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SUNY DownstateFrom The Peopling of New York City 
BiographyJanice Shen was born in Manhattan, New York, and raised in Shirley, Long Island. She recently graduated from William Floyd High School and is currently a freshman in Brooklyn College, the Macaulay Honors College and a scholar in the 8-year B.A./M.D. Program. Janice is pursuing a career in medicine and hopes to specialize in oncology because she firmly believes that a doctor's greatest pleasure and privilege comes from facilitating the improvement of a community's health. Her goals for Seminar Two: The Peopling of New York are to learn more about the city's development, immigration patterns, and the various cultures that have diversified New York thus far. She also hopes to dispel any misconceptions that she may have about New York by viewing it through a historical lens, and carrying forth with her a better understanding of how the city became an international nexus; a crossroads of cultures.
Street of Interest: Clarkson Avenue
These are some pictures I took while I was on site...
Research ProposalThe street I have chosen to research for the Wiki is Clarkson Avenue located in Brooklyn. Because Clarkson is a total of twenty blocks, I have decided to set some parameters in order to focus on the immediate community surrounding the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. When I visited the street, I mainly concentrated on the area between the crossroads of Clarkson and Nostrand Avenue and the crossroads of Clarkson and East 38th Street, which is about a block on either side of the Center.
When I found out about this project, I had many different ideas running through my mind. At first, I thought I wanted to investigate the street on which I lived in Long Island, but I eventually concluded that it would be fairly boring especially since it was such a short and ordinary-looking block. Besides, I wanted to explore one of the five boroughs; I figured that the seminar was called “The Peopling of New York City” for a reason, and because I have an apartment here in Brooklyn, taking the subway to the city would not be a horrible commute. However, it took me quite awhile to finally decide on Clarkson Avenue. At first, I considered well-known places, like Times Square, Wall Street, or 34th Street. Yet, as I carefully thought it over, I realized that I didn’t want to travel to a place that I was already familiar with. I needed a change of scenery, perhaps a more tranquil neighborhood that had hidden secrets waiting to be revealed. I chose Clarkson Avenue because I will mostly likely be walking on this street very often four years from now. When I asked some of the former BA/MD students who currently live on campus near Clarkson, I obtained mixed reviews. Overall, they commented that the street was not the safest at night and that there was always something happening. If something is always happening now in the present, I wondered if the same could be said about the street in the past.
There are a number of questions that I am eager to discover the answers to. When and why was the Medical Center built on Clarkson Avenue? When it was first built, what was the community like, what were the demographics, and did a great deal of people receive treatment there? It seems strange that the Medical College, the largest medical school in the state, would be planted right in the middle of such a quiet location.
I paid a visit to Clarkson Avenue on a Sunday morning around 10:30 a.m. Like most places in Brooklyn during this time, the streets were empty, but eerily so. Not only did I feel like I was the only one walking on the street, but I really was by myself. While I was there, I took some notes on the physical features of the street. Lying diagonally across from Downstate was surprisingly, a small square called the Rolf Henry Playground. It was vacant but the slides, seesaws, and benches seemed brand new, as if the park had been recently developed. To the left of the Downstate campus, there was a Duane Reade Pharmacy shop; next to the drug store were four massive lots devoted to parking for the hospital. According to the sign, ESP Group of NY, Inc. was the owner of this huge property, and hospital employees were granted discounts. Most of the buildings and brick walls that I passed by were covered in graffiti, and while the writing was illegible, the assortment of colors that the perpetrators used ironically brightened up the street. On the corner of Clarkson and Nostrand Avenue, the Danny Pizzeria Restaurant and a Unisex Beauty Salon stood as ending markers. Beyond this point, there were a slew of apartment houses that extended beyond my parameters.
The Downstate Medical Center itself resembled the buildings within the Brooklyn College campus. There was really nothing special about how it looked; I wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was a medical college if I hadn’t spotted the white flags with blue writing that read, “SUNY Downstate Graduate School.” What I didn’t expect was that the Kings County Hospital Center was right across the street. Prior to my visit, I had no idea that these two hospitals directly faced one another, which will make my research even more interesting. Why are there two hospitals along the same street?
I continued to walk down Clarkson Avenue, past the corner of Clarkson and East 37th Street. Once again, there were small shops, specifically, the Kings Pharmacy and Surgical store, a law office, and a restaurant that served fried chicken and Mediterranean food. I ended at East 38th Street, noting that these cross streets, including East 37th Street, had rows and rows of identical brick houses where people lived. The paradoxical nature of this neighborhood lies in the fact that the people who live in these houses keep to themselves, but must deal with the cacophonous noises that come with living in a hospital environment. The few people I did see walking on Clarkson Avenue did not talk to one another but rather hurried to their destinations. On the other hand, this serene atmosphere is frequently disturbed by the constant wailing of ambulance and police sirens. These sounds reminded me of where I was and how on such a calm street, there were lives waiting to be saved and around the clock emergencies. Even though I have only scratched the surface of Clarkson Avenue, I am excited to uncover its historical background and find out if and how the surrounding community has changed over time.
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