Sex, Drugs and Violence: The Stories Behind 10 Brooklyn Streetnames
Though named after one of New Lots’ founders, Dutch farmer John Blake, the avenue is better known as the scene of several bloody incidents in the 1930s and 1940s involving Brooklyn’s notorious mob Murder, Inc. It was here that contract killer Abraham Reles, known as the “Terror of Brownsville,” murdered Irving Shapiro to avenge his girlfriend’s rape. Shapiro and his brothers were leaders of the Brooklyn rackets.