On Lewis and Grand you had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the now-luxurious-but then-barely-middle-class roof penthouse, a one bedroom affair quickly outgrown when I arrived and could no longer fit in a bureau's drawer.
But until my arrival, that penthouse was a sure fire way to beat the heat during the dog days of August. A metal bucket big enough for my sister and any breeze off the East River and stirred by the trains on the Williamsburg Bridge usually did the trick.
