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29-487: The name Wallabout comes from the 17th century, when a group of Walloons, French-speaking Protestants from what is now Belgium, settled along the nearby bay. They called it “Waal-bogt,” or “bend in the harbor.” It is a mixed use area with an array of old wood-frame buildings, public housing, brick townhouses and warehouses. It is bounded by Navy Street to the west, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Flushing Avenue to

58-436: A steam trolley running on the avenue, and its ample adjacent beer gardens and park space, people from as far as Eastern Brooklyn came to Myrtle. In the mid-1920s, the parks closed as a result of Prohibition . Ultimately, the parks became incorporated by the city into what is known today as Forest Park . Currently, Myrtle Avenue is one of the primary shopping strips of Ridgewood , along with Fresh Pond Road whose south end

87-476: A decline in the vitality of the avenue, with business closures and increased crime. At its nadir of decline, the street became jokingly known to many Brooklynites as "Murder Avenue". In the 1990s the western end of Myrtle Avenue was closed from Jay Street to Flatbush Avenue Extension to create the pedestrian-only MetroTech Center . Adding to the MetroTech Center's revitalization of the neighborhood,

116-599: A major thoroughfare since the early 19th century, named after the myrtle trees that were plentiful in the area. Most likely, Myrtle Avenue began in Queens and was a plank road that charged a toll. The road eventually hosted the Knickerbocker Stage Coach Line, that ran stagecoach and omnibus services. After World War I , Myrtle Avenue in Glendale was a popular destination for picnickers. With

145-699: A modern revitalization movement is in effect by a collaboration of community organizations like the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project LDC (MARP), the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Improvement district BID, and the Myrtle Avenue Merchants Association. Some parts of Myrtle Avenue, for example around Pratt Institute , have become a main street of commerce, with many trendy restaurants and boutique retail shops. In

174-593: A pedestrian mall. The Federal Plaza in Downtown Youngstown , Ohio is a similar case. Since the unsuccessful Federal Plaza has been ripped up and redesigned in 2004, the city of Youngstown has seen the development of a new entertainment district erupt. A new arena, two new courthouses, federal buildings, bistros and other new night-spots have placed themselves in Youngstown's core. Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace has been expanded from

203-679: A place pedestrians wanted to be (it was, at least in part, Poughkeepsie's initial success which convinced Burlington to proceed with its Marketplace project). In 1989, Santa Monica, California on the Westside of Los Angeles , renovated and relaunched its 1960s-era pedestrian mall as the Third Street Promenade , and renovated both the adjacent Santa Monica Pier and adjacent enclosed mall, Santa Monica Place , all together helping to draw both domestic and international visitors and locals from across Greater Los Angeles locals. In

232-712: A result, the demand for housing in the area increased, prompting the New York City Housing Authority to build the Walt Whitman and Raymond Ingersoll public housing on Myrtle Avenue in 1944. In the 1970s, the decommissioning of Brooklyn Navy Yard and demolition of much of the Myrtle Avenue Elevated train line, along with an influx of poorer residents into the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods, led to

261-607: A term is most often used in the United States and Australia. "Pedestrian street" and "pedestrian zone" are the more common terms worldwide. Today, pedestrian malls are relatively rare in the U.S., except for areas with many tourists and other visitors. They were more closely tied to the success of retail than in Europe, and by the 1980s, most did not succeed competing with ever more elaborate enclosed malls. Almost all of this generation of pedestrian malls built from 1959 through to

290-626: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Myrtle Avenue Myrtle Avenue is a 8.1-mile-long (13.0 km) street that runs from Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill , Queens , in New York City, United States. Myrtle is a main thoroughfare through the neighborhoods of Fort Greene , Clinton Hill , Bedford-Stuyvesant , Bushwick , Ridgewood , and Glendale . In

319-474: Is a special-case pedestrian street, one level down from the automobile street. The River Walk winds and loops under bridges as two parallel sidewalks lined with restaurants and shops, connecting the major tourist draws from Alamo Plaza to Rivercenter , to HemisFair Plaza , to the Transit Tower . Most downtown buildings have street entrances and separate river entrances one level below. This separates

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348-666: Is at Myrtle Avenue. It is also the primary shopping strip in nearby Glendale, although this stretch of Myrtle Avenue is not as busy as the Ridgewood stretch. It was also home to the Ridgewood Theatre, which was the longest continuously operated theater in the United States, having operated for 91 years before its closure in March 2008. Myrtle Avenue is the starting point for several major thoroughfares in Queens that were built later. This includes Union Turnpike , whose west end

377-755: Is in Glendale just west of Woodhaven Boulevard , and Hillside Avenue , which starts off from Myrtle Avenue in Richmond Hill near Lefferts Boulevard. The M train of the New York City Subway currently runs above Myrtle Avenue through Bushwick and a small stretch through Bedford-Stuyvesant . Formerly, the Myrtle Avenue El was an elevated railroad line that ran along Myrtle Avenue. The completed line ran from Middle Village to Downtown Brooklyn and Park Row , Manhattan, using

406-662: The Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica thrives on tourist traffic. The Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia , now a vital business, entertainment, and retail area, spent roughly twenty years as a somewhat depressed stretch until an ice skating rink and multiplex opened on it in the mid-1990s. Broadway St. in Eugene, Oregon , is finally being developed with a hotel, movie theater, and retail after decades of limited economic activity following its experiment with

435-681: The Walt Whitman Houses and the Farragut Houses . The neighborhood's name is rarely used anymore, being split into Fort Greene , Clinton Hill , and Bedford Stuyvesant . Wallabout was originally inhabited by the Brooklyn Navy Yard workers. Many of the historic row houses were built by the navy yard workers as well. 40°41′37″N 73°58′10″W  /  40.69361°N 73.96944°W  / 40.69361; -73.96944 This New York City –related article

464-439: The 1970s, have disappeared, or were shrunk down in the 1990s at the request of the retailers. Half of Kalamazoo's pedestrian mall, America's first, has been converted into a regular street with auto traffic, though with wide sidewalks. In 1959, Kalamazoo, Michigan , was the first American city to implement a "pedestrian mall" in its downtown core, This became a method that some cities applied for their downtowns to compete with

493-579: The 21st century the economic revitalization of Brooklyn and gentrification in Williamsburg , Clinton Hill , and Bushwick have increased commercial prosperity on the Brooklyn stretch of Myrtle. Today many sections of the avenue, especially in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and adjacent areas are lined with shops, bars, and restaurants and have been commercially revitalized. Myrtle Avenue has been

522-2530: The Buffalo Place Main Street Pedestrian Mall in Buffalo, New York; Ithaca Commons in Ithaca, New York; the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado; St. Charles, Missouri; Salem, Massachusetts; Ped Mall in Iowa City, Iowa; Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida; the Fulton Mall in Fresno, California; the K Street Mall in Sacramento, California; the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado; State Street in Madison, Wisconsin; Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Grove in Los Angeles, California; Fort Street Mall in Honolulu, Hawaii; City Center in Oakland, California; Walnut Street in Des Moines, Iowa, Downtown Crossing and Faneuil Hall / Quincy Market in Boston; Washington Street Mall in Cape May, New Jersey; and The Downtown Cumberland Mall in Cumberland, Maryland . Typically these downtown pedestrian malls were three or four linear blocks simply blocked off to private street traffic, with fountains, benches, planters that doubled as seating areas, bollards , playgrounds, interfaces to public transit and other amenities installed to attract shoppers. Many were later re-converted to accommodate automobile traffic within twenty years. However, most of these areas are still popular attractions today. The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder continues to thrive with its college crowd atmosphere and

551-518: The automotive service grid (delivery and ambulance/police vehicles) from pedestrian traffic below, provides bridges, walkways, and staircases, and attempts to balance retail, commercial, office, green space and cultural uses. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States some cities pedestrianized additional streets in order to encourage social distancing and in many cases to provide extra rooms for restaurants to serve food on patios extended into

580-640: The avenue for most of its route. Since 1969, the portion of the line west of the Myrtle Avenue – Broadway station was demolished, while the rest of the line east of the Myrtle Avenue - Broadway station remains. Myrtle Avenue is currently served by the following subway stations, west to east: Also, DeKalb Avenue ( B , ​ D , ​ N , ​ Q , ​ R , and ​ W trains) and 121st Street ( J and ​ Z trains) are stations near

609-494: The avenue. There is an abandoned subway station on the BMT Brighton Line directly under Myrtle Avenue; it was closed in 1957 due to a track reconfiguration north of DeKalb Avenue. Myrtle Avenue is also served by the following bus routes: There are references to Myrtle Avenue in hip-hop culture and rap music , reflective of the street passing through African American neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The popularity of

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638-573: The borders shrank, and Wallabout was fitted just outside the Brooklyn Navy Yard . The Lefferts-Laidlaw House was built about 1840 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The Wallabout Historic District was added in 2011 and the Wallabout Industrial Historic District in 2012. Wallabout includes four public housing projects: The Marcy Houses , The Raymond V. Ingersoll Houses,

667-740: The growing suburban shopping malls of the time. In the 1960s and 70s over 200 towns in the United States adopted this approach. In 2009, there were at least 75 pedestrian malls in the U.S. Besides the Kalamazoo Mall , some notable examples are the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vermont; the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia; the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California;

696-509: The mid-2010s, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked during his final term in office to create pedestrian malls in major tourist centers that had also been areas of severe automobile congestion such as Times Square and Herald Square . In 1994–5, Las Vegas pedestrianized and covered its main downtown street, lined with smaller casinos, and created the Fremont Street Experience . The San Antonio River Walk

725-490: The neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill , the development of Myrtle Avenue was directly related to the Brooklyn Navy Yard , built in 1801. In 1847 Fort Greene Park , Brooklyn's first park, was built on the south side of western Myrtle Avenue. It was a busy thoroughfare since early on in its existence. During World War II, the Navy Yard employed more than 71,000 people, many of them African American shipbuilders. As

754-401: The newly available spaces. In New York, this was applied to up to 100 miles of streets across the city. In the last decades of the 20th century many urbanists such as Jan Gehl and Peter Calthorpe have listed and explained what they see as the virtues of pedestrian streets. Urban renewal activists have often pushed for the creation of auto-free zones in parts or in all of the sectors of

783-813: The nickname "Murder Avenue" dates back to the minor 1993 hit of the same name by the Geto Boys . Other artists that mention Myrtle Avenue include: Pedestrian malls in the United States Pedestrian malls , also known as pedestrian streets, are the most common form of pedestrian zone in large cities in the United States . They are typically streets lined with storefronts and closed off to most automobile traffic. Emergency vehicles may have access at all times and delivery vehicles may be restricted to either limited delivery hours or entrances on side streets. "Pedestrian mall" as

812-462: The north, Myrtle Avenue to the south and Marcy Avenue to the east. In the early 1800s, however, Wallabout was just a village inside of the town of Brooklyn. The Brooklyn we know today was divided up into six towns: Brooklyn, Gravesend, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrect, and Bushwick. Wallabout was one of the villages in the town of Brooklyn, bordering other villages in Brooklyn, like Bedford and Gowanus. But over time as Brooklyn became more industrialized,

841-502: The original three blocks to four, encompassing the entirety of the city's commercial "main street," and remains a thriving cultural center with shops, restaurants, vendor carts, sidewalk performers and special events which does not appear to be affected by the development of big box store farms in neighboring Williston . Poughkeepsie , New York , on the other hand, has reverted its Main Mall to vehicular traffic, having failed at maintaining

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