Brooklyn Landmark

It seems as though nearly every city has one. A landmark that can be seen where you are that's way up high that points in a certain direction and helps guide and point people in a particular direction.

Paris has its tower as Washington DC has is monument. Manhattan has the Empire State and Brooklyn, well sometimes there's the Williamsburg Savings Bank Clock Tower.

I grew up in The Bronx and rarely went out to Brooklyn, unless it was to get laid or got to an all-night party. Most of the time these adventures would take my into the Fort Greene and the then not so nice to go Park Slope. I always knew if I could find my way back to that clock tower I then find a place to get a bagel to settle my stomach for the two-hour IRT 4 to the 2 to the 5 train back to Baychester station in the Bronx.

Although I don't get as lost in Brooklyn as I used to, I still have a fondness for the ugly clock tower. I think it reminds me that Brooklyn was once the nation's fourth largest city before it merged with New York City and that in some ways it's still a city onto its own.

The clock tower sits at odd location. There are no other tall buildings around it, but below tons of traffic as Flatbush, Third and Atlantic Avenues collide with one another. There's also a very large subway station below and a Long Island Rail Road terminal too. It's a real hub.

Part of the reason for all the activity is that it's where several residential neighborhoods merge; a revitalized Fort Greene, the well-to-do Park Slope, the working class and up and coming Prospect Heights and working class South Slope. It's very residential around the clock tower with many stores catering to household needs. And although the area is jammed with car traffic, people still flock to this hub.

A very wealthy Brooklynite who tore up a nearby neighborhood and turned it into a most banal business park wants to build tall office buildings around the clock tower and bring the New Jersey Nets basketball team, which he owns into a new arena to be built across the street from the tower. This project calls for the tearing down of new and recently renovated housing stock. Naturally many in the area are up in arms working to defend Brooklyn.