Walking Tour: Bedford-Stuyvesant

Bedford-Stuyvesant, in north central Brooklyn, is not an obvious neighborhood to get the Slavs of New York walking tour treatment. While the neighborhood may have been home to some Poles long ago, they did not leave much of a trace. This is the district that elected the first Black woman to Congress – Shirley Chisholm in 1968 – and today it is a major center of African-American life in the city.

Our tour starts at the Classon Avenue G station (this can easily be accomplished together with a visit to Greenpoint, also serviced by the G train). Coming out of the station, walk up Classon towards Kalb Avenue, turn right onto Taaffe Place and you’ll find Sputnik (262 Taaffe Place).

The place lies slightly out of the area normally though of as Bed-Stuy, but it’s close and the burgers are highly recommended. The restaurant has a 1950s space-age theme that has as much in common with the Jetsons as it does with the Russian space program, but has a great vibe.

After a quick bite (the burgers are highly recommended!) head back down to Kalb and keep walking straight, to Nostrand. From there, two streets up is Pulaski Street, one street down is Kosciusko Street. Between Marcy and Dekalb Avenue is the Kosciusko Street Pool, a public swimming pool.

Kazimierz Pulaski (1746-1779) was a Polish nobleman who came to the American colonies and rose to the rank of General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Pulaski does not seem to have been active in New York, but memorials to him abound across the United States. Aside from this street, the Pulaski Bridge between Greenpoint and Long Island City is also named for him. Pulaski Day is celebrated on the Sunday closest to 11 October with a massive parade down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Kosciusko Street is named for Thaddeus Kosciuszko (1746-1817), a major figure in the American – and Polish – wars of independence. Though he is not known to have spent much time in New York (he was, however, the chief engineer at West Point, and his one-time home in Philadelphia is a National Memorial), he has also given his name to the Kosciuszko Bridge, over the Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens.

Kosciuszko is also the only Slav honored in the New York City subway system - the Kosciusko Street J train station. When you’ve finished exploring the neighborhood, walk down to Lafayette Street and hop the #38 bus to catch the train!

New York Soviet Socialist Republic

News broke on Monday that a Cold-War-era fallout shelter has been discovered within the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge (see Sewell Chan’s “Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War,” from The New York Times).

The bunker held a stockpile of supplies intended to keep some part of the local population going in the event of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. According to the Times, they included “water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352,000 of them, sealed in dozens of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.”

Boxes were stamped with dates including 1957 (when the USSR launched Sputnik), and 1962 (during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

The location is being kept secret, but if you want to relive the Cold War yourself, check out some of the city’s other Soviet-esque sites. As we’ve discussed before, the Municipal Building (1 Centre Street) may have been an inspiration for Stalinist architecture, and Manhattan has not one but two Red Squares, one even bearing a monumental Lenin.

You can buy Soviet gifts at Russian Souvenirs (227 14th Street between Second and Third Avenues) or Revolution Books (9 West 19th Street between Fifth Avenue and Union Square).

And there are also a number of Soviet-themed bars, like KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street), Pravda (281 Lafayette Street near Prince), Eastern Bloc (505 East Sixth Street at Avenue A) or Siberia (356 West 40th Street). In Brooklyn, check out Sputnik (262 Taaffee Place in Bedford Stuyvesand) and the Russian Baths of New York (1200 Gravesend Neck Road), featuring a café with a Soviet hockey theme.

One Soviet-esque footnote: We somehow managed to miss it but, Cafe Trotsky (192 Orchard at Houston) closed late last year. Via Eater, the café’s story is told in “Bitter Brew,” by its owner Michael Idov.

(Photo: John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times)