A MORBID MYSTERY IN PARK SLOPE (1940)
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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When researching our clients’ properties we often come across some pretty outrageous stories, fantastic histories, and some strangely enigmatic images.
During a recent review of some of the city’s tax photos featuring properties in Brooklyn from the 1940s, we came across this very interesting, yet certainly fleeting (it no longer exists), architecture constructed into a storefront on Brooklyn’s Seventh Avenue (see the left side of the photo above).
It is apparent, from the rest of the neighboring storefronts, that No. 298 Seventh Avenue’s facade had been altered at some point, but to what end? The modified storefront projected a very gothic image that told passersby that something very different – and important – was going on within the building.
We wondered was it a chapel, a little church, a museum? Unfortunately, the resolution of the city’s tax photos are often too grainy to make out much detail, so we had to look elsewhere for answers.
We, thus, resorted to the archival images of Brooklyn newspapers to determine what had existed at No. 298 in the 1930s/1940s. When the following image popped up in our search results, all was made clear.
No. 298 Seventh Avenue was a second-to-final destination for many Park Slope Brooklynites:
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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.
