Reliving Old Flatbush With a Longtime Local

This story was written by Megan Riesz. 

When Harold Rosenblaum moved to Newkirk Avenue in 1940, he lived across the street from the Milk and Honey Café – only at that time, it was a luncheonette that sold ice cream and soda for 25 cents.

“Everybody hung out there,” he said. “We hung out there at night. Everybody knew each other because everybody went to school for eight years in the neighborhood.”

Back then, going to school meant dressing up. Boys had to wear pants and a shirt and tie. Girls had to wear skirts – even in the wintertime, when they would wear them over their snow pants.

There was a small supermarket in place of a local Rite Aid. Newkirk Plaza had “better” stories – a women’s clothing store, a card store, chains of bakeries, a bar, a fish store. And on Coney Island Avenue between Newkirk and Ditmas, there was a movie theater called Leader. Everybody went.

“There was no television early on,” Rosenblaum said, “so [we] went and got news at the movies.”

He graduated Erasmus High School in 1953 and moved in with his parents, who had a nice-sized apartment in the area. Everyone started getting married – including Rosenblaum, who moved with his wife to Argyle between Newkirk and Foster.

He remembered when the crime rate spiked in the 1970s and 80s, before dropping back down over the past two decades. 

“Then the neighborhood got bad,” he said. “I was mugged in the lobby of my apartment building. A guy followed me and put a knife to my deck, said ‘Give me your wallet and money.’ I said there’s nothing in the wallet, so he gave me the wallet back.”

Amy Sara Clark contributed to the reporting of this article.