I was going to take my normal route this morning, considering it was my first “official” morning commute but when I got to the Gowanus Canal, I was forced to take a detour. The draw bridge was up…so I back tracked and road on 3^rd avenue through Boreum Hill, down Dean Street and over Bond Street to the Fulton Street Mall.

I was able to take a great picture of the old Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn building on Fulton Street.

They recently demolished the famous and infamous Albee Square Mall (as Biz Markie said “my home is the Albee Square Mall, my house is the Albee Square Mall”) that was directly behind the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn building. For nostalgic reasons, I was sad to see the Albee Square Mall go but completely understand why it needed to go. Since the demolition, you can really get a whole new perspective on the beauty of the Dime Savings Bank building (built 1906-8 by Mowbray & Uffinger).

That whole area is going through an incredible transformation with the rezoning of downtown Brooklyn that happened in 2004 and it will change even more once the Barclay’s Arena is finally completed. The whole area was somewhat of a dead zone ever since I can remember and there still are some buildings along Livingston Street and Flatbush Avenue that have really bad non-commercial land uses as their street frontages. I remember taking the B41 down Livingston Street to go to school in the early 1980’s. It was bad then and is equally as bad now.

Even on Fulton Street where you’ve got tons of retail, there are many building where the upper floors of the building are left empty. I assume, it was just more profitable to use the stairwells as street retail or there was absolutely no demand for non-street level commercial along the strip. I suspect that much of this will change in the coming years.

Beautiful ride home. There are a ton more bikers out on the roads this year. The difference over the last couple of years is pretty incredible. I took the Manhattan Bridge home. The Brooklyn Bridge on a nice summer afternoon, make that any afternoon is swamped with tourists. Not worth it.

Completely obsessed with this Bon Iver song, it led me home!