Bay Ridge

Who Do You Love? Favorite places in Bay Ridge

Eye On Real Estate

February 17, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Ship ahoy beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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Who Do You Love?

You remember this song.

Not rapper YG’s song, featuring Drake. It has words in it we never, ever say. Bo Diddley’s old refrain is what keeps repeating in our head.

There’s no need to quibble over grammar. This is our theme song of the day, though we’re not pondering people we’d like to strike with arrows from Cupid’s quiver.

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We’re thinking about the buildings in Bay Ridge we love most, and a bridge — things that are worth walking around outdoors to see when whipping winds freeze our fingers in no time flat.

* We never lived in a home that had to be torn down for the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. So we don’t feel any of the bitterness about the mighty span that some old-time Bay Ridge families still harbor.

America’s longest suspension bridge is pure eye candy as far as we’re concerned. It looks good through a camera lens in every kind of weather.    

* Bennet-Farrell-Feldmann House at 119 95th St. is easy to love. The butter-yellow frame house was built in the 1840s. It’s a Greek Revival-style villa, which is a rarity in New York City. It was designated as a city landmark in 1999. Yes. It’s in Bay Ridge.

* Shore Road was the site of the landmarked villa until it was moved inland a century ago. Many of the houses now located on Shore Road are easy on the eyes — and their inhabitants enjoy terrific views of New York Harbor.

One of the Shore Road houses we love uses a side-street address, 5 80th St.

* The Gingerbread House is architectural eye candy. See related story.

* A house on a hill at 8311 Ridge Blvd. is one of many residences we love on this fine street.

* The shingle house at 163 81st St. has a plaque on it that says it was built in 1895, a turret topped by a witch’s hat (that’s a metaphorical description) and a porch for sipping lemonade in summer.

* The 1860s-vintage neo-Georgian house at 131 76th St. has a porch with columns overlooking a steep ridge where the road ends and a set of stairs connects pedestrians to the street below.

Right across from that nifty home, 122 76th St. is a Gothic Revival-style castle look-alike built around 1900.

* Senator Street rowhouses between Third and Fourth avenues are stunning snippets of bygone Bay Ridge. The street’s name refers to state Sen. Henry Cruse Murphy — a co-founder of the Brooklyn Eagle with Isaac Van Anden in 1841.

The street has a second name: Kathleen Hunt Casey 9/11 Memorial Way. She worked on the equity trading desk at Sandler O’Neil & Partners on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center and died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.

Bay Ridge was her hometown.


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