Last Wash at the Cascade Company est.1898

Myrtle Avenue and Marcy Avenue - Brooklyn

... A titan of a neighborhood.  A complex comprised of multiple extensions and additions blended together into one factory and serving as one of the neighborhood stalwarts of stability and employment.  Their steam towers rising high above the intersection cast morning shadows upon the very Housing Units Brooklyn's own Jay-Z used to call home.

Cascade Building Lobby

Upwards to 300 Cascade Uniform and Linen Supply Company employees showed up for work to collect their last pay checks.  A company started back in 1898 which outlived the breweries of near-by Bushwick, the hey-days of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and more recently, just a few blocks away, the closing down of the Pfizer plant, is now out of the business having sold off their business operations.  The property itself will be up for sale.  I could not get information on how the compound would be redivided - if at all.

The last wash came on May 24th, 2010.  Not only was there a time when this company was the largest linen and uniform supply company this side of the Mississippi, they never forked over one dime to Con-Edison for electricity expenses.  They generated their own power, making themselves one of the few if any, totally self-sufficient entities in the city, with regards to energy consumption.

 

1948 photo with old Myrtle Ave. El Train over head.

Cascade ad at Brooklyn's famed race tracks of days past.

Lobby

It's been 112 years since their first wash, and they too will now take their place in Brooklyn's glorious past.  But it also serves as a stark reminder: Time Changes Everything.  Brooklyn has seen its old traditional core industries disappear in steady succession.  Yes, there are new ventures and opportunities developing all over the Borough.  The Domino Sugar plant is another example of our great past being lost and discarded.  But will new opportunities rise to the challenge and be to the Borough what these once major players used to be?

the Cascade truck fleet.

The loss of comfort with our surroundings is why change unsettles us.  We are left to our anxieties, wondering what comes next, who is friend and who is the novice foe?  With the dizzying pace of change transpiring throughout the Borough, that's the unknown.

A gentleman was agreeable enough to furnish me with these little tidbits of information.  I didn't want to pry too deeply.  Number one, I am not a reporter.  Two, I'm just opportunistic in these matters and don't mind making a decent post when the situation presents itelf and especially where it concerns my home of Brooklyn.  My point of contact today respectfully requested to remain anonymous, and I will oblige.  He was kind enough to indulge my curiosity ... And I Thank Him.

Take these snapshots and file them into your memories.  Change is upon us once again.  It's always fun to look back.  But the present is where anxieties grow.  What comes next across the street from Jay-Z's old stomping grounds is any-body's guess right now. 

Gentrification has taken to Brooklyn like a California brush fire. 

That means many things for many different people.  The intersection and the neighborhood itself have been many things to many people; sometimes for the better and unfortunately many times
for the worse.

We don't know what will rise next across the street from Marcy.  It is my sincere hope something positive comes to the location.  Something that benefits the neighborhood; something that will enhance and strengthen a much maligned community.

Bring something tangible that the people can reach out and touch and have it be beneficial to them.  Bring jobs, and positive development, and something which reduces idle time among the youths and promotes productive activity.  Obviously the relationship between NYC law enforcement and the local citizens is strained.  The local male youth feels targeted in and around Marcy Houses and greater Bed-Stuy.

Well, there's an old adage; - Busy hands are happy hands.  Bring something that people can actually benefit from and effectively improve the collective civic goodness.  It's all about opportunity.

Only 1000 feet or so away the Pfizer plant at the location laid-off most of its employees.  Cascade represents another 300 people out of jobs by their count as told to me as/of Thursday 3rd of June.

I'm a better sports fan than I am addressing matters such as this.  But, once in a while, it doesn't hurt to chime in.  Once upon a time Brooklyn was considered the capital of the East Coast.  In my fantasy I want for that time to exist again for all my fellow Brooklynites in all our neighborhoods.

"Do the Right Thing" on Marcy Avenue

Myrtle Ave., urban Art

BTB