Two of my great loves — pre-Modern interiors and flea markets — join forces in one fantastic mashup: The Brooklyn Flea’s temporary digs at One Hanson Place.

View looking over the mezzanine rail.

During the colder months (till March 28), The Brooklyn Flea is movin’ on up, from its standard location in an empty asphalt lot to the palatial lobby, mezzanine, and underground vault of the former Williamsburg Savings Bank.

If you’re into this sort of thing, it is quite a special experience. The mosaics on the walls and ceiling are spectacular. The food court can be found behind a 6′-thick metal door in the old vault. Vendors populate the old teller booths. The light streaming through the Gothic windows makes the wares seem to glow with their nostalgia.

No need to spend a dime, even. The space is enough of a treasure.

Detail of the mosaic on the back wall of the lobby (seen at a distance in the photo at top).

I ’bout fell off my bicycle Saturday afternoon riding across Brooklyn through Crown Heights, when I rounded a boarded up pre-war apartment building and came upon this giant yellow monster.

So this is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Why didn’t anyone tell me Brooklyn had one of those? I really should get me a kid, so I can be in the loop on such swell goings-on.

Not only is the museum a gem to behold, it’s super-sustainable. Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects and opened last September, the building achieved a LEED Silver rating for its use of rapidly renewable and recycled materials in construction. The big yellow building even has geothermal wells for heating and cooling purposes. Wow. I wonder what those look like.

And check out the Museum from above:

Photo: Michael Moran

Lovely. It’s incredible to see such bold design in a public project—plopped in the middle of Crown Heights, no less, rather than in Dumbo, Brooklyn, or some such trendy (read: ridiculous) location. This place for kids could hold its own against any boutique hotel on the Lower East Side.

Score: 1, NYC Department of Design and Construction. And one for Brooklyn.

A friend who lives nearby sent along this lovely photo of Metropolitan Avenue at Graham—our closest subway stop (Graham Avenue on the L line). It was taken in the summer of 1937 by Berenice Abbott (available from the New York Public Library digital archives here).

Curious, I went out and snapped my own, from the same spot:

The differences and similarities are equally striking! 72 years did quite a number, but to my eyes it appears that not a single building has been razed. Altered considerably, sure, but the structures still stand—people still pass them everyday, climb their stairs, and call them home.

The intersection was unquestionably more beautiful in 1937. I don’t think I need to tell anyone here how unspeakably tacky vinyl siding is (Unless—landlords? Y’all listening?) compared to the facades of the thirties: the Victorian cupola on top of the corner building anchoring the intersecting avenues, with rounded pediments on either side giving balance and proportion. The ornate cornices along the tops of all the buildings have been lopped off, leaving them no better crown than a fence. Where the windows have not been bricked (or sided) over, they’ve lost all the framing that made them make sense in the larger structure—eaves, ledges, sills, gone. The wide friezes separating the storefronts on the ground floor from the residences above have given way to bulbous prefabricated awnings and roll-down metal gates. Charming.

Interestingly, the cast-iron subway entrance hasn’t changed one bit. Evoking Industrial-Age New York (Ms. Abbott captured her photo the same decade the Empire State Building went up), the chunky balustrade around the stairs is supported by thick, tightly spaced posts (I wonder if they were forest green back then?) and lanterns signal the entrance.

There was a beer ad (and Coca-Cola too, of course) spanning the south face of the corner building in ’37, so I can’t rail at that in the modern world. But look at that poor lamppost littered with paper scraps and tape gunk from flyers and solicitations—in the age of Craigslist, no less! The streetcar tracks laid into the cobblestone have presumably had black asphalt poured over them. One thing we do have, mercifully, on the streets these days, that was missing back then: trees.

As I stood in line at my local U.S. Post Office today (mailing a Mother’s Day package), having to dispose of an old envelope and a used-up stamp book, I was outraged that there was no recycling bin in sight. Standing in a post-office line gives one ample time to think, and often leads to pondering (hating) the state of gov’t services in this country. (I was reminded of living in Helsinki, where the Finnish postal system was a picture of efficiency, the post offices a treat to visit.)

The U.S. Post Office has publicized their recent efforts to “go green” by focusing on the fuel-economy of their delivery vans and the efficiency of their routes. Why not also have a recycling bin in every post office? There are 36,000 branches in the country, visited by 9 million people each day. I wonder how much paper trash they’re (we’re) generating?

On the way home from the post office, I passed the office of some design/planning outfit. (The name eludes me.) Toward the front of their office, through the glass window, I could see their garbage bins clearly labeled: The one with a blue plastic bag for “glass/metal/plastic,” the clear bag for “paper,” and the black plastic bag, rather than being labeled, “trash,” said, “landfill.”