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The shipyard that endeared Brooklyn to the U.S. Navy for 160 years is being closed. Already gone is the yard's Sands Street honky-tonk strip—where all real sailors prayed to go to when they died. Says Mrs. Martha Dimmler, Big Martha to Navymen of three wars who packed the Red Mill Bar: "It used to be that no place in the world had wilder, drunker, more wonderful sailors than we did. And now . . ."
No Sale. Brooklyn Heights is one of the few neighborhoods that retains its distinction; its elegant Victorian houses across the bay from Manhattan have attracted many genteel bohemians. On the other hand, the fading Fort Greene Park area nearby recently lost one of its last distinguished citizens when Poetess Marianne Moore, 78, packed her tricorn hat and cape and, after 36 years in Brooklyn, moved to Manhattan. The swamps and old fishing villages in the further reaches have given way to modern subdivisions that most young couples rising in the world regard as mere way stations on the road to suburbia. "Long Island, that's the thing," said Mrs. Myra Gershowitz, 24, as she pushed a baby carriage around Sheepshead Bay. "Everybody's moving to the island. You think you're missing something if you don't move out there."
The ultimate symbol of Brooklyn's disinstitutionalization is the virtual disappearance of The Accent, that ebullient glottal goulash of old Dutch, Yiddish, Irish, Italian and perhaps even Mohawk. "Only 1% of the kids are still dese, dem and dose types," says Speech Professor Bernard Barrow of Brooklyn College. "It is very difficult today to know a Brooklyn boy from a Bronx boy." Even The Bridge has lost its mystique. Not for three years, at least, the police report somewhat sadly, has a con man tried to sell it.