“ANYTHING FER THANKSGIVING?”
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 there was Halloween “trick-or-treating” – there was another tradition in Brooklyn: Thanksgiving “begging.” A STORY ABOUT CHILDREN PANHANDLING IN BROOKLYN Most people have never heard of this custom, but that is because it ended sometime in the 1940s or 1950s here in the northeastern part of the U.S. But in the process of doing research on a brownstone for a Brownstone Detectives House History Book, we tracked down a former resident who, during her interview, and to our great surprise, began telling us about this defunct holiday. “In the morning we were dressed up as hobos, in whatever old clothes our parents gave us,” said Patricia O’Neill who used to live at 738 Macon Street in the eastern section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, “and we went from door to door saying, ‘Anything for Thanksgiving?’ “They used to give us a dime or an apple.” O’Neill (Loftus at the time) remembers the custom well. Where she grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, all of the kids dressed as hobos and they spent the morning of Thanksgiving Day carousing the neighborhood “begging” for food and money from their neighbors. THE HISTORY The custom which started around 1870 may have a connection to Martinmas, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of beggars and […]
HOW YOUR BROWNSTONE LOST ITS SOUL (1915)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** It started just 20 years after construction began on “Brownstone Brooklyn” – our brownstones and townhouses began to lose their “souls.” Constructed in a time when owners needed three and four stories of room for large families, they had, in those times, existed as the epitome of style and class. Now that so much square footage so close to the city center was becoming too dear for so many residents (who did not have families or who needed much less room), builders were beginning to construct large apartment houses that provided all of the necessities of home within a smaller, but more stylish and efficiently laid out, space. Such competition from newer construction caused the formerly beloved brownstone to lose its lucrative “soul.” THE SOLUTION TO ANTIQUITY In 1915, real estate broker Frank Tyler struck upon an idea that turned out to be, in essence, a paradigm change: Take an old inefficient brownstone and turn it into a stylish and updated apartment house. Tyler noticed that “the average three-story and basement dwelling of old-fashioned style” had “become a drag on the real estate market.” Because of “great changes that have taken place in construction, and the popularity of apartment house living,” brownstone owners had been experiencing a decline in the rental […]
“SHAKESPEARE’S GHOST” AT 437 HALSEY (1889)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** The Brownstone Detectives investigates the histories of our clients’ old houses. In the process, we have come across no small number of incredibly juicy stories featuring the houses and their lineage of occupants. Every once in a while, those stories – as stories sometimes do – feature a topic we rarely wade into – the paranormal. While most properties we investigate do not involve the supernatural, it is even rarer still to find an old brownstone that comes with a thoroughly debunked ghost story. No. 437 Halsey Street – in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn – is one of those houses… ***************************************************************************************************** In late 1889, during a strong snowstorm in the City of Brooklyn, word began to get around about the “haunting” of an apartment house at the corner of Halsey Street and Lewis Avenue, along with its complement of frightened and fleeing former residents… “…the snow was blowing everybody in doors yesterday,” started the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, setting the scene for its readers of “an ambitious little ghost story-started out on its career of making trouble. The “trouble” mentioned in this story was the reaction that the rumor of ghosts in the apartment house had engendered. It brought to the sole remaining occupant of the structure a whole host […]
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 […]
BURIED ALIVE IN BROOKLYN!
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Victorian Brooklyn was mortified at being buried alive. If newspapers and patents together are any indication of an age, then we know the fear was strong. Research performed toward the end of the 19th century indicated that approximately 700+ cases of being buried alive had been documented. Such premature burials apparently took place in nearly every major city, in numerous small towns, and across the world. Whether they were occurring in droves or not, though, was of little import. The overriding principal here was public perception. And the perception was this: Premature burials were happening ALL THE TIME. And perhaps they were. BROOKLYN & NEW YORK TESTAMENTS Brooklyn’s most famous case of being buried alive involved a Manhattan woman by the name of Virginia McDonald, who, after she had perished, was brought to Brooklyn and buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. The young woman’s mother, though, had “had a presentiment, shortly after her burial, that she was still alive.” The thought ate at the woman for some time until she decided to share her fears with her family members. They understandably attempted to assuage her, even resorting to joking with her when she could not be consoled. Finally, to settle her doubts, they had the casket opened for their mother. “The body was […]
THE CHANGING FACE OF MACON STREET (1908)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** While researching the history a local brownstone, we located an old postcard of a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The sepia paper photograph gives an idea of the innate promise of the neighborhood back in 1908 as it was still being built up with new brownstones, limestones, and rowhouses. That picture postcard, featured above, shows a stretch of Macon Street – replete with newly built rowhouses – that starts at the back of the Saratoga Library on Thomas S. Boyland Street (then, it was Hopkinson Avenue), and ends about halfway down the block before reaching a row of barrel-fronted 2-family houses and the one-time parking garage at the corner of Saratoga Avenue (now the Shirley Chisholm Day Care Center). Interestingly, this part of Macon Street still had its dirt (mud on rainy days) street as late as 1908. Residents of the area had been complaining to the City of Brooklyn (by 1908, the borough of Brooklyn) since the 1890s about the slow pace of street paving in the district. Home building had gone on at such a fast clip during this period that the city had struggled to keep up with the builders. The houses that are the focal point of the snapshot were the first put up on the block – what […]
