Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York

Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bound by 65th Street on the north, Interstate 278 on the east, and the Belt Parkway-Shore Road on the west. The southern border is 101st Street. The portion below 86th Street is a subsection called Fort Hamilton. A small area east of I-278, bounded by 7th Avenue, is also part of Bay Ridge.

(All photos enlarge when clicked on)

In the late nineteenth century, Bay Ridge was one of Brooklyn's most exclusive suburbs and the Shore Road section still contains many homes of the wealthy.

Many of these home are built high on a ridge......

.... as across Shore Road street in front of them is a walkway park, and through that .......

.....are magnificent views of the Narrows, and the Verrazano Narrows bridge that connects Brooklyn to the borough of Staten Island. Here you can see Shore Promenade that circles the perimeter of the Brooklyn coastline in this neighborhood.

A view straight ahead of Staten Island:

To the north lies the Upper New York Bay and the borough of Manhattan, and many of these exclusive homes have this view.

I zoomed in closer with my camera and you can see The Empire State Building in the distance to the right, and the green copper top of The Woolworth Building to the left.

An even closer view of the Empire State Building and a cruise ship that is using the relatively new Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.

Some more houses along Shore Road.

Driving through this neighborhood we see many homes that look like they could be found in New York City suburbs.

Because property is so expensive in NYC, even in the outer boroughs, it is rare to see ranch style homes like this:

I showed this unusual stone house when I went on A Slice Of Pizza Brooklyn Tour, but since it is in this neighborhood I took a few more close ups.

It looks like it belongs in a J. R. R.Tolkien novel! It's so magical in design!

Bay Ridge is also comprised of many other types of middle class homes once you go a little further away from the shoreline, and homes that are more representative of the types of housing that Brooklyn is comprised of.

Bay Ridge has been known for its large Irish, Italian, Greek and Scandinavian population, but like other areas in South/Southwest Brooklyn, it has recently seen a large influx of Russian immigrants, and a smaller amount of Chinese The neighborhood is home to one of America's oldest Arab communities of Lebanese Christians and in recent decades, Arab Muslims from a large variety of countries have moved to Bay Ridge.

Bay Ridge also has many international restaurants and bars, especially along 3rd and 5th Avenue, its main commercial strips.

Here are some single family houses:

Semi attached single family houses:

Limestone houses attached on both sides, which are usually each two family homes with a rent able basement:

Brownstone houses that are also usually each two family homes that have a rent able basement:

I loved how this owner decorated their steps with flowers.

There are also many, many apartment buildings. Unfortunately many older homes have been torn down over the years and high rise apartments have replaced them. Some of these apartment buildings have privatized and the apartments are sold as "Co-Op" shares, which means it is jointly owned and managed by those who live in it.

A closer view of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

When it opened in 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was the world's longest suspension span. The ends of the bridge are at historic Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn and Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, both of which guarded New York Harbor at the Narrows for over a century. The bridge was named after Giovanni da Verrazano, who, in 1524, was the first European explorer to sail into New York Harbor.

Another view from this area (below) looking north towards Upper New York Bay and the promenade. If you look closely in the distance, you can see a large cargo ship that has just passed the narrows under the bridge and is about to enter the upper bay.

The Verrazano Narrows Bridge "monumental 693 foot high towers are 1 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases because the 4,260 foot distance between them made it necessary to compensate for the earth's curvature. Each tower weighs 27,000 tons and is held together with three million rivets and one million bolts. Seasonal contractions and expansions of the steel cables cause the double-decked roadway to be 12 feet lower in the summer than in the winter. " source

It now has the eighth longest center span in the world, and is the largest suspension bridge in the United States. Its massive towers can be seen throughout a good part of the New York metropolitan area, including from spots in all five boroughs of New York City.

Presently, the fee to cross the bridge is a one-way toll (paid westbound into Staten Island only) in cash is $10 per car or $4.50 per motorcycle, and unfortunately there are no pedestrian or bicycle access.

I continued along the promenade to the show the views of the bridge from the southern side. The sunsets over the bridge can be spectacular, and someday I hope to share some good photos of them.

Close up of the sea wall beyond the promenade.

The promenade continues southward. This area is well used by families, walkers, bike riders, etc. At one time many recreational kite flyer's used this park until that was prohibited by the city in this area as it caused many traffic jams and accidents on the parkway because drivers were distracted by the kites!

From this spot I zoomed into a view of Lower New York Bay and the peninsula at the end of Coney Island that is called Sea Gate . This is a gated community of many expensive homes.

This shot was zoomed in on a more central view of Coney Island, where you can see on the left the light towers of Keyspan Baseball Park the home of the Met's minor league team The Brooklyn Cyclones, the old landmark parachute jump ride tower, and both private and public housing projects that are located there. On the other side are the Coney Island beaches and the Atlantic Ocean.

I hope you enjoyed seeing another neighborhood of Brooklyn and I hope to be able to visit many more on future blogs.

As you can see there is much variety in Brooklyn, both in housing, neighborhoods and attractions. We are a borough of over two and a half million people, from almost all nations of the world , or as one of the famous highway signs which I have on my sidebar says: "Welcome to Brooklyn: Home To Everyone From Everywhere."