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the past into the future. Living experience cannot be fully significant because it is isolated and transitory; it becomes significant only when it is contemplated in connection with those parts of the pattern which time separates but which really belong together.

Joseph Wood Krutch in the introduction to Remembrance of Things Past - Proust - page X - Random House 1925

Preliminary summary - end of book 1 of research on Myrtle avenue....

Myrtle avenue started as a country lane in the village of Brooklyn, expanding to link the outlying villages of Wallabout and Williamsburg. It was open country between these villages with not a house to be seen, only flowered fields and woods. The path lay over ground that was sometimes swampy, as it was near the east river. This ground was later to be filled in and Myrtle avenue

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became a main route of travel and commerce between these towns. As trade prospered, people began to build along the way, first inns for the stage coaches, some farms, then houses. Finally the road was paved becoming a major artery of trade. Brooklyn became a city and Wallabout and Williamsburg its suburbs, soon to be swallowed by the expanding population. The gaps of country became smaller. It all was to become one sprawling city. Better transportation was needed, the stage coach, then the horse and car were not enough. The bridge to New York was built, then the elevated on Myrtle Avenue linking to the bridge. The elevated an iron monster that was to dominate and characterize the street for over eighty years. Brooklyn becomes a part of New York City and is relegated to a suburb of Manhattan and New York itself becomes part of the pattern on the east coast urban sprawl.

Myrtle avenue is a classic example in urban civilization. First as a means