Spring Has Sprung, For Now, During the Week of Falling Wood

Yesterday evening, a cool Checker Cab was parked on Chestnut Avenue, near Avenue M. later. This is the vicinity of the original Vitagraph Studios. Nearby, scenes from films like "Hey Pop" and "Buzzin’ Around," starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, were filmed on streets in Midwood.Warner Bros. purchased the studio in the 1920s, using it for short subjects, and moved the studio operation to Hollywood in 1939. The building is now home to the Shulamith Yeshiva School for Girls, but a large smokestack bearing the name Vitagraph is still on the property, visible from the BMT Subway line, as are two brick walls from the original studio. Many Vitagraph Employees resided within the community. After Warner Bros. vacated the land (in the late 1960s-early 1970s), it remained vacant till the Shulamith School purchased the property years later. The Vitagraph Studios were more recently featured in a New York Times Article (2007), and in the PBS, WNET-13 TV Special 'A Walk Through Brooklyn,' hosted by David Hartman and historian Barry Lewis. Old historic photographs of the studio show that part of it also existed across the Brighton line subway tracks where Edward R. Murrow High School now stands. More here on Midwood

Loggers ply their trade in my backyard in Fiske Terrace. The spruce was about 35 feet long (formerly 35 feet tall.) . It was an eventful week, arborially speaking.