Cool Streets

Franklin Avenue

You’ve probably been wondering when Franklin Avenue was going to come into play in this guide. Franklin Avenue is the main hotspot of the new Crown Heights, packed with restaurants like Mayfield, Barboncino (voted best pizza in Brooklyn), Chavela’s, The Crabby Shack, Bunsmith, Domo Taco, Gladys, and Brooklyn Winery‘s outpost BKW. With some great bars, it has the vibe of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg before it became luxury-fied.

Clove Road

In the midst of the street grid in Crown Heights is an odd diagonal midblock street known as Clove Road. Located behind an A&P supermarket, it’s so forgotten the Google Street View car didn’t even bother to turn down it. Yet, it may have one of the richest and longest histories of any street in the neighborhood.

Clove Road is what remains of a Native American trail and later Colonial era road and it retains some of its old Belgian blocks to boot. (Belgian block, rectangular pieces of granite that came from ship ballast, is commonly miswritten as cobblestone but the two are actually different.) Architect Michael Cetera, who has studied Clove Road in depth, says it was also an important location in the American Revolutionary War and was one of the first roads in Brooklyn to be paved. It was also possibly a portion of, or nearby, the Bedford Pass, which allowed passage through a ridge that is today’s Eastern Parkway. American troops used this pass to retreat back to Brooklyn Heights during the Battle of Brooklyn.