PARK SLOPE URNS vs. BASEBALL BATS (1914)
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?
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On a still warm September morning in 1914, residents of the homes along the first block of Prospect Park Southwest woke to find something out in front of their houses distinctly off-kilter.
As they exited their limestone rowhouses, several of them were shocked to see what appeared to be concrete rubble strewn up and down the block along the sidewalks and within their gates.
Leaving their doors and approaching their gates, they began to realize the inanity of the cause – many of their decorative concrete urns, which had been perched peacefully upon the short columns flanking their front gates, had been destroyed overnight.
As neighbored surveyed the block, there seemed to be no method to the madness of the demolition of these pieces of architectural ornamentation. Simply put, some neighbors had theirs undisturbed, while others’ urns were a pile of concrete on the sidewalk.
The blame was quickly laid squarely at the feet of the local youth – toughs, rowdies, gangs, hoodlums.
HOODLUMS
It was a common story of the day.
Gangs of loafers gathered on corners assaulting women verbally as they passed into the park. Roughs fighting along certain streets at odd hours of the mornings. Rowdies, after drunken trips to Coney Island, ending their nights on a high note of destruction.
The incidents of such behavior from the “neighborhood youths” had been growing throughout the borough since the turn of the century, and there seemed to be no end in sight to the wanton misconduct. And the destruction along Prospect Park Southwest early on the morning in question, unfortunately, was no different.
“It was apparent that some hoodlums,” noted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, “probably on their way home from a night of revelry at the Coney Island Mardi Gras, took this way of closing up an evening of pleasure. Considerable force must have been used to smash the urns, but despite this five of them were completely destroyed.”
PATROLMAN MURPHY FILES THE REPORT
“Patrolman Murphy of the Fifth avenue station reported the case to the station,” noted the Eagle. “He said that he had been on duty in the neighborhood from midnight until 4 a.m., during which time the urns were undisturbed. He left at at bout 4 a.m. to ring in, and it is his opinion that the damage must have been done after he left.”
In other words, “not on my watch.”
It is not known exactly which urns were destroyed on that night and which may have – for other reasons – been removed since.
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
