Turns out, 48 years ago, there was a horrible plane crash on our very block. Our apartment is at 7th Avenue and Sterling Place in Brooklyn, the same spot were a United Airlines plane came crashing down. That might make some people shy away from the place, but I look at it like that scene from "The World According to Garp," when a plane crashed into a house Garp and his wife are considering to buy. They go ahead and buy it, because they figure the odds of another plane crashing into the place are pretty slim.
Anyway, here's some background on the crash:
On Friday, December 16, 1960, a cold, gray morning, a United Airlines DC-8 originating in Chicago and a TWA Super Constellation, outbound from Columbus, collided above Staten Island. The TWA flight crashed at Miller Field, in the New Dorp section of Staten Island. Fortunately no one on the ground was injured there. The United flight plunged into Park Slope’s Sterling Place, near Seventh Avenue, killing five people on the ground. In all, 135 people perished in what was the worst air disaster of its day.
The United flight narrowly missed the now defunct St. Augustine’s Academy (Sterling Place near Sixth Avenue) which was filled with school children, then hit a brownstone (126 Sterling Pl) before careening into the ironically-named Pillar of Fire church (at 123 Sterling Pl), destroying it completely. Wallace E. Lewis, a 90-year old caretaker was in the church at the time and was one of the five people killed on the ground. According to the New York Times report, the other victims were Charles J. Cooper, who was out shoveling snow, Joseph Colacano and John Opperisano, who were selling Christmas trees on the Sterling Place sidewalk, and Jacob Crooks who was walking his dog.
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