Midweek Photo: Oriental Angle


by on Oct 6th, 2010

Haven’t yet seen this angle of the Oriental Hotel, which faced Sheepshead Bay between Ocean Avenue and Girard Street was somewhere else entirely [Read comments]. The photo comes from SepiaTown.com. Cool, eh?

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  • Eitan

    Beautiful photo. How fascinating would it be to visit Brooklyn even for one day in those times?

    Also, my understanding of Sheepshead bay was always the small body of water between manhattan beach and the main part of brooklyn. Is the gulf between manhattan beach and breezy also SB? Because i believe this hotel faced the second body of water, and the map on Sepiatown shows its location as being where the beach is now – not facing the mainland.

    • BrooklynBus

      I have a 1914 map that shows the Oriental Hotel facing the Atlantic Ocean between where Hastings and Kensington are today. It was accessed from Shore Boulevard which curved down to meet the Hotel at its rear entrance a little south of where Oriental Blvd would have been.

      • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

        Yep, that’s it. The large and expensive hotels were built to face the ocean. That’s a huge lawn in front which ran for blocks between the hotels. The first hotels were built too close to the water and had to be moved inland. So the lawn made it all look like part of a plan.

        The Oriental was THE HOTEL for the moneyed classes, the Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach had a more varied clientèle.

      • http://www.nedberke.com Ned Berke

        I knew it! Next time I listen to my gut, and not random websites with god-awful names.

        • BrooklynBus

          Just went to the site. There are other mistakes. There’s a picture of Stillwell Avenue between Mermaid and Surf that is supposedly taken from the Bay 50th Street Station. That must be some telephoto lens. It looks like it was really taken from one of the towers at the Stillwell Ave Station.

          • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

            It’s user generated content, and many photos were taken from other websites. (They encourage this, with attribution) So I guess mistakes are to be expected.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

    FWIW, Sepiatown is a user generated website. So if anyone has old photos whose location they can determine within one block the project would appreciate their submission.

    http://www.sepiatown.com/index

    • Georgia

      Very interesting web site a lot to see
      Thanks

      • http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanne001 Lisanne!

        They definitely need more pictures from this area. I have some from the early 80s, but their cut-off is 1980. And yet so much has changed since that time.

  • Georgia

    This is a fantastic picture the way it was. This was always a water front but how everything changes. Thanks for the info I have to look these up.

  • brighton beach al

    no this is manhattan beach, if your ever in an adventurous mood, and not afraid of getting yelled at by some snooty neighbors take a walk to the right side of manhattan beach, (the actual beach, and go right from the main entrance) hop onto the rocks and take a walk down all the way to brighton beach, you can actually walk down that stone boardwalk, well whats left of it atleast. also a great place to have a toke =)

    • Eitan

      Discovered that about 15 yrs ago, Al. Perfect place.

  • http://twitter.com/SepiaTown Sepia Town

    Hi all,

    We’ve changed the location and description of the photo. In the coming months we will be adding features which will allow a crowd-source approach to correcting information and geodata of the images on the site.

    Hope you enjoy the site. Please feel free to upload you’re vintage Brooklyn pics.

    SepiaTown

    • http://www.nedberke.com Ned Berke

      D’oh! Now I feel bad for dissing the site’s name. Don’t worry, I didn’t really mean it. I was just covering for my own shortcomings as an editor ;)

      Thanks for taking the time to post; and thanks for the resource.

      • http://twitter.com/SepiaTown Sepia Town

        No worries. Thanks for posting about us and helping to get the word out.