Poor Oscar Moore, Fell & Hit The Floor (1884)
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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We Brooklynites can sense history all around us.
It does not jump out at us like ghosts or drift in our direction like disembodied voices from walls. But we know it is there. Sometimes it takes a little physical research to understand what it is that happened at a particular location, though – just to see it.
Take the case of the brownstone at No. 272 South 5th Street in Williamsburg, for example – literally, at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge. The facade shows what appears to be an unassuming 3-story and basement 19th century tenement.
But something once happened there – literally, right there out in front of the house – that changed a man’s life.
POOR OSCAR MOORE
A short piece in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of 11 January 1884, noted that a painter, by the name of Oscar Moore, who lived at 143 Marcy Avenue, had been working on a scaffold at the Fifth Street location, painting the front of “No. 272 South Fifth Street.”
Then he fell.
According to the paper, Moore “sustained a severe fracture of the right side.”
It is likely that a surgeon was dispatched to tend to Moore. He probably did little more than assess Moore’s status and then, with the help of an assistant, pick him up and place him in their horse-drawn ambulance. Moore, still very much conscious, likely groaned in pain. The surgeon may have administered him a restorative along the way to the hospital.
The article does not stated how far he fell, but eight years later Moore would appear in the 1892 New York State Census having migrated from the field of painting to a more “literary” pursuit – he was now working as a “Book-Keeper.”
A job much less fraught with danger.
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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.
