THE LONG SLOW DEATH OF REID SQUARE (1870)
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.
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Laid down by the Brooklyn street grid commissioners in the 1830s, Reid Square was a planned park that was to be comprised of two of Brooklyn’s city blocks in the Town of Bedford.
Named after the owner of the farmland that the once-future park was to grace, Philip Reid, Reid Square never ended up being developed.
The Square was to be bounded by Reid and Stuyvesant Avenues and Halsey and MacDonough Streets. Macon Street, which, for all intents and purposes, would have passed directly through the square at its center, was to be closed at that point.
In 1869, however, as the park had been laid out but not improved, the Committee on Opening Streets of the Brooklyn City Common Council met and proposed a resolution to “draft an act to the Legislature to close Reid Square and lay down Macon Street from Stuyvesant to Reid aves.”
This proposal was adopted and later in April of 1869, the Legislature passed the act, dooming Reid Square to an historical footnote.
It is quite probable that powerful real estate speculators at the time forced the planned public square into its stillborn state, allowing the properties on these streets to be broken up into lots and then sold at auction for development purposes.
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