Eastern Parkway Tour, part 1

A few days ago I was walking along Eastern Parkway at a time when I would usually be at work, and everything seemed especially vivid. Maybe I was just happy to be out roaming the streets when I'm usually behind a desk, or maybe I'm just more used to seeing everything at 7:00 am/pm, when there's less light. In any case, everything seemed brighter, more detailed, and worthier of examination. Emerson (yes that's right, Emerson. What?) said a change in perspective "gives the whole world a pictorial air." I suppose that goes for time-based perspective too.

Gratitude doesn't always find the same object twice, but I am perpetually grateful for Eastern Parkway. Most of the places I have to be each day are not necessarily the places I want to be—that is, they are not physical spaces to which I would be drawn if they didn’t contain something else of interest. But I walk along Eastern Parkway almost daily, and I’m happy to do it. I think it deserves an ode, or at least an introduction. Eastern Parkway is one of the greenest places in Brooklyn outside of parks and gardens; it preserves public space for unspecified uses (i.e. it is not a concert venue, playground, memorial, etc., but just a place with benches and plants) and in a city that seems to grow only in one direction—up—it has a wonderful and rare horizontal expansiveness.

One of my favorite things about Eastern Parkway is that it follows a glacial path. It was built along the Jamaica Pass, a valley resting between two moraines that the Wisconsin Glacier left behind as it moved across the Northern United States 2 million years ago.

Many of the trees on Eastern Parkway are surrounded by a network of bare roots that have pushed up through the shallow dirt and become hard and knotted. I think they look sort of like an aerial view of a huge, glacially-formed mountain range.

The Jamaica Pass is also the route British troops took during the Battle of Brooklyn, the first major conflict in the Revolutionary War. They marched towards Grand Army Plaza, demolishing an American outpost at Bedford Avenue, and eventually killing thousands of American soldiers. Now it's the route of the West Indian Day Parade, which I think is a tidy little piece of poetic justice. Eastern Parkway lends itself to marching of all kinds.

There isn’t all that much to visibly connect Eastern Parkway to the Revolutionary War at this point, although one of the apartment buildings near Franklin Ave. is called “Nathan Hale Court”:


There is lots of Nathan Hale to be seen in New York. A spy for the Continental Army, Hale is probably most famous for the line he spoke before he was hanged by the British in 1776: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." He was 21 at the time. It seems 21 year-olds have a tendency to proclaim. Several different sites are claimed to be the site of the hanging-- both City Hall Park and the Yale Club are in the running. Everybody wants a piece of Nathan these days.

This seems a little long to be read on a computer screen, so I'm going to stop there for now. I suppose we're moving West on Eastern Parkway, along the path of British troops and also me, on my way to work. To be continued....