MR. DINKINS’ BULGING FACADE (1977)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Have you ever wondered what once filled those large lots at the corners of Halsey Street and Ralph Avenue? Every house has a history. You know it is there, but the clouds of the past work to obfuscate the present. Uncovering that history takes some detective work, but with a little time and some gumshoe sleuthing, the answers can be discovered. With regard to 774 Halsey Street – what do we know happened? A fire? Decay? Gas explosion? What do we know about the life of the building? What was it used for? Who owned the building and who lived there? We looked to clues from newspaper archives, fire insurance maps, and physical evidence to unravel that history. This is our report: WHAT HAPPENED to 774? A 4-story brick apartment building – 774 Halsey Street – sat on the southeast corner of the Halsey/Ralph intersection. It had a commercial space on the ground floor facing Halsey Street and one at the rear of the building at 153 Ralph Avenue. The building housed a number of apartments the addresses/entrances of which were on the Ralph side of the building at 149 Ralph Avenue. The apartments of the Ralph-facing side of the building had stacked bay windows, one on each floor. South of […]
HITLER’S BROOKLYN BROWNSTONE (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** I know. I know. So dramatic, right? You must be thinking that we’re using a figure of speech in a misguided attempt to characterize a Brooklyn slumlord, right? I mean, he’d have to be a really nasty landlord to get the Hitler comparison. Takes your deposit and keeps the heat off in the winter? Goes into your place when you’re not there? Charges you part of the common area bill? What a dictator! But hold on, because there’s actually a story behind this. A good one… WHAT TO DO WITH A “CRUMMY BUILDING”? Once upon a time, in the City of Churches, two Manhattan attorneys – who had allowed the mortgage payments to lapse on a certain “crummy building” they owned – were discussing legal strategy. These two gentlemen, Julius Freilicher and Martin Auslander of 1 Park Place, had a $3,300 mortgage on their tenement – 541 Clinton Street in Carroll Gardens – with the Dime Savings Bank. The two advocates had determined that it was not in their best interests to pay the mortgage, but they also did not like the idea of losing. They were attorneys, you know. So, they opted for a scheme that would be the next best thing. One day when the bank was about to […]
THE STRAY PATH OF A BROOKLYN BULLET (1894)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Henry J. Hartig was no law-breaker. As a machinist, he had invented one of the first successful gas engines and patented numerous governor designs over his lifetime. An industrious German-born American citizen, well-known and loved throughout his Fort Greene neighborhood, Hartig was a law-abiding family man who would go on to sire five children with his wife, Emma. He started the Hartig Standard Gas Engine Company, manufacturing his engines – which used illuminating gas for fuel – from the early 1890s and well into the 20th century. And so, possessing the intense interest in creating, tinkering and experimenting that drives all serious inventors, his hunger for learning drew him into a variety of fields that sparked his interest. One of them was guns. Hartig owned at least one firearm – a Flobert Remington “Cadet” .22 rifle – with which he enjoyed taking target practice in his backyard. But when a stray bullet from that weapon struck an innocent man one lazy summer afternoon, it looked as though Hartig would lose it all. “CULLOM WAS HALF ASLEEP WHEN HE FELT A SHARP TWINGE…” Of course it was an accident, and many Brooklynites were owners of firearms in the 1890s – it was that kind of place back then. But then again, the […]
THE VIRUS TAKES A WOMAN MARINE (1918)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. This biography tells the story of one of those servicemembers. PROLOGUE In 1918, when the United States was fighting a war overseas, the country was also fighting a conflict back home – influenza. Just as people were dying in the the “Great War” to combat “the Hun,” Americans were succumbing back home to a virus that was leading to their deaths in hospitals. Much like with today’s coronavirus, there were still essential services then that needed to be continued. One of those services was recruiting for that overseas war. One of those recruiters was one of the first woman Marines. She lived on Macon Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. She came down with influenza while on recruiting duty in Manhattan. And she became the first woman Marine buried with full military honors. This is her story. PVT. LILLIAN MAY BOGEN PATTERSON It would be a mistake […]
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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 […]
EDGAR ALLAN POE’S ODE TO POLK (1844)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** A more improbable story you may have never heard – but Edgar Allan Poe may have been partially responsible for electing James Polk president. A TEA STORE, A FRIENDSHIP, AND THE WHITE EAGLE CLUB… Remembered from the campaign year of 1844, erstwhile actor and artist Gabriel Harrison recounted for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle his encounter with Edgar Allan Poe. Harrison had met him one evening as the latter was peering through the plate-glass window of his tea store. “It was in the Fall of 1843 or ’44 that I first became acquainted with Poe,” Harrison mused. “At that time I was the President of the White Eagle Club, New York, and kept a tea store on the southeast corner of Broadway and Prince street, then Mr. William Niblo’s property. “One evening I observed a person looking intently through my windows at a display of some Virginia leaf tobacco. After some minutes he entered the store, spoke of the beauty of the leaf and its quality. He took a very small bit of it in his mouth, and further remarked that he might be considered a small user of the Solace. In a few days after he called again. “On this occasion I was endeavoring to compose a campaign song for my […]
