A GANGLAND SLAYING AT 162 COURT (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? ********************************************************************************************************************************Above: The “Navy Yard Gang,” (l to r), (1) Stephen Collins, (2) John Keogh, (3) William Evans, (4) Frank Evans, and (5) Pellegrino Mucci On a frigid February evening in 1922, three young men stepped into the dimly lighted drugstore at No. 162 Court street in Cobble Hill. Druggist Paul J. Gillman, looking up from behind his counter, suspected something was up – the men, who seemed to be barely out of their teens, moved with a sense of purposelessness filled with less-than-good intentions. Gillman noticed as the first young man, who stood by the case in front of his prescription counter, pulled something from his coat and then began to walk towards the passageway leading to the place behind the counter where Gillman stood. “I just stood at the entrance and pointed the gun at him,” the gunman, William Evans, 23, of No. 24 Fort Greene Place, later explained to the police. “I told him to put his hands up.” The night, which was planned to be spent on a simple hold-up, would not turn out as the members of the “Navy Yard Gang” had expected, however, as Gillman would not be encouraged by what he certainly thought were young boys attempting to get away with a prank. Gillman, not complying […]
WHEN BROOKLYN WAS (PRE-) FAB (1946)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 Johnny came marching home again – he found a housing shortage. As World War II ended right on the tail end of the Depression, the City of New York realized it had a crisis on its hands. Relatively little housing had been built in the previous 15 years and suddenly, with the war winding down, veterans would be returning en masse to a “smaller” city. Robert Moses proposed the temporary solution that seemed to perfectly address the veteran housing shortage – quonset huts. Servicemen would certainly be familiar with them – those curved corrugated “shacks” so familiar to the boys who fought in the Pacific. Used there as quickly built administrative offices and barracks, they were the solution for an army “on-the-go.” But would veterans want to live in them – again? BROOKLYN’S HUTS GO UP In Brooklyn, after much heated debate as to what to build, where, and for how much, acres of land in Canarsie, Jamaica Bay, and the area along the Belt Parkway in the south of Brooklyn, were all selected upon which to build temporary public housing in the form of the Federal surplus quonset huts. These structures, with their curved, corrugated roofs, potbellied stoves in each living room for heat, and a common ground between […]
SPRING, DAY 1, “TAKING OF PARTNERS” (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** As the snow begins to melt and migrating birds begin to reappear upon the southern horizon, newspaper journalists have historically been excused if they turned to dreaminess and began to write in the style of Byron. “Yes, Gentle Reader,” cooed the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in its “First Day of Spring” edition of 1905, “Spring has arrived, even if the weather to-day seemingly belies the official dictum contained in the almanac that this is the first day of Gentle Spring.” (Wha-wha-whaaaaaaaaaaat???) “That poet who said that ‘In the Spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,’ might have added that it turns that way just the same in Summer, Winter and Fall, but because the sparrows and giraffes become playful as the snow clears and house-keeping becomes easier, it is assumed that the whole world neglects its other business at this season and addresses itself in the taking of partners.” (emmmmmm…..giraffes and…..ummmm……snow….?) “Hence the artist is excused by poetic license for including the human race in among the genus that mate when Spring hats and daisies bloom.” (Spring hats and….mating? okaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy….) “Nature smiles and young folks are of a part of nature.” Don’t take this stuff too seriously, folks. Just enjoy the 1st days of Spring – if you […]
WHEN WOOD HOUSES BECAME EXTINCT (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** On a cold December day in 1909, on a busy thoroughfare in Brownsville, the lives of hundreds of school children were invariably altered when a row of frame houses adjoining their school began to burn out of control. The flames “shot to the roof and then ran under the cockloft roof of ten two-story frame structures.” “Fanned by high wind, the smoke from the burning structures enveloped the schoolhouse,” noted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The school, which no longer exists, sat at one time on the corner of Dumont Avenue and Powell Street – where the Van Dyke II Senior Center now exists. The smoke enveloping P.S. 109, as the school was known, which had “accommodations for five thousand pupils,” had brought their “excited parents” by the dozens who “refused to believe at first that flames were not raging in the building.” “So quickly did the fire eat away through the row of frame houses that many of the inmates had narrow escapes.” That day, the city condemned at least 10 two-family houses which were housing approximately 25 families, making roughly 150 residents instantaneously homeless. EXTENDING THE FIRE LIMITS Advocates for the termination of the building of wood frame houses increased their pleas to city officials to extend the fire limits […]
THE KEEPING OF BROWNSTONES – 1, 2, 3 (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Every year new wonders are invented that will make housekeeping a pleasant occupation for the housewife. So declared the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in the 3 October 1909 edition of their paper in a “puff” piece on the latest in kitchen tools for the good housewife. The article slyly implied that women’s housework was difficult and so why not make it easier on her by purchasing the latest in kitchen gadgets. SELLING THE LATEST IN KITCHEN GADGETS These type puff articles were mostly fillers in the newspaper, but they also spoke to the housewife who was more often reading newspapers and sought out improvements in the tools she used in keeping house. (On the same page were articles entitled, “Artist or Woman,” “Women of Iceland Lead Active Lives,” and “The Making of Perfume.” Newspapers must have known what women wanted to read about back then!) This piece presented some of the newer tools available in the market – many of them simply improvements on older ones – that made life in the kitchen simpler. “The housewife who is dissatisfied with her present equipment…will not find it much of a task to secure new things,” the reporter informed. The correspondent then went on to lay out and describe the “newest production in metal […]
A CHILD SNATCHING ON CLASSON (1875)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** He was “large.” He was “repulsive looking.” And he wanted to steal a child. And so, when Michael Kelly, of No. 22 Franklin Avenue, heard the joyous amusements of a number of young children upon a stoop at No. 208 Classon Avenue, he was resigned that he should have one. Ascending to where they were, he seized little Josephine Carter, aged 3 years, and “despite her cries of alarm, began a hasty retreat.” As he reached the bottom step and turned to flee down the walkway, little Josephine’s head knocked violently against the iron railing, causing her to cry all the more loudly. The children who remained on the stoop, “their playmate having been removed so from their midst, were all terrified, and began to cry in concert.” This crying attracted the attention of a Mrs. Hartley, who resided next door at No. 206 Classon. She, “supposing there had been an accident of some sort, hastened to the street just in time to see Kelly running off with the little girl.” THE CHASE “Very pluckily she followed him for nearly half a block and finally overtook him. Demanding the instant release of the child, she wanted to know why he was carrying it away.” Kelly, though, pretended to be deaf and […]
