“IT BURNED WELL” (1885)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Have you ever left something aboard a subway car and wondered what happened to it? The Metro Transit Authority has an entire “Lost & Found” room devoted to articles that were forgotten on their property. In it, they hold items discovered (or turned in) on their trains and buses for “three months to a maximum of three years, depending on the estimated value of the item.” If your item is not retrieved within this period of time, it is either auctioned or, if it is in poor condition, sent for disposal. Back in the late 19th century it appears that disposal was the only method employed. FOUND ON THE BRIDGE Well, apparently, the Brooklyn Bridge being so new in 1885, having so recently opened, and being so popular with the public, the accumulation of so many disparate articles on the “cars” was likely a phenomenon that had not presented itself before. As such, there was no program designed to locate the owners of the materiel left on trains and street-cars. It was simply summarily destroyed. According to a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that year, a “great assortment of odds and ends which have been picked up on the bridge cars and promenade during the past year were cremated in […]
BOYS HIGH GRADUATING CLASS (1907)
The inset black & white photograph is from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Wed., 19 June 1907, showing a portrait of the 1907 graduating class of Boys High School – 112 years ago! It has been superimposed over a Google Maps image of the exact same location today. Follow @BrownstoneDetec ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives The story you have just read was composed from extensive historical research conducted by The Brownstone Detectives. We perform in-depth investigations on the historic homes of our clients, and produce for them their very own House History Books. Our hardbound books contain an illustrated and colorful narrative timeline that will bring the history of any house to life. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
BOYS DROWNING AT CONEY ISLAND (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. ******************************************************************************************************************************** Lifesaving at Coney Island has existed since sunbathers have been flocking there to lie along the beach and swim in the surf. As such, there were constantly brave or foolish little boys who thought that they could swim further and further into the briny blue. Many such instances ended in drownings – or near drownings if the lifeguards got to you in time. Two such incidents occurred on one day in 1897. One, “Nathan Nichols, a Negro Boy,” had “drowned in the surf.” Nicholls, 18 years old, who was employed by a feed man on Neptune Avenue, whose custom it was every Sunday to give his employer’s horses a bath in the surf. About noon, Nicholls was riding one of the hoses in about seven feet of water, off the foot of Ocean Parkway when we was suddenly seen to slide from the animals’ back and disappear. When Nicholls did not reappear, a few people on shore who had been watching ran to the police station. A roundsman grappled for the body for an house but failed to locate it. The body had not been recovered. Worse must have been a drowning in the Gowanus Canal where, it might be expected, a boy would be able to grapple his way to shore before sinking into the murky depths. One […]
THE RETURN SLAVE TRADE IN DUMBO (1889)
Back in the 19th century, newspapers knew how to tell a good yarn. And who better to get their material from than sailors who were known for spinning a few of their own. So, in 1889, when reporters heard a rumor about a ship filled with escaped snakes and monkeys, many of the former making meals of many of the latter, they raced down to the shipyards to see what stories they could find. THE CLIPPER SHIP MONROVIA AT THE EMPIRE STORES Docked down at the Empire Stores, a chain of huge coffee warehouses strategically built near the Fulton shipyard docks – in what is today known as DUMBO – was a relatively new, 3-masted clipper bark, the Monrovia. The Monrovia’s original purpose was the Liberian trade, but as all shipping companies had to make up for costs in any way they could, they usually took on a trade in passengers. The clippers’s trade route was New York to Liberia, though, so there were few passenger sources other than missionaries – until they learned of the groups hoping to repatriate former slaves. In this case, at the request of the American Colonization Society, the Monrovia had been transferring black emigrants, many of them former slaves, back to their African homeland. OUT OF AFRICA On the date of her return to New York, the Monrovia was transporting in her holds palm oil, ginger, palm nuts, cattle hides, canewood, and coffee, the last of which, in particular, caused her to dock at […]
THE RENTERS OF CARROLL GARDENS (2017)
“A British cheese dealer, a newsman who predicted his own death, a leather merchant with a penchant for chorus girls, an alleged wife murderer, a German dentist with political aspirations, a Norwegian hero tugboat captain, and an Italian bomb builder…” These are many of the characters who were discovered during the recent investigation into the history of a Carroll Gardens brownstone. The historic property, No. 280 President Street, is an 1880 brownstone that was, additionally, built by a man who turned out to be the product of a clandestine relationship that rocked Brooklyn in the 1870s with stories of challenged wills, mental illness, and “other” women, presented under such headlines as “BEDEVILED” and “DRAKE’S WILL: His Illegitimate Children Most Carefully Provided for.” For nearly 100 years after the house was completed, No. 280 served its various owners as a rental property. The first owners to actually live in the home, Joachim and Eunice Auer, purchased it in 1979. After navigating redlining, remediating a rat and termite infestation, and entering into a year-long renovation, the Auers settled into enjoying their 2-story and basement home directly across the street from Carroll Park. While the Auers had always been interested in the history of their house (indeed, it was one of the reasons that they bought the house), and after doing some amount of research themselves, they decided to find someone who could more fully track down the history of their home. They turned to a detective – a Brownstone Detective. After a year […]
THE GREAT BROOKLYN FLOOD OF 1903
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** By 7 a.m. on Friday, 9 October 1903, the cellars all along Macon Street were completely inundated with water that was rising quickly toward the basement joists. Without let up, the turgid brown waters continued to pour into the homes through the under-stoop doorways until the floodwaters had reached the level of the basement windowsills, whereupon it then began to pour also through the windows and into the basement dining rooms. The Ocean Hill area, like much of Brooklyn, had fallen victim of the heavy rains that had been falling continuously for much of the night. All the residences along Hancock, McDonough, Macon, Decatur, Bainbridge and Chauncey Streets were so flooded that residents on the ground floor apartments discovered upon waking that they were forced to go to the second floors to escape the waters. “IN SARATOGA PARK…BENCHES WERE FLOATING ABOUT…” The paths in Saratoga Park, according to one newspaper account, “had become running streams and benches were floating about.” The nearby Putnam and Halsey streetcars stopped running, as “it was impossible to take on any passengers, as the water was as high as the seats.” Streets and sidewalks were submerged under several inches of water, and, eventually, furniture moving vans were pressed into service by the police to be used […]
