What else can we find out together?
Bay 53rd Street, which runs to a dead end west of Cropsey, is all that remains of a former enclave called White Sands. The remaining White Sands streets were paved over for a well known home improvement store and its vast parking lot (There are some caches here). A short stub of Canal Avenue runs between Cropsey and the Belt Parkway. Decades ago, was originally going to connect with another stub of Canal Avenue about a mile west in the Sea Gate area but that would have involved the filling of Coney Island Creek.
A second bridge, constructed in 1931 to replace an earlier structure, takes Crospey Avenue over Coney Island creek (in which, when tides are favorable, you will find a yellow submarine). A bascule bridge, it can lift in the center to allow boats to pass; rarely is that function necessary anymore on little-trafficked creek. For your webmaster, its chief attributes are its original 1931 lampposts, which are still in place.
The Cropsey Avenue Bridge still has its original Machine Age-style fence, and the shafts of its original lampposts shown here as depicted in a catalog of remaining lampposts styles in NYC as of 1936. They’re reminsicent of, but don’t quite match, the metal posts used on the West Side Highway from 1932 to its closure in 1973.
Even though Coney Island Creek is noxious indeed, and has no Superfund allocated to clean it up a la Lavender Lake, aka the Gowanus Canal, the area on its southern flank has been spiffed up quite a bit lately as new stores have opened up here. There is even an opened sitting area by the creek. You have to provide the nose plugs, though.
