ROMEO & JULIET “COME TO” BROOKLYN (1866)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 City of Brooklyn’s street grid system was still in its infancy in 1860, some 25 years after it had originally been laid out in Brooklyn maps in 1835. As builders began to buy up land, and as city elders watched the progress of speculative construction move continuously eastwards, it became apparent that some adjustments to the street grid were going to be necessary. SHAKESPEARE TO THE RESCUE Throughout the early 1860s, various New York State legislators from Kings County – likely in consultation with builders, land owners, and lawyers – began to plan these adjustments. These adjustments would come into being in two ways: 1) as extensions of certain streets through land that had originally been planned for building purposes, as well as 2) the closures of certain other portions of streets that had made other parcels of land unusable for building purposes. Thus, a legislative amendment to the Commissioners’ Map of the City of Brooklyn was in the works, and Brooklyn senators, having consulted professionals on the proposed changes, got to work on the wording to make the needed adjustments. In the end, six adjustments would be proposed – one of which was the creation of the very Shakespearean street moniker, Verona Place. “WHAT’S IN A NAME?” Considering the […]
“HE HAS MADE HER…CIVILLY DEAD” (1848)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 July of 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an early organizer for women’s suffrage movements in the United States, changed the course of property rights for married women forever when she uttered a stunning declaration about their legal mortality. They were, she noted dryly, “civilly dead.” While Stanton was not attacking the institution of marriage itself, she was confronting American society with a challenge to the institution’s precepts on women’s capacities to control their very destinies. Most importantly, she believed the forfeiture of married women’s autonomy to be a mistake. As things then stood, women, as soon as they tied the proverbial knot, were in positions of almost total dependency on their husbands. The legal status of married women at the time, referred to as coverture, was famously placed into stark terms by the English jurist William Blackstone in his 18th century legal classic, Commentaries on English Law: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in the law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing.” As a result of the suspended existence of married women, they could not own […]
HOW ART DECO CAME TO PARK SLOPE (1931)
******************************************************************************************************************************* 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? *******************************************************************************************************************************Up until the 1930s, everything in Park Slope was Victorian brownstone. But then came Michael’s and the revelation of a stunning Art Deco facelift. ART DECO IN THE HOUSE For those of you familiar with 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, you may be acquainted with the 5-story building with storefronts known as Nos. 503-505. Currently housing Urban Market of Park Slope, the entire floor was at one time taken over with bedroom sets, kitchen tables, and dinettes – a furniture store known as Michael’s & Co. Originally, the building – sitting between 12th and 13th streets – had quite a different look – a product of the Queen Anne/Romanesque architectural period in the late 1800s, its top floor was lined with faux gables and a mansard roof. By the 1930s, a vertical sign and a marquee had been added to the facade, both with the Michael’s name. Today, of course, Michael’s is no more and all of the Victorian architectural features toward the top of the building (as well as the Michael’s signs) have been removed – probably as much out of an extreme aversion to the cost of maintaining such a facade as due to some of extreme economic periods the building’s passed through. Nonetheless, its current facade is rather unremarkable, particularly […]
RISE & FALL OF THE STUYVESANT CLOWN (1895)
******************************************************************************************************************************* 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************* Back in the early 1890s, in Stuyvesant Heights, there were clowns everywhere. Roaming and squeezing their little horns, making sad, droopy faces, and generally miming mischief. And everyone came to see them at Halsey Street and Saratoga where they paid a nickel a person to get in. Life for the clowns existed there for at least 20 years, until one day it all came to a halt. The developers had arrived and were threatening the home of the clown, threatening his very existence. BROOKLYN EXPANDS TO BUSHWICK By the mid-1890s, three blocks in the furthest reaches of the Eastern District’s Stuyvesant Heights had surprisingly remained untouched by speculative progress. While feverish land purchasing and selling had gone on all around this valuable real estate for the previous ten or so years, these dusty plots of land would continue to sit like the vestiges of the past that they were – unused farm land. Eventually, though, this land would be put to use by a bunch of clowns – the lots would begin, in 1891, to be referred to as the “circus grounds,” as traveling circuses and shows would begin annually to rent the land for their high profile extravaganzas. But the reign of the Stuyvesant Clown would be relatively short as, […]
THE NAVY BICYCLE SQUAD OF BROOKLYN (1897)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Boy! But the Navy sure knew how to get around back in the day! These “wheelmen” – resplendent in their military uniforms – were organized not just for play, but for work. As bicycling was as much of a past time then as it is today, these men likely rode not only for their enjoyment, but to travel from station to station, as well – also representing the Navy in bicycling races. Headquartered at 56th Street in Brooklyn, the Second Naval Battalion was organized just before this picture was taken in July of 1897. It performed duty for the state during the Spanish-American war on coast signal service, guarding mine fields at Willets Point, in Queens, and on patrol duty in New York harbor aboard various vessels. From the New York Tribune of 4 July 1897, we have pictured above, “the first meet of the Bicycle Squad of the 2nd Naval Battalion at the Memorial Arch (Grand Army Plaza) in Brooklyn.” Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives 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 […]
SUNSETTING ON A BED-STUY BOULEVARD (1909)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1909, a landmark was about to be destroyed. It was quite common, though, at the time for owners to tear down the antiquated wood-frame mansions that dotted Brooklyn’s landscape. Since the new brownstone houses had become all the rage in the 1880s, these tinder “firetraps” had become redundant, difficult to sell, and simply unstylish to live in. By the late 19th century, they were being sold, in many cases, for the value of their land as building lots. And with the demise of these historical artifacts, went some truly beautiful examples of mid-19th century architecture, few of which remain with us to this day. THE DE MILLE HOUSE The De Mille house was built around the middle of the 19th century for the family of that name, “and it has been a landmark in that region since the days when it was surrounded by open fields.” Yes, even Bedford-Stuyvesant – today chockablock with brownstone and masonry homes – was once – even before the advent of wood-frame homes – forested land alongside open virgin fields. As a matter of fact, the corner of Quincy and Patchen, in the 1850s, was little more than hills, dales, dirt lanes, and the vague promise of a future suburban city. “Broadway, which is nearby, was […]
