DRAPED IN OLD GLORY AT 159 ADELPHI (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Few men have lived lives of greater adventure and achievement than John Quevedo, whose body, in a flag-draped coffin, lies at his home, No. 159 Adelphi street, Brooklyn.” So read an article in the Duluth Evening News of 9 February 1905. “Fifty years in the United States Navy, a member of the crew that, under Commodore Perry, opened Japan to Western civilization, one of Farragut’s men in the big sea lighting of the Civil War and, greatest of all, one of the gallant crew that under Schley dared the perils of the frozen North and rescued Greely from his starvation camp at Cape Sabine. Such is the record of John Quevedo. “A Spaniard born, he had been in the American Navy since he was 16. His father was a bluejacket before him, and his son fought under Dewey at Manila, and is now instructor of gunnery at the Brooklyn navy yard. “For the past decade John Quevedo has been the storekeeper at the navy yard ever since a shell fell on his feel on board the Boston and incapacitated him from further active service. Two weeks ago the veteran was attacked by paralysis and gradually sank into death.” A GREELY RESCUE HERO “Of all his adventures, he spoke most proudly of […]
THE DAY BED-STUY WAS BORN (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Bedford-Stuyvesant, known coloquially as “Bed-Stuy,” is a section of Brooklyn that conjures as many mental images as there are residents of the district. With a past as colorful and storied as any other section of the borough, its ups and downs, though, seem to have been much more extreme. One only need consider the district’s unofficial slogan for much of the past 30 years, “Bed-Stuy: Do or Die,” to dredge up a very recent period sadly associated with images of guns, drugs, and gang violence. But this more recent history is not the point of this story. We want to go further back to try and understand how Bedford, which was formerly a village built up around the intersection of Bedford Avenue and what would become Fulton Street, joined with the developing neighborhood of Stuyvesant Heights. The official birthdate of Bedford-Stuyvesant has always been a moving target depending on the reference made or its actual source. Any discussion of its original designation would need to consider the fact that the term “Bedford-Stuyvesant” came about colloquially, and so unofficially, at first, but later took on the mantel of authority. WAS BED-STUY BORN IN THE ’30S? The majority of designations have placed Bed-Stuy’s birthday squarely within the 1930s. The New York Times, in […]
MURDER AT No. 248 PRESIDENT ST (1916)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Joseph Russo had a good reputation. He was a 26-year-old longshoreman with a strong work ethic. But when his wife was discovered with a bullet between her eyes, Detective Coughlin figured he would search the place. And when the dust had settled, the police were in possession of nine weapons and Russo was in lock-up. INVESTIGATING THE CRIME Carroll Gardens by this time had changed from the lower middle class Irish neighborhood that it had once been, into a working-class Italian community with numerous Italian criminal gangs. Violence was a common daily occurrence and reports of abductions, shoot-outs, and kidnappings for ransom were often in the papers. Still, the police had, during the investigation, come to believe that “the bullet that killed his wife was fired accidentally.” Russo told the police that he had been “cleaning an automatic pistol about 10 P.M. with his wife seated across the table from him with the baby, Anthony, in her lap.” After Russo had removed the magazine, he had forgotten that “a cartridge had been left in the chamber.” Then, apparently, continuing to clean and oil the weapon, Russo pulled the trigger and the cartridge “exploded.” First, gracing the face of the baby, whom Rose had seated on the table, the bullet then “entered […]
“HE CAME TO FIX THE ELECTRIC WIRE” (1938)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “And if thow take a wyf unto thyn hoold, Ful lightly maystow been a cokewold.” With these words – and others – the Wife of Bath, in Shakespeare’s “Chaucer,” attempted to secure the hand of the knight by frightening him with the possibility of becoming a cuckold, a man whose wife is sexually unfaithful. The word has survived down the ages used in most derisive ways, but mostly as a lesson that men should pay more attention to their wives and take caution, particularly if they are pretty, that they do not “wander.” In 1938, this very tale unfolded for a mechanical engineer, whose wife “employed in a swanky Lexington Ave., Manhattan, hotel,” had the misfortune of being “caught in the act.” THE STORY ABOUT THAT “ELECTRIC WIRE” The whole story started when Thomas Goodfellow’s wife, Mary “Mae” Goodfellow, “a comely brunette,” one day left her husband and visited friends of theirs, Mr. and Mrs. Rafael of No. 628 40th Street. Along with her visit to Manhattan came her story that “she had had some trouble with her husband and asked for shelter.” Mrs. Rafael allowed Mrs. Goodfellow to remain and when the Rafaels left for Central Islip for the summer, “Mrs. Goodfellow was still there.” While Mrs. Goodfellow resides in […]
A BUFFALO SOLDIER ON HERKIMER ST. (1930)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 was 1918, and Harry Francis Cole had only three options. As an African-American in the United States, drafted into the military when the country was entering the First World War, he could: 1) work as a non-combatant – laboring as a stevedore, digging trenches, graves, and latrines, or building hospitals, roads, bridges, and railroad lines, 2) fight in a segregated unit – as an American soldier with the French Army, whose soldiers did not object to fighting alongside African-American troops, or 3) join a military band – one of the many brass bands in the European theater that were composed of African-American musicians. Cole, already a budding musician back home in Philadelphia, would naturally find himself in the last group, a horn player in one of the units of the 92nd Division – or, as the military unit was more commonly known, the venerated “Buffalo Soldiers.” BORN TO WAIL Born one of four children to William and Carrie Cole in Philadelphia in 1896, Harry Cole was never really destined to be a fighter. When he was a boy he was even then sure that his future was in music. He likely caught the bug when ragtime was all the craze, but when he heard the new sound of jazz in the […]
THE JAPANESE GILT OF 150 HANCOCK ST (1887)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Much of the design selections made by designers in the last part of the 19th century are comprised of a coterie of materials, patterns, and tools either no longer available today or much changed in their appearance. Although most builders used simple materials that did not require the knowledge or training of a master designer, some of the more high-end brownstone constructors utilized the services of those who would tailor their interiors toward the more affluent members of society. In the late 1880s, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle started a series of articles which described – in great length and detail – the interiors of individual newly-built or renovated houses. These houses were usually brownstones belonging to those affluent or upper-middle-class members of society. Not only did such articles describing the interiors of neighbors’ homes sell newspapers, but the articles also served as advertising directed at those in the market for a townhouse to have a home of their own. These advertisement-articles were placed, likely at the expense of the designers responsible for the “interior decorations” being described, as each piece ended with what readers wanted to know. “Who did the work?” THE WORK WAS DONE BY HALBERT In 1886, a row of Queen Anne style 3-story and basement “brown stone houses” […]
