Past issues
Feeds
The Paper in print
Twitter
Facebook
Contact
Email updates Twitter Facebook RSS Feeds
Talk about writing a wrong!
One day after The Brooklyn Paper started making calls about a misspelled street sign on Dahlgren Place in Bay Ridge, the city fixed the sign and promptly ended a year-long snub against the so-called father of American naval ordnance.
“‘Dahlgreen’ is a nice name, but it’s not the correct one,” said neighborhood historian Peter Syrdahl, who pointed out that the four-block-long street, which lines the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway from Fort Hill Place to 86th Street, was named in honor of Rear Admiral John Dahlgren.
Don’t know Dahlgren? Here’s a primer: a Civil War naval officer (for the Union side, silly), Dahlgren designed a variety of guns and armaments for Lincoln’s prized ships.
No, he never lived in Brooklyn (he was born in Philly and died near Washington, D.C.), but an innovative gun of his design was installed on a ship called the U.S.S. Brooklyn.
“[His] contribution to military ordnance and American history should not be misspelled on the street bearing his name,” said Syrdahl, who co-authored “Bay Ridge,” an essential history of the neighborhood once known as Yellow Hook (but that’s a whole ’nother story!).
The Department of Transportation apparently agrees. Yes, the city put up the sign — plus the extra “e” — at the corner of 86th Street in January, 2008, at the request of Bay Ridge’s Community Board 10, according to District Manager Josephine Beckmann. But when the mistake was pointed out, city workers rewrote history faster than you can say, “Is that a Dahlgren howitzer or are you just happy to see me?”
Some Ridgites were pleased with the attentiveness, but others didn’t care — after all, they’d been calling the street “Dahlgreen Place” all along.
A Bay Ridge mail carrier, who gave her name as Joan, told a Brooklyn Paper reporter that she didn’t even know the proper name for the street until she started working for the post office.
“I always thought it was ‘Dalgreen,’” said the mail carrier, who continued to deliver the mail through rain, sleet and misspellings.
— with Kate Emerson
©2009 Community Newspaper Group
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
Print this story
Digg this
Del.icio.us