Map courtesy Google Maps.
WHERE: Vermont Street and Highland Boulevard,, Brooklyn
SUBWAY AT START: Broadway Junction (A, C, J, L, Z), then Q56 bus
SUBWAY AT FINISH: Bushwick Avenue - Aberdeen Street (L)
DISTANCE: 1.1 miles (1.7 kilometers)
Photographs by Michael Cairl.
Vertical on today’s walk (read from right to left), courtesy Google Maps.
This was a sunny, brisk day for the first stair streets trip of 2021. On this short walk I tackled the stair streets in Cypress Hills that I hadn’t in Cypress Hills Part 1, completing, I believe, the stair streets in Brooklyn.
The starting subway station, Broadway Junction, is in what was once known as Jamaica Pass. In the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, one column of British soldiers marched west through Jamaica Pass to join another column marching north from Gravesend Bay, to do battle with Washington’s forces in what is now Prospect Park.
Starting this walk at the bus stop at Jamaica Avenue and Wyona Street, I walked west one block and then uphill on Vermont Street. The two stairways on today’s walk go from Vermont Street to opposite sides of Highland Boulevard, which at that point is an overpass crossing Vermont Street and the Jackie Robinson Parkway. The first stairway has 55 steps, with the only landing being just two steps from the top. The ascent was not difficult and I did it without stopping. From there I looped through the neighborhood as shown on the map, then up the 22 steps of the second stairway back to the Highland Boulevard overpass. I ascended the two stairways in this order so I would have the sole handrail on each on my stronger right side.
Clockwise from top left: first stairway, view from Crosby Avenue to the Evergreens Cemetery, second stairway, Bushwick-Aberdeen station house.
From there I walked past the Evergreens Cemetery on one side and New York City Transit’s East New York Maintenance Shops on the other side, to the Bushwick Avenue - Aberdeen Street subway station on the Canarsie (L) Line. The cemetery was founded in 1849, beyond the limits of what was then the City of Brooklyn, and is the start of a green belt that runs east through most of Queens.
The subway station house (entrance) is an unassuming structure situated between two used-car dealers. Walk inside and you’re in for a treat. The underground stations on the Canarsie Line have some of the most beautiful mosaics in the entire subway system, the style being the Jazz Age of the 1920s. Those at Bushwick-Aberdeen are quite nice but at Montrose Avenue, a few stops closer to Manhattan, they’re spectacular.
