WAS POT GROWN IN THIS BROOKLYN PARK? (1952)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
Do you know the history of YOUR house?
********************************************************************************************************************************
Around the 1920s, Americans began to become aware of “hop.”
Known alternatively as “marihuana,” the “loco weed,” “drugged cigarettes,” and a laundry list of other names, the narcotic became the focus of Fed struggles in the ’30s as its use became widespread.
Raids were conducted, while drug-crazed citizens went on “1-man riots” because of the drug, and a herd of milk goats grazed on a “5-acre crop” of it at Floyd Bennett Field.
In the end, though, the marijuana craze would become a difficult crop to spike.
By the 1950s, raids had become an almost daily occurrence, and the City of New York was cooperating with Federal agents as it turned to conducting “operations” of its own to locate and destroy large crops that seemed to be growing just about everywhere in Brooklyn and Queens – mostly on vacant lots.
A BROOKLYN PARK GROWS WEED
At one point, the City conducted a public campaign with the Sanitation Department and the Police Department at the lead. The police did the locating and the sanitation workers did the destroying.
During one raid, in 1952, a rather large marijuana crop seemed to be growing in a wide open park area “in the shadow of the Brooklyn Federal Building, one block north of Tillary St.” in what is today the Korean War Veterans Plaza (directly north of Cadman Plaza).
The irony here was that as the future Korean War Veterans Plaza developed into the scene of this particular raid, nearly 7,000 miles away the Korean War itself raged.
In the vintage black and white newspaper photograph above, inspectors from both departments are seen in light-colored suits, observing sanitation worker as they cut down “a new crop of marijuana” and take “the weed” away to be burned.
———————————————————————————————————————–
Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
