This is our first venture outside the cozy confines of Manhattan, crossing the river into the South Brooklyn Brownstone belt.

William B. Helmreich put Cobble Hill this way (and since he’s better at this than I am, we’ll go with it): “It has beautiful tree-lined streets with townhouses, apartment buildings, and some more modest two family brick houses of a type commonly found in other neighborhoods of Brooklyn.”

The neighborhood is lucky enough to have two solid commercial streets. Smith Street is more for boutiques, brunch, and browsing, while Court Street—one block east—has more workaday things like grocery stores, daycare centers, and a couple of toy stores.

According to a historic district designation, this street gently follows an old road south toward Red Hook and was laid out in 1760. The neighborhood that has sprouted up since then is perfectly storybook, even if it’s a little light on lore.

Here’s what this block¹ looked like on a mild December day.

Streetview Link

Cobble Hill Cinemas | 1925

A rare independent movie house, still standing now for a century.

On December 26, 1939, an audience of mostly children settled in for a screening of Irish Luck when the theater manager noticed smoke, called for the house lights, and announced there was a fire, reads a contemporaneous New York Times account. He told everyone to calmly evacuate and minutes later an overheating oil stove in a neighboring pool hall exploded, collapsing the walls between the buildings, and raining bricks into the theater.

A 13-year-old named Patsy Rulli told the paper he helped pick up a baby who’d been dropped, made it through the smoke, and escaped with minor injuries.

He wasn’t worried about his sprained hand, he told the newspaper, but was “down-hearted, however, over the loss of a new hat he had received for Christmas.”

Eleven people were injured, and the building was repaired.

In the 70s, it became a B-movie theater called The Rex, which screened kung-fu, horror, and sci-fi movies, according to Brownstoner. Today, it’s known for a classic art deco interior and the walls outside are decked in posters from movies that seem to largely be set in New York, letting Serpico, Holly Golightly, and the Ninja Turtles keep watch over the corner. (Irish Luck is notably absent.)

272-276 Court Street

Three closely-related rowhouses with popular restaurants: modern Indian (spicy vegan cheese toast and pork vindaloo ciabatta sound good), a pub/cafe with Bluegrass Thursdays, and a take-home Italian specialty joint.

262-264 Court Street | 1894

This is the highlight for me. Turns out it’s two buildings, a pair of Romanesque lovebirds (Happy Valentines Day, everyone!) arranged asymmetrically with four window bays on the left and three on the right.

Downstairs at 264 there’s a vacant window with a fruit tree that’s been sprouting citrus for several years now. Next door is a boutique that maximizes the open windows and delicate columns.

In the 1980s, a company called SunDog had offices at this address. If you had $100 and a whopping 37 kilobytes of RAM you could run a program called Squish which could compress your huge documents into tiny lil baby files 1/10 the size.

283 Court Street | 1886

Not much to add here: a nice three-story mixed-use building which is here because I like these photos. It looks nicer than it did in 2011, when Lost New York posted a photo and noted an item in which a grocer here was fined in 1886 for selling canned tomatoes without a proper label. Rude.

292 Court Street

Freegans love that Union Market.

And the gray building in the middle was the Paras Court Theater before it closed in 1959. It’s since been home to various schools, but it still has a mascaron looking down on Court Street:

In a funny way, we’re bookended by actors looking down at us: Cobble Hill Cinemas on one end, this old theater face here. Cut!

What’s Good: This is a solid Brooklyn block with plenty to be proud of.

What’s Not: Lacking a little bit of the edge that we like here at By the Block HQ.

Block Rating: 7/10

How did I embarrass myself this time? Do let me know at [email protected]