Little Old Canarsie
P.S. 114 Was A Long Walk From The Boat

Boating around the waters of Jamaica Bay on a spring or summer afternoon was the order of the day back at the turn of the 20th century. Historians note that it was hard getting around in winter, but “not too bad” in nice weather.

Around the year of 1910 the McAvoy Ferry Line would take you to Rockaway Beach with stops at Bitz’s and Breezy Point also a frequent stop at Barren Island (now Floyd Bennett Field) which was isolated from the mainland with the inlet into Jamaica Bay on one end and a couple of creeks called Irish Creek and Johns Creek on the northern part and Jamaica Bay on the east side of Canarsie and a population at the time of maybe 20 or 25 families, most of Polish ancestry, who work-ed very hard in a fat rendering plant with a large tall chimney where all of N.Y. City’s dead horses and other animals were taken to be stripped of their fat for the making of soap and other by-products.

When the wind was blowing from the southwest, we sure got a smell that was nauseating from the smoke out of that tall chimney.

This plant was owned and operated by the McKeever Bros., who in 1913 opened up the new home of the Brooklyn Dodgers along with Charles Ebbetts, which became famous all over the world as Ebbetts Field. Now on this island was a small schoolhouse for the children of these families who lived there to attend. When these children had to go into the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, they had to come over by boat to Little Old Canarsie to go to P.S. 114 at what is now Remsen Avenue and Glenwood Road, but at that time was School Lane on one side and Smiths Lane on the other. Each morning these children came over about 7:30 a.m. on the “Frank & Helen” of the McAvoy Ferry Line and land on the Canarsie dock (which was just about ten feet on the south side of the Belt Parkway at present).

After getting off the boat, they had the long walk up to P.S. 114 along Canarsie Road into East 92nd Street and so on up to the school. (No buses for them those days). This wasn’t too bad in nice weather but in the blustering snowy weather it was rough for them to walk that distance. When Jamaica Bay froze over solid, many times they would walk across the ice to get to school.

I can’t recall all the names but one of the boys I remember Fred Morlocke who along with others made this trip each school day and had to walk back from school at 3 o’clock to catch the 4 o’clock boat back to the island and Home Sweet Home. After the horse rendering plant discontinued operating and the families all went to the mainland, in the early twenties, Paul Rizzo and William (Buster) Warner, two local Canarsie boys would take you up in a plane over N.Y.C. and back for about a dollar and a half. Later the island was developed and named as Floyd Bennett Flying Field. So ends another chapter of “Little Old Canarsie.”

Canarsie Historical Society/Merlis collection