Father & Daughter Talk About Growing Up In Park Slope
Stanley Karp, a retired banker, and Melissa Smith, a local real estate agent, discuss the founding generation of Park Slope, how Fifth Ave has changed, and block parties in the '80s.
Hi! How are you? Welcome to Park Slope Times’ last issue of 2024! This year has been amazing. I’ve LOVED writing this newsletter and meeting readers at events like Open Streets and the Fifth Ave Music & Art Stroll. As a reminder, I’m offering 20% off annual subscriptions — that’s only $4/month for a full year of Park Slope Times and access to all the archives. The discount expires at the end of the day tomorrow, December 31st. You can gift a subscription, if you need to send a late Christmas gift or a Hanukkah gift. Okay, now for the interview!
In August 1970, after purchasing a four-story brownstone in Park Slope, Stanley and Susan Karp — she a human resources professional, he a banker — settled into their new neighborhood with their one-year-old son, Andrew, and daughter, Melissa, on the way. “There were a lot of families living in Park Slope, but in 1970, Park Slope wasn’t anything like it is today,” says Stanley. “I remember when we bought this house, my father-in-law came over to see the house, and he said, ‘You want to live here?’ before he came into the house [laughs].”
Although some met their move with skepticism, Stanley and Susan knew Park Slope was the place for them. “The neighborhood was so convenient. We had everything on Seventh Avenue and Fifth Avenue, and the library, drugstores, and schools. We had a lot of friends on the block, and a lot of friends in the neighborhood,” Stanley remembers.
Today, Stanley, 85, and Susan, 82, still live in the house they bought in 1970. Melissa, 53, a local real estate agent, and her husband, a public school teacher, are raising their two teenagers in Prospect Lefferts Garden. Here, Stanley and Melissa talk about growing up in Park Slope — Melissa as a young girl and adolescent, and Stanley as a young parent — and how the neighborhood has changed over the decades. They also share their local favorites, including a gift shop, prosciutto bread, minestrone soup, garlic rolls, and the best bagel.
Kelley MacDonald: Thank you for having me over today. I love seeing the interior of the homes in Park Slope that have been here for decades.
Stanley Karp: This house, the way you see it now, it's been this way for 50 years.
Melissa Smith: When they bought the house, it was a rooming house.
What’s a rooming house?
Stanley: There were five different families living on four floors. There was a family on the top floor. There were two families on the second floor. There was one woman who lived in the kitchen and the dining room for about 15 years.
Melissa: The doors in the house are the original doors, and there are locks on the front of many of the doors. That was the lock to their living space.
When did you move to Park Slope, and what prompted the move?
Stanley: I had a friend at work who lived on Third Street with his family. At that time, we were living in Brooklyn Heights on Henry Street, but I didn't see Brooklyn Heights as a family neighborhood. It was more of a singles neighborhood. We were thinking of family and expanding and so on. So, my friend invited us to his house; his kids were running around. There were a lot of families living in Park Slope, and it’s right on Prospect Park. We liked it. So, we moved to Park Slope in ‘67 or ‘68. Our first apartment in Park Slope was at 75 Carroll Street. Then, my son was born while we were on 75 Carroll Street, we bought this house in August of ‘70, and Melissa was born in March of ‘71. We've been here since then.
Stanley, how did you meet Susan?
Melissa: My parents grew up in Brooklyn, and they went to high school together!
Stanley: Erasmus Hall High School. It was like a college campus.
In the mid-50s, my family moved to Linden Boulevard, from Williamsburg, and Susan's parents bought a house across the street from the apartment building that my parents rented in. So we were both physically new to the block. She's a couple of years younger than me, and we became friends. It was love at first sight [laughs].
Melissa: No, it wasn’t [laughs].
Stanley: We became boyfriend and girlfriend at some point in high school. As high schoolers, we would ride the Church Avenue Trolley from 39th Street to Flatbush Avenue.
This was in the late 50s. I graduated from high school in ‘57; she graduated in ‘58. Then, in ‘59, I went to the Army, and she went to Barnard. Then, she came home, and I came home from the Army in ‘61. In ‘62, I enrolled in LIU. We hadn't seen each other for years. One day, I was coming home on the subway, and she was coming home on the subway — we re-met.
Melissa: And then they got engaged, like three months later! So, in high school, they dated, but they ran into each other again as adults. That's why I'm saying it wasn't love at first sight.
What was the neighborhood like in the ‘70s and ‘80s?
Stanley: In 1970, Park Slope wasn’t anything like it is today. It's gone through tremendous change over the years.
Melissa: When I was growing up, you did not go down to Fifth Avenue. For whatever reason, it was bulletproof liquor stores, Chinese restaurants, and bodegas, and that's it.
Stanley: And Seventh Avenue was always the shopping avenue.
Melissa: Yes, you could go there and eat and drink and do everything up there. But not Fifth Avenue.
Then, when I was still in high school, an Italian restaurant called Cucina, opened on Fifth Avenue, which is where Negril is now. It was the first nice restaurant to open on Fifth Avenue. That was the beginning of Fifth Avenue; everything changed over the next 10 to 15 years. I went to college and when I came back, there were like two bars that people were going to, and slowly it became what it was. That was probably in the ‘80s.
That’s so interesting about Fifth Avenue — you’d never know that now. Did the neighborhood feel unsafe then?
Stanley: I never thought of it being unsafe. The neighborhood was rougher years ago. There was a contingent of mafiosos on Fifth Avenue and known mafia hangouts all along Fifth Avenue. Also, the neighborhood had a lot of immigrants and poor people. But, you know, I grew up in Williamsburg, which was a similar kind of neighborhood. So I've never been daunted by that. But I remember over the years, people and families from outside of New York started to come into Park Slope, and they were leery and concerned about different issues.
Melissa: I never heard you say that; it's very interesting what you said, because people who are from New York and who started Park Slope, like all of my friend's parents, they were from Brooklyn. The same as my dad. Or maybe they were from The Bronx. But they came here to start their families, and they knew what they were getting into — because they were from here. Then, when people started moving here from outside of New York, they were leery, as you said. That's how the shift started to happen— the socioeconomic shift.
Stanley: Yes. You didn’t really notice it. People weren't dressing fancy. They didn't have fancy cars. Everyone seemed to blend in. But over the years, the neighborhood began to be expensive. In 1970, I bought my house for…