SATAN’S CANDY SHOP (1911)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** If a man named Hell offered you some candy – would you take it? That was Otto Herman Hell’s problem. And, yes, in fact he was about to open a confectionery in Brooklyn on Broadway. THE DEVIL’S CONFECTIONER It must have been difficult growing up with a name like Hell. There were probably countless jokes and plays on the name. Otto must have been quite tired of it all by the time he reached the age of maturity, at which point he began thinking seriously about changing it. Having emigrated from Germany in 1891, he was 25 when the immigration officials must have looked up at him in surprise as he stood before them hoping to gain entry into the country. “Hell? Hell?” the official must have half-asked, half-shouted, incredulously. “O’Connor, come quick, or you’ll have Hell to pay!” Lots of uproarious laughter here, then a loud stamp, and then Hell was on to the next set of jokes somewhere in his new country. He probably found it curious in the early days, perhaps a bit enjoyable if he had had a playful streak. But, by George, it was 1911 now, and Otto was 36 with a wife and two children. He was more than ready to get serious with his […]
THE GANG THAT STOLE HOUSES (1907)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Stealing homes is not a unique and recent invention. Known by its formal title as “deed fraud,” it involves the collusion of wrong-doers within and without city government. Cases of “deed forgery,” or of the filing of “bogus deeds,” have existed from the time that paper has been used to represent the transfer of property from one party to another. In the case of “deed fraud,” the difference between it and a regular legal real estate conveyance, is the fact that, in the former, someone else has represented themselves to be owner of a property they do not possess by forging their – or someone else’s – name on a document representing the parcel of property. The fraud continues when that document is notarized, sometimes illicitly on the part of the notary, and then filed with the city which represents that the victim’s parcel of property has now been transferred to someone else. The fraud, at this point is usually not complete, as the bogus transferer of the victim’s deed then transfers the victim’s property a time or two (or three) (through the hands of buyers who either have no idea their name has been used – or who happily allow their names to be used for a price) until the […]
THE GHOST OF 281 STUYVESANT AVENUE (1901)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “At last Stuyvesant Heights revels in the proud possession of a genuine haunted house.” This was back in 1901, when Stuy Heights was relatively young, the houses newish, and the ghosts scarce. But Stuyvesant Heights had everything back then – “a Republican Club, an amateur dramatic society,” and even “several asphalt streets where bashful maidens learn to wheel at night.” So why not a ghost? THE HAUNTING AT NO. 281 STUYVESANT AVENUE The Griffins, who had lived in the apartment house at the ground floor were terrorized by their electric bell ringing at 2 o’clock every afternoon. But they also heard “hollow groans,” “creepy sidesteps on the staircase,” and “unexpected trips from room to room of pieces of furniture.” It all got to be too much for the Griffins to handle, and so they fled. The Griffins moved to Williamsburgh. PERFECTLY GOOD EXPLANATIONS Some of the other tenants blamed the wind. A young woman who lived in the second floor apartment told an Eagle reporter that everything was perfectly explainable. “This house, you know, stands alone and the wind, when it sweeps into the vestibule, often comes hard enough to blow the whistle in the kitchen tube,” she explained. “Then it’s a fact that the pictures do move, but that’s caused […]
SHAKESPEARE AT NO. 24 BREVOORT PL (1928)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of its clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. ******************************************************************************************************************************** Henry C. Folger loved Shakespeare. His admiration for the author and his writings was such that he once paid $100K for a single folio of the bard’s work. The president of the Standard Oil Company was so smitten with Shakespeare’s works that, in 2014, a book, Collecting Shakespeare, was published about Folger and his collection. Folger, who started his relationship with Standard Oil as its director, would rise to become the chairman of its board, building a trusted relationship with the company’s owner, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. While frugal in the management of his money, Folger’s position with the largest oil company in the world certainly allowed him plenty of it to use in the pursuit of everything Shakespeare. And everything Shakespeare that he purchased for his collection eventually made its way to the library of their rented house at No. 24 Brevoort Place in Brooklyn, where the couple would live from 1910 through the early 1930s. FOLGER, BREVOORT, & SHAKESPEARE Henry Clay Folger’s collection of Shakespeareana included 35 copies of the 1623 first folio edition, of which only 200 copies were then known to be in existence. These earliest texts of William Shakespeare’s works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. While quartos are smaller volumes, folios are large, tall volumes, roughly […]
DESIGNING A BETTER BROWNSTONE (1888)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Current owners of brownstones know the time and cost investment necessary to renovating the ancient structures. After 125 years or so of constant use and abuse, it is understandable that, like with humans, things tend to sag, break, and otherwise, go out of date. Thus their constant renovations and redesigns. But did you know that our brownstones have been undergoing renovations – since they were built? At No. 278 Lafayette Avenue, an Italianate brownstone in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn, one such renovation – likely the rowhouse’s very first – took place in 1888, just 20 years after the construction of the building. While the redesigned was feted at the time, the owner’s name would go down in infamy… AN INFAMOUS OWNER OF AN OLD BROWNSTONE In 1904, an excursion steamship called the General Slocum sank in New York City’s East River. The craft had been chartered to carry members of the St. Mark’s Evangelical Church (a German-American community in Manhattan) to a church picnic when it foundered. According to Ship Ablaze, a book written about the disaster by author Edward T. O’Donnell, of the 1,342 people on board – mostly women and children – 1,021 drowned. The disaster decimated an entire section of New York City and caused the […]
WHEN BUSHWICK MET OCEAN HILL (1923)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Ocean Hill” was still settling softly into the Brooklyn lexicon of place names as a working class suburb in 1923. Bushwick, on the other hand, was already very well-known in the borough for its German breweries and beer gardens. But where the two met – and they met, all right – there were SPARKS! (…or maybe a bank or real estate office….) This snapshot was taken at the intersection of Broadway and Hopkinson Avenue (later to be renamed Thomas S. Boyland Street). The building there on the corner in 1923 held the Bushwick National Bank and Frederick W. Erdtmann’s real estate offices. The Bushwick National Bank came into existence the same year that this photograph was taken – probably the reason for the photograph and the patriotic bunting all around the building; the bank ended up merging with the Globe Exchange Bank in 1929, and so had a short life of about six years. Frederick W. Erdtmann, a realtor who lived at 868 Macon Street and then above his real estate offices in this building, had filed for bankruptcy in 1913 before this photo was taken. He was back in the real estate business by 1919 and did well for himself in the 1920s. Who the old woman and the young […]
