BROOKLYN’S PLAN TO SAVE DAYLIGHT (1917)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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’s difficult to believe that just over 100 years ago there was opposition to Brooklyn’s plan to “save daylight.” But in 1917, when Brooklyn State Senator Calder was talking up his “Daylight Saving” idea, many future-opponents started, at that time, to smell (and prepare for) a fight. As such, when the bill was actually lodged the following year, these opponents of sunlight came out from the dark in full force with every reason NOT to have daylight saving – under the sun: (1.) The theaters would go out of business, as no one wants to attend while the sun is still shining. (2.) The Bible is opposed to it – read Joshua, chapter 10, where he fought the Amorites – during the battle of which God held the sun from going down for one hour – long enough for Joshua to win his battle. (3.) Too much sun is bad for us, claimed some doctors. (4.) Steamship and railway lines would suffer, as their adjusted timetables would confuse passengers. (5.) It violated Home Rule, said Governor Al Smith. The reasons were as endless as they were interesting. But just as the sun will rise tomorrow, so was it eventual that Daylight Saving would come. In the end, the measure won the […]
THE “WET SPECIMEN” OF HALSEY STREET (1899)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** When a body was discovered in the cellar of a brownstone on Brooklyn’s Halsey Street, the police were immediately notified and the “owner” hunted down… The medical profession, like most other professions, was much less regulated in the 19th century than it is today. Those who worked within the medical studies of the period – involving the dissection of corpses, the experimentation on recently live human organs, or the display of exoskeletal remains – were just as similarly unregulated. There was a medical practice, however, which was associated with the medical profession but which also appeared more morbid – it provided for education of medical students through the preservation (and display) of certain organs, animals, or tissue specimens. This practice appears to have fallen, however, into an altogether different grouping of practices – at least as regarded the general public. This was the practice – long important to the preservation of biological specimens for observation and continued study – of the preservation of biological tissue within alcohol-filled jars – otherwise known as “wet specimens.” While these specimens were a common site within a laboratory, hospital, or teaching school, such specimens were rarely known to disappear from these locations and, more rarely so, to find themselves upon the cellar shelves of a […]
A STUDY IN DISMEMBERMENT (1914)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** When the pieces of a dismembered body started showing up in different locations in Brooklyn around Christmas of 1914, it didn’t take long before Brooklyn Detectives traced those body parts to a block on Macon Street in the Stuyvesant section of town. “The two pieces of torso which were found on Friday by boy skaters embedded in ice in a pond between Coney Island and Ulmer’s Park were identified yesterday afternoon as parts of the body of Rufus Dunham, 61 years old, of 752 Macon Street, Brooklyn.” So began the article that was to create a great sensation on Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Macon Street between Ralph and Howard avenues. DREDGING UP THE PAST When we uncovered this story a few years back, we had been researching a house on this block of Macon Street (near to Howard Avenue) for our first House History Book. We had thought it would be interesting to see who else had lived on the block over the past 125 years. During our historical research, up popped this gruesome and sensational story which must have created quite a stir on the block at the time. SEARCHING FOR THE KILLER The murder case, described as “one of the most disturbing that police of the city have had to cope with […]
HALLOWEEN ON THE SUBWAY (1922)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Those of you who live in New York might have seen costumers on the subway during your commute today. It is less likely, though, that you saw straphangers bobbing for apples. At the time of this cartoon’s publication in the October 29th, 1922 edition of the New York Tribune, the subway was a mere 18-year-old. And the term “straphanger” was not much older – it derived from the (at first leather, and later metal) straps which hung from the ceiling of a street or subway car. “Why not play ‘bite the apple’ in the subway Halloween?”, shows two New Yorkers, a “dudish” man and an “artsy” woman (two typical subway riders of the day?) “bobbing” for apples from those straps. When was the last time you played this game??? 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 of your home.
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 […]
