Arrival Pt. IV

Brooklyn and a Job

My Eastern Parkway home

After a trip to a neighborhood drycleaner to make good a shirt I had borrowed from the apartment that had served me for my first New York month, I hustled myself and the luggage into an East 30th Street Manhattan cab and made for Brooklyn.  Manhattan’s density gave way to the more breathable dimensions of Vaux and Olmsted thoroughfares and circles just beyond Park Slope in Brooklyn.  Prospect Heights occupied a polygon shaped territory that abutted Mount Prospect Park along Eastern Parkway.  That tree-lined street (the oldest parkway in the world) was now lined with apartment houses from the 1920’s.  Part of its charm was the giant Brooklyn Museum on its southern flank.  Further west was the Works Project Administration-era main Brooklyn Public Library and beyond that a great roundabout called Grand Army Plaza with a victory arch and columns.  It is from that circle that one formally entered Prospect Park – the great historic follow-up to Central Park.

Despite the lax condition of Apartment 5A (described in the previous chapter) its view was immaculately impressive.  Apart from the Brooklyn Museum with its neo-classical marble splendor and detailed frieze there was the greenery that appeared to bulge out of the park across the street.  There were even two parks to fit out the view – Mount Prospect Park and the larger Prospect Park behind it, meaning that the undulating line of green traveled well toward the horizon.  This was essentially a Fifth Avenue view on a budget.  Jules was the leaseholder.  He was a professional studio photographer and rented a space in SoHo.  The lease on the Brooklyn apartment was $750 per month, and my rent was to be $375 – the second-highest rent I had ever paid, outside of that first Manhattan month.  Today, there may be apartments in that building renting for ten times that price.

My room (amazingly outfitted with a waterbed - a more common installation then) was down the hall. It had the same southern view of the park.