the street was a bungalow for the crew of Patrol Frigate 93 USS LORAIN (PF93) who were awaiting the ship’s commissioning.  To say the least, they were not a bunch of “boots”.  No one seemed to have anything for them to do, so they didn’t do anything but make fun of us “boots”. And go on liberty which we could not do.

At the time of my arrival, Company “Y”  was learning to launch pulling boats and row all over Sheepshead Bay. And do it over and over again.  The next week we  were sent “next door” to the U.S. Maritime Training Station to practice abandoning ship without the life boat.  You were  instructed how to put on the Kapok life jacket, hold your nose, grab  your family jewels, keep your feet together and jump 20 feet into a large tank with a pretty serious fire burning on top.  You had to swim out of the flames, splashing water about to keep your eyebrows from being singed or hair catching fire.  You got to do this three times the first day.

The next couple of days we practiced putting out fires above and below decks in a “training ship”.  We learned how to use a number of fire fighting rigs, how to close water tight doors, pump water from one compartment to another, wear oxygen breathing apparatuses and be able to live in a smoke filled environment.  Then rush top side, grab your family jewels, and jump into the flame filled tank, splash water everywhere, get hauled out, form up and march back to the bungalow.  You didn’t eat between  the 0530 breakfast and   1800 supper.  I recall we spent nearly the whole week doing that. My eyebrows eventually grew back.

The third week we were told to get our shaving kits, two pair of skivvies, two pair of dungarees.  We boarded a bus for Sea Girt, New Jersey to gunnery school six hours away.  The first day was spent in the classroom being instructed in 20mm, 40mm twin and quad mounts, the 3 inch 50-caliber, and the 5 inch 38-caliber open mount.  Four days were spent trying to shoot down the U.S. Navy plane towing targets back and forth. Some PF crews were there also, but we weren’t allowed to be contaminated by them.  We were given lunch.  A canteen cup of green pea soup and two pieces of dry bread separated by a slab of ham or spam.  Nothing to brag about.  Nor was breakfast or supper.

Then back to MBTS and our first liberty. Saturday 1200 to Sunday 1800. I slept most of mine at a USO in New York City!

Several of the “old” boots graduated and went on to better things, and several new ones arrived.  My fourth week was learning how to do close order drill and march endlessly all over the base.  Quite often I went around the drill field at double time with my rifle at high port. This was to teach me something, I’m sure.  We had to march everywhere.  And scrub our clothes in a bucket, use the clothes stops to tie them to some ratlines, haul them up a central mast.  Then post a guard  with about six others (STM3/C) to march around the clothes mast till the clothes were almost dry, lower them down, roll them up, “stop” them, put them in your sea bag in a specific order.  And hope they didn’t turn black from mildew before you used them again.

Around the fifth and sixth weeks we learned all about the USCGC NEVERSAIL.  How to tie knots, make rope fenders, splice both manila and wire rope till your fingers bled, especially if you bit your fingernails.  Do you realize how many nerve endings are in your fingertips?   We also learned how to stand various watches. How to semaphore.  How to salute; when to salute.  How to man the side; what the “bosun” blew on his pipe.  How to make the NEVERSAIL ready to sail.  How to approach a dock; how to tie it up.  How to anchor; how to rig a sea anchor.  How to rig a collision mat; how to make one.

At the end of the sixth week, about 12 of us were placed on orderly duty at MBTS headquarters running countless errands, making coffee, cleaning up after everyone and saluting everyone. During one of my errand runs I wound up in the classification branch of the personnel office and found a kind soul who took pity on me.  He had me make out the necessary paper work to get assigned to the next Quartermaster/Signalman School there at MBTS.  That class  began on 12 June 1944.  Suddenly the eight long weeks of my boot camp was over.  Without boot leave. I was rated Seaman Second Class (S2/C) and moved out of the bungalow into a large barracks building with an indoor “head” and hot water showers.  I had arrived!

I know I’ve left a lot out.  We had pretty good chow.  Got to see some first run movies after setting up the chairs in the base gym.  Had four liberties in New York City that I didn’t sleep through.

Boot Camp was eight weeks long, and I can only remember the names of about three people,

QM/SM school was 12 weeks long and although we learned a lot about Quartermaster tasks, were all rated as Signalman on graduation.  I later changed my rate to Quartermaster 3/C. And  after surviving the sinking of the USCGC MAGNOLIA and a brief hospital stay, the Japanese gave up, the war was over, and I got the opportunity to train as an Aviation Machinist Mate.

I left the Coast Guard in December 1948 after nearly 5 years, and joined the U.S. Air Force for another 25 years of service. –Ted A. Morris, LTC, USAF, RET.

 

View of the Manhattan Beach and Oriental Boulevard Hotels from Sheepshead Bay-Turn of the 20th Century-Where Kingsborough Stands Today

” I Didn’t Appreciate Brooklyn Until I Left It.” – Rosie Perez

The Changing Shape of the Point at the End of Brooklyn-The Manhattan Beach/Kingsborough Peninsula 1600-2017

Pre- 1600’s -Occupied by Canarsee Native Americans of Lenni Lenape Tribe- a hunting fishing area where Native Americans collected Oysters and Clams from Jamaica Bay.

1600’s Dutch -The Sedge Bank- a large swampy area at the eastern most point of Coney Island.

1600’s -Sedge Bank- a swampy area at eastern end of Coney Island used by smugglers and pirates.

1600’s- Coney Island named for the Dutch Word for Rabbit

1700’s- Township of Gravesend-deeded to Lady Deborah Moody

1700’s- Sheepshead Bay- named for the Fish, with the highly unusual human teeth.

1700’s -Sheepshead Bay

Late 1800’s Manhattan Beach Railroad Map to Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels at eastern point of Coney Island.

1879- Approximate Locations of Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels.

 

1890-Map of Manhattan beach and Oriental Hotels

1894- Photo of Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels

1880’s- Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels

1897- Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels

Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotel 1897

1897- Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels

1910 View of Coney Island from Balloon

1921- View of site where Kingsborough now stands.

1922 View of Sheepshead Bay and Manhattan Beach

1932- Manhattan Beach Baths

 

1934- Manhattan Beach Baths

1934- Manhattan Beach Baths

1946 Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Facility

1946- Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Facility from Blimp.

1946- Sheepshead Bay Maritime Training Facility

1947- United States Air Force Training Facility

1959 Occupied as Housing for  US Military

1967- Abandoned Military Base Occupied by Kingsborough Community College

1967- Kingsborough Community College

2015- Kingsborough Community College

2015- Kingsborough

2015- Kingsborough

2015- Kingsborough

2017- Kingsborough Community College

Fireworks by Pain at Kingsborough Community College (Manhattan Beach) in the 19th Century

Fireworks are one of our most enduring customs, and have moved us for centuries. Each dazzling display depends on a simple technology, a black powder known as gunpowder, an explosive mixture that shoots fireworks into the air and propels bullets from guns.

12 Park Place, one of the prominent retailers of explosives along ‘Firecracker Lane’.  James Pain was known as one of the world’s greatest pyrotechnists.  Today the Pain name lives on in a UK fireworks company.(Wurts Brothers, courtesy MCNY)

 

Between the two grand hotels – the Oriental Hotel and the Manhattan Beach Hotel now (Kingsborough Community College) Behind the latter, stood an enormous fireworks amphitheater – complete with man-made lake and dedicated fireworks factory – played out demonstrations. The operators, father and son team James and Henry Pain, were particularly fond of extravagant historical tableaus (the lake was used to recreate naval battles), and created shows like “The Battle of Gettysburg,” “Siege of Vera Cruz,” “The Burning of Rome,” “The Attack of Moscow” and “The Last Days of Pompeii.”

It was the Chinese who first discovered gunpowder over 1000 years ago. Soon they developed simple pyrotechnics, like firecrackers, which they believed had the power to scare away evil spirits. Marco Polo said these devices made such a dreadful noise that anyone not used to it could easily go into a swoon and even die.

The most important ingredient in gunpowder is the compound potassium nitrate, more commonly known as ‘saltpeter.’ These naturally-occurringcrystals are not explosive on their own, but require the presence of a fuel, like charcoal, to produce a flammable mix.

Ancient alchemists refined the recipe to 75 percent potassium nitrate, 15 percent charcoal and 10 percent sulfur. The ingredients become explosive after they’re ground together. This highly volatile black powder gave birth to the science of pyrotechnics and the incredible fireworks we experience today.

The wood carvings depict that last one, in which the ancient Roman city of Pompeii is consumed by the lavas of Mt. Vesuvius. The show ran for quite some time, at least from 1885 – when the illustration above was published – to 1903, when a New York Daily Tribune profile of Manhattan Beach made reference to the performance. But, from the brief research we did, it appears all of the historical performances – which were held daily during intermissions for concerts by Patrick Gilmore, John Philip Sousa and Victor Herbert – were handled by the younger Pain, who managed the set from 1879 until 1905; it’s likely “The Last Days of Pompeii” ran just as long.

The performances were more than just a fireworks display. Live music played as costumed actors, clowns and acrobats entertained, and then ultimately scrambled for cover as the fireworks began exploding, simulating the volcano’s mighty eruption.

But not all the actors were professionals. In this 1903 account from the New York Times, a man named Jefferson Jackson was hired for a minor part in the performance. But Jackson, “a burly colored member,” wasn’t told what the role entailed.

Where Jefferson is now Mr. Pains wants to know. He was last seen negotiating the course between the fireworks amphitheatre and Sheepshead Bay in record-breaking time clad in a costly, bespangled garment, and with a stream of flame behind him.

Jackson was an Alabama negro just from the plantation, and when he was hired to carry a torch in the “Last Days of Pompeii,” nobody explained to him the nature of the spectacle. When Mount Vesuvius went of Saturday night Jefferson Jackson went likewise.

He carried what is known as a lycapodium torch, which, whirled in the air, causes a flambeau effect. The faster Jackson ran, the greater became the flame from the torch until as he rushed along the board walk to Sheepshead he looked like a traveling flame. He did not appear for rehearsal yesterday.

What happened to Jackson we may never know. But the prodigious Henry Pain continued to be an American star of the pyrotechnic world, known as “The Fireworks King.”

The Brooklyn Eagle did a nice little bit on his work last year:

[Pain] traveled to France for the 1900 Paris Exposition, or World’s Fair, then back to America for the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901 the St. Louis Fair in 1904.

At the Buffalo celebration shortly after the Spanish-American War, he created an aerial display of a map of the USA including our latest possessions, Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippine Islands. For the finale, the likeness of the President, William McKinley. While attending the fair later, McKinley was assassinated and the former New York governor, Theodore Roosevelt, stepped into the office. Later, Pain also created portraits in fire of Presidents Roosevelt, Wilson and Taft.

Before Henry Pain died in 1935, he was interviewed for The New Yorker by James Thurber for the July 4, 1931, issue after 27 years in the fireworks business. In the article, Thurber revealed that the largest display of fireworks set up by Pain’s company was for the Havana inaugural of President Machado in Cuba in 1929. Over $25,000 of fireworks were shipped there, perhaps enough to sink the battleship Maine all over again. Every rocket and explosive device was set off in less than two hours. Thurber reported that the largest and most expensive piece was a replica of Havana’s new capitol which was 70 feet high and 700 feet long, costing $6,000 but lit up for only a few minutes.

Black powder is a mixture of three components, potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal. If you mix them together you end up with a powder in which you can still see the white, yellow and black flecks. Now if we burn that, what happens is it burns relatively slowly.

This is really quite useful for the basis of a lot of firework compositions where you want something to burn slowly enough that you can see it in the air. If it burnt too quickly it would all be over and it would be a pointless firework. So lots of sparks being produced slow, burning lots of gas, lots of smoke.

And if you take that same chemical composition but you grind the potassium nitrate and the charcoal together, add the sulfur, grind it over many hours, press it into cakes, break it up, you end up with a powder the consistency of coarse granulated sugar.

Now when we burn that, the fire can travel both through the grains and between the grains and the whole reaction is very much more quick. This sort of thing is used for making the lifting charges of fireworks, where you want lots of gas in a short space of time.

So if you take the same black powder but compress it into a tube, what we get is, in effect, a little fountain. It only burns on the top surface.

 

his same black powder can be compressed into marble-sized balls, called stars. They’re used in many of the shells in large-scale displays like Boston’s 4th of July celebration. Each star-filled shell is ignited by an electronic match inserted into the lifting charge in its base.

This is a typical chrysanthemum shell that will be fired during the program. At the base of the shell is a black-powdered lift charge. Once that is ignited, it will propel the shell approximately five or six hundred feet into the air. Then there’s a secondary burst that takes place within the ball shell. It will then ignite several hundred small marble-sized stars that will determine the shape, which will be round in symmetry because this is a round shell.

Round shells can also create waterfalls, ring patterns, strobes, titanium salutes and peonies. Roman candles and fountains come from tubes.

The modern firework display is full of color. And you make color by adding metals salts, not metals but metal salts to the composition. So, you know, if you put a piece of copper into a fire you see it glow with a blue flame, and we can do the same. It’s the sign of a very good firework-maker is a really good strong blue. And here we’ve added copper oxychloride to the basic oxidant fuel mix and we get a good blue flame.

Adding strontium salts to the mix makes a red flame. And adding barium to the mix makes a green flame. So with those three, and with other metal salts, we have a whole spectrum of colors that we can use.