THE LINCOLNS OF No. 25 CRANBERRY (1860)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 Abraham Lincoln traveled to Brooklyn Heights, another Lincoln made it his home. In fact, on a Sunday morning in February of 1860, George B. Lincoln personally accompanied the future President on his famous visit to hear the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher preach at Brooklyn Heights’ Plymouth Church. Hailing from Hardwick, Massachusetts, George B. Lincoln arrived in New York City in 1836 at the age of 19. He engaged in the straw business for a number of years, dividing six of those years between New York and New Orleans, eventually setting his roots into Brooklyn soil around 1856, having established his dry good business across the river in Manhattan. Lincoln, like so many merchants of the period, preferred to live in Brooklyn Heights while keeping his business in New York City. (In fact, this was often how Brooklyn Heights real estate was advertised around the time – in terms of how quickly its businessmen could travel to New York City from Brooklyn.) Arriving around 1855, he initially rented a house at No. 54 Willow Street (future No. 62, now accupied by an apartment building). A few years later, however, in 1858-9, Lincoln had moved into No. 25 (former 45) Cranberry Street, where he would live for several years until being appointed […]
TURNING No. 51 HICKS INTO A HOME (1948)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** (From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mon., 22 November 1948.) Ed.’s Note – The residents of Brooklyn Heights were the first in the borough to see old brownstones as treasures to be valued. In the 1930s and 1940s, as some were reparting to the suburbs, others were taking advantage of the availability of old brownstones at bargain basements prices. One such homebuyer was a dress designer and her husband who moved into No. 51 Hicks Street and modernized it. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Certainly in passing 51 Hicks St., the second and third floors of which are tenanted by Mr. and Mrs. William Brackett, no one would suspect the changes which this typical old-fashioned Heights brownstone has undergone to effect a modern interior. Confronted with the usual problems of that type house, the Bracketts had to decide what to do about the exceptionally tall ceilings, the extra large rooms, the narrow hallways and the lack of a modern kitchen (it having been a three-floor private home with the kitchen located on the street level). First credit goes to the landlord who in eliminating the typical high stoop stone entrance, recognized the simple and beautiful lines of the doorway and iron railing and saved it to be installed as the new entrance on the ground floor, […]
YE OLD TIMBER TAVERN ON COURT ST (1926)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Old English architecture is a rare sight in New York City. Rare, interestingly, because it once had a distinct place and time in the history of New York City’s 20th century architectural development. As tastes changed, however, its look – sometimes referred to as Tudor, Chester, Jacobean, Elizabethan, &c. – quickly fell into disfavor. Also, its reliance upon such materials as wood and stucco – those that can easily wear if not well maintained – forced owners of these structures to look for more long-term solutions to their maintenance. One of these solutions usually meant simply covering their more wearable materials with those that stood up better to weather. Although it would take nearly a century to do, such is the case with No. 93 Court Street, initially designed in the Old English style. “Brooklyn’s most distinctive office building,” started a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article in October of 1926, “may well be the description of the new home of Malkind & Weinstein, architects, which is being completed at 93 Court st., and is expected to be ready for occupancy in November.” The article went on to highlight the building’s design and beauty. “The building will carry out the style of Old English architecture in every detail in its exterior, while the […]
BROOKLYN & THE “JUMPING SELFIE” (1886)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1886, there was a LOT of jumping on Livingston Street. That year, a man by the name of Wallace G. Levison, an amateur photographer who lived on the street with his family, was testing a new type of film along with its ability to capture subjects in the process of motion. As the dawn of the 20th century approached, newer, more sensitive film emulsions were being developed that allowed pictures to be taken with faster and faster shutter speeds. Levison was set on experimenting with them. An avid photographer, he used the new technology both as a scientific tool and a recreational activity. In addition to being an amateur photographer, Levison was a chemist, inventor, and lecturer who founded the Departments of Mineralogy and Astronomy at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in the latter half of the 19th century. He may have also invented the concept of the “jumping selfie.” ORGANIZING SHUTTERBUGS Born at 1435 Pacific Street, Brooklyn (where – except for the 1880s-1900s – he would live for most of his life) in 1846, Levison attended Cooper Union, New York City’s prestigious free school for the sciences and arts, and graduated with a BS from Harvard in 1870. He was a member of the New York Mineralogical […]
HOW TO REMOVE A BROWNSTONE STOOP (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Today, brownstone owners shake their heads in wonder. “Why would anyone intentionally remove the stoop from their own townhouse?” they muse. The stoop, like a timeless portrait’s gilded frame, is a vital element to the design and use of the townhouse. It carries the focus of the viewer into the house itself, just as the stoop physically transports the resident bodily into the house. A brownstone house simply cannot exist without its stoop. Well, like shag carpeting in the 1970s, stoop removal was all the rage in the 1940s. “Remove your stoop and turn your brownstone into apartments,” was the sage advice of contractors hoping to bring their clients’ properties into the 20th century. “Remove your brownstone stoop and add value to your property,” they said. If you didn’t see it happen, though, with your own eyes, you might assume that the destruction was merely accidental. Perhaps a car crashed into the structure and damaged the stoop beyond repair, or time and the elements slowly destroyed the stoop. Well, here, thanks to the New York Historical Society, we have pictures – in all their “glory” – of the “before,” “during” and “after” snapshots of the destruction of one of those august brownstone set of steps. These, documenting the disappearance of a […]
THE RAREBIT FIEND OF 23 MIDDAGH ST (1906)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** At No. 23 Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights, in the early 20th century, lived the veteran actor, John P. “Jack” Brawn, who starred in upwards of 24 motion pictures. Most notably, he starred in the first ever trick motion picture, 1906’s “The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend.” Brawn lived on Middagh with his wife, Ethel Brooke Ferguson, who had been his leading lady on stage and whom he married in 1903. THE DREAM A trippy movie, “The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend” is about a man, played by John P. Brawn, the titular “fiend,” who has an all-too-real dream after consuming a large meal of Welsh Rarebit. His dream, rather a nightmare – the result of an upset stomach, the film implies – was likely supposed to represent the penance that could expect to be paid for the sin of gluttony connected with living a life of overabundance. The director of the short film, Edwin S. Porter, based the film on a comic strip, using it as a vehicle to present his mastery of the technical aspects of film-making, which displayed a good deal of hands-on special effects work – double exposures, miniatures and other camera trickery. Few cinema-goers, it is certain, would have seen a picture like this at the time. […]
RESCUE OPERATION ON “BOERUM HILL” (1964)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Most Boerum Hill residents do not know the name Helen Buckler – but they should. While she wasn’t instrumental in building Boerum Hill, she was the reason it got its name. She also started the organization that ushered in the wave of brownstoners and brownstoning in the area, the Boerum Hill Association. Brownstoning – or the renovation of brownstones back to their former glory – is not a recent trend. Like many other movements, brownstoning appeared in parts of New York City in waves as good/bad economic times ebbed and flowed, neighborhoods fell in and out of fashion, and young professionals, who were usually the harbingers of those waves, “discovered” New York City’s 19th century brownstones. One of those waves washed over Brooklyn in the early 1960s. Helen Buckler rode, from her Dean Street brownstone, firmly atop the crest of that era’s wave. She named it Boerum Hill. BOERUM HILL BEGINS A few years after Buckler bought No. 238 Dean Street, she started the Boerum Hill Association. Then, already at the age of 70, she was no ordinary brownstoner. Her enthusiasm attracted to the organization approximately 20 like-minded families who were also interested in renovating their brownstones in the area. The purpose of the organization was to improve the community and […]
BEECHER’S BROWNSTONE GETS A RENO (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 1940, Nora Sullivan embarked upon a renovation of 66 Cranberry Street. It was an historic brownstone built in the mid-1800s, at some point being occupied by the Joel Osteen of his day, the great abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher probably selected the house to be close to his job next door, as the phenomenally popular preacher at Plymouth Church. Before the house had been built, like many other structures in old Brooklyn Heights, two wood frame buildings had graced the spot. These particular structures had been used as a school for boys. Later in the 1840s, though, a “foundling,” deposited on the building’s stoop “in a basket,” was “discovered in the front yard of Mr. Henry Ruggle,” the owner at the time of 66 Cranberry in its previous iteration. The scandal, though, lay in the fact that, upon the baby’s arrival at the mayor’s office – where abandoned babies were apparently brought back then – it was discovered that when the “habilments” were examined, they were “found to be of fine quality and of elaborate workmanship” which were indicative that “its late possessors are an unworthy portion of the ‘upper ten.’” Amongst the other discoveries in the baby’s basket was a “fine cambric handkerchief marked ‘E,’” which was “the […]
BURY ME DEEP, IN A METALLIC CASE (1852)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Beware BODY SNATCHERS! Beware GRAVE ROBBERS! BEHOLD, the Fisk Metallic Burial Case! F.A. MORREL, UNDERTAKER AND DISTRIBUTOR, 57 MYRTLE In 1852, a Brooklyn Heights “sexton and general undertaker” by the name of F. A. Morrel, practicing at his “coffin-wareroom” at No. 57 Myrtle Avenue, was promoting to the Brooklyn public the latest design in funerary offerings – the Fisk Metallic Burial Case. Originally designed as a vessel that would keep a dead body from decomposing if the individual had died far from home, the Fisk Metallic Burial Case would soon “take on a new life,” so to speak, for those who wanted their nearby loved ones to keep from rapidly decomposing, as well. For this reason, many Fisk ads promoted their cases for the general preservation of the body – which was important to those whose burial case included a “viewing plate,” allowing for the living relatives to view the departed one’s face. “From a coffin of this description the air may be exhausted so completely as entirely to prevent the decay of the contained body on principles well understood,” noted Fisk’s patent, “or, if preferred, the coffin may be filled with any gas or fluid having the property of preventing putrefaction.” Another of the selling points of these cast iron […]
WHICH LANDMARKS TO DEMOLISH? (1913)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1913, Brooklyn was looking to tear down long rows of stately brownstones. These brownstones were “substantial residences” in the “Court Street Section” comprising Nos. 24 to 40 Schermerhorn Street and Nos. 141 to 137 Clinton Street. The owners of these homes, upon discovering that their residences were in the path of the newest Brooklyn courthouse, were, understandably, up in arms. Eminent Domain or no, they were having none of it, and they started a campaign to force the city to locate a building site more suitable. Apparently, these men got to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which published this spread showing their houses – along with their names (5 out of the 7 of whom were doctors) – and compared their residences (favorably, of course) to an alternative site that they had seclected comprised of “several blocks of lodging houses, dance halls and the like in the Bridge Plaza District,” asking the question: “WHICH SITE CAN BE BETTER SPARED FOR A COURT HOUSE?” Playing upon the morals of the people of Brooklyn, it would be clear which site would meet the wrecking ball when, the following day, an assemblyman from Brooklyn by the name of Burr announced that the New York State Assembly would soon adopt his bill “taking from the […]
