WOOLWORTH’S BEDSTUY BACKYARD (1889)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 1889, the head of the Woolworth “5 & dime” store chain, Frank Woolworth, bought a substantial brownstone house, No. 209 Jefferson Avenue, in what would become the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Their home would soon become the center of life for the Woolworth family – and their friends and co-workers. After purchasing the brownstone in 1889, Frank Woolworth would frequently entertain his business associates there, bringing them together, at least once a year, for what he termed a “Grand Five and Ten Reunion.” These reunions lasted two or three days and were jolly affairs, generally culminating in a picnic or a seashore excursion, with plenty of food and liquid refreshment. The first “reunion” would be held just a month-and-a-half after buying No. 209 and would be held annually through the early 1890s. The picture above is from their first “reunion” in 1889. All of Woolworth’s regional managers, who were often family members, posed with Frank (seated with his topper at right) at a side fence, likely the one on the west side of their property as you can see buildings along Nostrand Avenue. Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ […]
WOMAN ON A LEDGE AT No. 97 MACON ST (1953)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** All houses have a history. Those of a certain age clearly have it in spades. One part of any house’s history are those incidents that occur without planning or preordination. They can be unpleasant to know. One of those unplanned incidents, is the housefire of unknown origin that spreads uncontrollably through a residence. One such fire which spread throughout a building, took place on a cold January day in 1953 in a rooming house on Bedford-Stuyvesant’s No. 97 Macon Street. FROM A SINGLE-FAMILY TO A ROOMING HOUSE By 1953, Bedford-Stuyvesant’s brownstone stock was ageing – and it was not doing so gracefully. A large percentage of this section of Brooklyn’s brownstones had passed their semicentennial and were still wired and plumbed as they had been when they were constructed. While many of them had been maintained through the first 30-40 years, as earlier owners moved out and were acquired by owners who began to rent out rooms, however, these newer owners put little money into their maintenance, preferring to squeeze as much profit as possible out of their rent rolls. The Depression-era programs of redlining and blockbusting brought many unsavory characters into the business of making money through the purchase and management of brownstones in black-majority sections – as well as […]
THE PLAN TO SEGREGATE BED-STUY (1937)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 1937, much of Brooklyn’s brownstone stock was reaching its limits. Its townhouses were, on average, approximately 50 years old and, in the eyes of many residents and brokers, outmoded of interior and unattractive of exterior. In fact, residents of certain sections of Brooklyn were beginning to move out of the older sections with the ancient brownstones, in favor of the newly constructed apartment buildings – or simply to other outlying sections of the borough. There were those residents, however, who felt that they saw a bigger problem, an over-arching trend that, unchecked, had the potential to destroy investment, send house values spiraling downward, and force them to move out of a community where they – and their families – had lived for generations. For these residents, the problem fell less into the category of an ageing housing stock than into that of the lot of outsiders – those of a different economic class, certainly those of a different race – who were already beginning to move into them. The problem of the outdated housing stock, while real, was not the sole impetus to modernize. Rather, that incentive came from a fear of an undesirable population that must, at all costs, be kept at bay. It was, thus, that a move […]
HOW TO MOVE A ROW OF BROWNSTONES (1905)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** It was called “one of the most unusual examples of housemoving” ever. Up until 1905, no one had ever attempted it. And it was moving two rows of five Brooklyn brownstone houses together, as a row each, one, across the street, and one across a block AND a street. Contractors, experienced in the business, had – to this point – only moved much lighter frame houses, even rows of frame house. But a row of brownstone houses? Impossible! Over a course of several weeks, though, two rows of brownstone houses were jacked up, stabilized – and then rolled away. These same brownstone houses now sit across the street on Jefferson Avenue – as though they had always been there. MAKING WAY FOR THE EXTENSION It all started in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, when the State of New York decided it needed more room for an extension to an armory it owned on Sumner Avenue. The armory, bound by Sumner Avenue on the west, Putnam Avenue on the north, and Jefferson avenue on the south, could only expand in one way – into two rows of brownstones. Behind the armory, on Putnam Avenue, sat a row of brownstones from the 1880s, while, on Jefferson Avenue, a more recent vintage of brownstones […]
MR. DINKINS’ BULGING FACADE (1977)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Have you ever wondered what once filled those large lots at the corners of Halsey Street and Ralph Avenue? Every house has a history. You know it is there, but the clouds of the past work to obfuscate the present. Uncovering that history takes some detective work, but with a little time and some gumshoe sleuthing, the answers can be discovered. With regard to 774 Halsey Street – what do we know happened? A fire? Decay? Gas explosion? What do we know about the life of the building? What was it used for? Who owned the building and who lived there? We looked to clues from newspaper archives, fire insurance maps, and physical evidence to unravel that history. This is our report: WHAT HAPPENED to 774? A 4-story brick apartment building – 774 Halsey Street – sat on the southeast corner of the Halsey/Ralph intersection. It had a commercial space on the ground floor facing Halsey Street and one at the rear of the building at 153 Ralph Avenue. The building housed a number of apartments the addresses/entrances of which were on the Ralph side of the building at 149 Ralph Avenue. The apartments of the Ralph-facing side of the building had stacked bay windows, one on each floor. South of […]
THE VIRUS TAKES A WOMAN MARINE (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PROLOGUE In 1918, when the United States was fighting a war overseas, the country was also fighting a conflict back home – influenza. Just as people were dying in the the “Great War” to combat “the Hun,” Americans were succumbing back home to a virus that was leading to their deaths in hospitals. Much like with today’s coronavirus, there were still essential services then that needed to be continued. One of those services was recruiting for that overseas war. One of those recruiters was one of the first woman Marines. She lived on Macon Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. She came down with influenza while on recruiting duty in Manhattan. And she became the first woman Marine buried with full military honors. This is her story. PVT. LILLIAN MAY BOGEN PATTERSON It would be a mistake […]
“ANYTHING FER THANKSGIVING?”
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Before there was Halloween “trick-or-treating” – there was another tradition in Brooklyn: Thanksgiving “begging.” A STORY ABOUT CHILDREN PANHANDLING IN BROOKLYN Most people have never heard of this custom, but that is because it ended sometime in the 1940s or 1950s here in the northeastern part of the U.S. But in the process of doing research on a brownstone for a Brownstone Detectives House History Book, we tracked down a former resident who, during her interview, and to our great surprise, began telling us about this defunct holiday. “In the morning we were dressed up as hobos, in whatever old clothes our parents gave us,” said Patricia O’Neill who used to live at 738 Macon Street in the eastern section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, “and we went from door to door saying, ‘Anything for Thanksgiving?’ “They used to give us a dime or an apple.” O’Neill (Loftus at the time) remembers the custom well. Where she grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, all of the kids dressed as hobos and they spent the morning of Thanksgiving Day carousing the neighborhood “begging” for food and money from their neighbors. THE HISTORY The custom which started around 1870 may have a connection to Martinmas, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of beggars and […]
“SHAKESPEARE’S GHOST” AT 437 HALSEY (1889)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** The Brownstone Detectives investigates the histories of our clients’ old houses. In the process, we have come across no small number of incredibly juicy stories featuring the houses and their lineage of occupants. Every once in a while, those stories – as stories sometimes do – feature a topic we rarely wade into – the paranormal. While most properties we investigate do not involve the supernatural, it is even rarer still to find an old brownstone that comes with a thoroughly debunked ghost story. No. 437 Halsey Street – in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn – is one of those houses… ***************************************************************************************************** In late 1889, during a strong snowstorm in the City of Brooklyn, word began to get around about the “haunting” of an apartment house at the corner of Halsey Street and Lewis Avenue, along with its complement of frightened and fleeing former residents… “…the snow was blowing everybody in doors yesterday,” started the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, setting the scene for its readers of “an ambitious little ghost story-started out on its career of making trouble. The “trouble” mentioned in this story was the reaction that the rumor of ghosts in the apartment house had engendered. It brought to the sole remaining occupant of the structure a whole host […]
THE CHANGING FACE OF MACON STREET (1908)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** While researching the history a local brownstone, we located an old postcard of a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The sepia paper photograph gives an idea of the innate promise of the neighborhood back in 1908 as it was still being built up with new brownstones, limestones, and rowhouses. That picture postcard, featured above, shows a stretch of Macon Street – replete with newly built rowhouses – that starts at the back of the Saratoga Library on Thomas S. Boyland Street (then, it was Hopkinson Avenue), and ends about halfway down the block before reaching a row of barrel-fronted 2-family houses and the one-time parking garage at the corner of Saratoga Avenue (now the Shirley Chisholm Day Care Center). Interestingly, this part of Macon Street still had its dirt (mud on rainy days) street as late as 1908. Residents of the area had been complaining to the City of Brooklyn (by 1908, the borough of Brooklyn) since the 1890s about the slow pace of street paving in the district. Home building had gone on at such a fast clip during this period that the city had struggled to keep up with the builders. The houses that are the focal point of the snapshot were the first put up on the block – what […]
ROMEO & JULIET “COME TO” BROOKLYN (1866)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** The City of Brooklyn’s street grid system was still in its infancy in 1860, some 25 years after it had originally been laid out in Brooklyn maps in 1835. As builders began to buy up land, and as city elders watched the progress of speculative construction move continuously eastwards, it became apparent that some adjustments to the street grid were going to be necessary. SHAKESPEARE TO THE RESCUE Throughout the early 1860s, various New York State legislators from Kings County – likely in consultation with builders, land owners, and lawyers – began to plan these adjustments. These adjustments would come into being in two ways: 1) as extensions of certain streets through land that had originally been planned for building purposes, as well as 2) the closures of certain other portions of streets that had made other parcels of land unusable for building purposes. Thus, a legislative amendment to the Commissioners’ Map of the City of Brooklyn was in the works, and Brooklyn senators, having consulted professionals on the proposed changes, got to work on the wording to make the needed adjustments. In the end, six adjustments would be proposed – one of which was the creation of the very Shakespearean street moniker, Verona Place. “WHAT’S IN A NAME?” Considering the […]
