Way Down in The Hole
A photoessay on New York City’s legendary Queens/Brooklyn neighborhood The Hole
The Hole is a tiny New York City neighborhood that flirts with legend. Partly, that legend lies in its history as a mob dumping ground and we’ll get to that. But visually, it’s unlike anything else you’ll see in the NYC area, too. The Hole squats right on the border of Queens and Brooklyn. Only a few blocks wide and long, its most unique characteristic is that it falls about 30 feet below grade — about 10 meters below much of the nearby land.
That’s most visible at this intersection of Emerald and Dumont Streets, what you might consider the crossroads of The Hole, where there seems to be constant standing water. From the perimeter of the area, too, you can see the significant dip in the land, which is often labeled with street signs.
Via Google Maps, you can see it’s likely the water here rises to greater heights, too, and you imagine The Hole must have been hit quite hard by Sandy. That…
