Mr. J. Goes Around the Heights

By on February 25, 2011 12:37 am in Brooklyn Heights, Video

Our man with cam reflects on Walt Whitman Park, under construction, a classic 1970s movie partially filmed in the Heights (alas, your correspondent wasn’t on hand to do his impression of the star giving the film’s unforgettable line), and unsightly wiring. Video after the jump.

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  • C.

    Wow. I never would have known that it was Cadman plaza in that scene. Very cool. I did always think that the apartment he buys the guns in looked like it was in BK Heights. It looked that way from the view you can see out the window. Anybody know? When is Walt Whitman Park supposed to open?

  • bornhere

    The part with the wiring made me laugh out loud in a “This isn’t even funny” kind of way — especially when you know how beautiful the neighboring houses are. It’s amazing that the “display” hasn’t invited random, shenanigan-inspired “rearranging” or some interaction with ticked-off neighbors. And if any of that is actually electrical, you have to wonder how safe it is….

  • Margo

    Funny. Very funny. Love the Brooklyn characters in the film. Only in Brooklyn.

  • Eddy de Lectron

    @ C, The gun buy scene Margret Hotel which was located on Columbia Heights and Orange St.
    The Margret burned down in a spectacular fire around 1980.

  • http://www.BrooklynPeriodontics.com Brooklyn Periodontics

    John, Marshall, and Kark Junkersfeld what the bleep are you doing in this video.. I love it. I know all of them.. Marty from Brooklyn Heights Video was the missing person saying “you talkin to me?”

  • Karl Junkersfeld

    I should mention that the total money allotted for renovation of the Walt Whitman Park is $4.5 million. This will really make a difference for area residents. Attached is a more detailed article from the Brooklyn Eagle :

    http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=31&id=34908

  • Eddy de Lectron

    I remember it used to be called Red Cross Park.

  • MARTINLBROOKLYN

    The article mentions the fact that daily workers at the Courthouse and OEM have free, priviliged, personal, parking rights on the street. What a nice bonus they get. And we get a commuters’ parking lot in what ought to be park space.
    Someone should look into the early claims of the Federal Courthouse that they’d provide some 300 parking spaces for their workers. Whatever happened to that plan?
    And please, don’t let them plead terrorism threats, just one more excuse to misuse public property and keep the money flowing to expensive, ineffective security monitors.

  • Andrew Porter

    As I’ve posted on the BHB before, the scene was shot on the vacant land where the Park Plaza Diner is now located. The campaign posters are in the windows of a vacant, never-occupied store which ultimately became Cadman Travel and is now Signature Dental. They were so big because they had to obscure the fact that the inside of the place was raw, unfinished concrete.

    Yes, scenes were shot at the Hotel Margaret, a once-famous hotel which housed famous visitors including Mark Twain and H.G. Wells. It was being made into condos and was 2 weeks from being finished when a worker’s heat source in the basement caught the structure on fire, and it burned to the ground in an all-night 5-alarm fire. Remind me to scan in the photos I took that night and morning, Homer.

    Because the Margaret was taller than the 50-foot Landmarks limit on height, there was a big stink about letting the replacement building be as tall as the original. But after the developer got permission, the Witnesses swooped down and bought it outright, and thus we have a new building which violates the BH height limits, is off the tax rolls, and in general makes those with long memories Very Unhappy. And that’s your history lesson: there *will* be a test later.

    Incidentally, wonder if anyone who posts here regularly will send a link for the video to their absentee landlord, to perhaps make them get rid of those dangling wires…

  • David on Middagha

    @Andrew Porter: Those wires were always there, but became less organized last summer, when the exterior was repointed and the trim painted. Blame contractors who don’t clean up properly? The relevant parties are being made aware…

  • nabeguy

    Andrew, I always thought that the common consensus surrounding the Margaret fire that it was an inside insurance torch job?

  • Eddy de Lectron

    Yep nabe, that was the scuttlebutt, however, it was never proven, how could it, the building was totally incinerated.

  • really

    nice work Karl. Can you guys name the street and apt building where woody allen did a scene from Manhattan?

  • Karl Junkersfeld

    Are you referring to the buying of the used car in front of 81 Cranberry?

  • really

    wow!