BARBERS ARRESTED FOR SHAVING? (1896)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Imagine the “perp walk” from 489 Nostrand in early 1896, when two barbers – who were operating out of that address – were arrested for giving shaves. George Jackson and Thomas Lorrain, barbers employed by William Reiss, whose shop was at the above location, were hauled from their cells and into the Gates avenue police court the next day and fined $5 each. The barber law, known formally as the “Sunday Shaving Law,” was passed in 1895 and was probably a part of the blue laws that prohibited certain activities on Sunday (such as drinking) which were coming into vogue in the period. A few years later, though, another “Barber Law” was enacted which regulated the industry for reasons of enforcing cleanliness and hygiene; additionally it caused all barbers to be licensed and to receive training, prompting many a Brooklyn gentleman to be heard wondering aloud: “Can’t a man just get a shave around here?” 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.
THE BROOKLYN BARBER WHO BURGLED (1904)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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. ******************************************************************************************************************************** Abe Miller was fond of burglary. You might say that it was in his bones. He could not resist it any more than a child could resist candied apples at the fair. He burgled countless Brooklyn and Manhattan homes – more, certainly, than he was ever tried and convicted for – crossing the North River, at times, to burgle still more in New Jersey. Miller, aka Abram Miller, aka Abram Skudden, aka Abe Skudin, &c., &c., &c…was a burglar, though, of little note. As his life of crime ran from the early 20th century through 1940, he had been caught, convicted, and sentenced many times over. But he never reformed. GETTING MARRIED, ARRESTED, & DRAFTED Researching people who are long dead is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle that you find between the cushions of a couch – the pieces are a little dusty, some are broken, and usually they are not all there. In the end, if you do not have the puzzle’s box top, you are left to guess at what the whole picture looks like. This was the case with “Abe Miller.” THE PART ABOUT GETTING “MARRIED” & “DRAFTED” Miller first shows up in government records in 1904 when he married Lena Silverman 14 August on Manhattan. Both were from Russia, the two remaining […]
BENSONHURST BOY EATEN BY LIONS (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Most people who hear about lions attacking, mauling, and killing human beings envision these violent scenes taking place in the natural habitat of these beasts where they roamed and hunted prey. But the country was mystified by a story that came out a little more than 100 years ago about just such a lion assault – taking place in Chicago. DAREDEVIL DIETRICH AND THE SIX LIONS The son of a wealthy Bensonhurst architect, Emerson D. Dietrich was a graduate of Erasmus High School. He had lived with his parents and his three brothers at 8642 Bay Parkway until he had joined the circus just six months prior to his death. Dietrich, it was learned, had wanted to be near the lions, of which he was fond, and so he had become the manager of Madame Adgie Castillo, the lion trainer. Dietrich, 24, had lived a daredevil’s life, according to his father, who spoke to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle the day after the attack. “He won medals of every sort, but he joined no society,” the elder Dietrich said, “for he was a society in himself. “He had hundreds of friends who came to see him. He didn’t need a society. Then in 1909, he graduated and, for the first time we, […]
THE ROMANCE OF A BOTTLE NOTE (1902)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Floating along in the water, down the southern shore of Martha’s Vineyard, came bobbing a corked green beer bottle with what looked suspiciously like a note inside. Coaxing the bottle to shore with a stick, Harold A. Thomas barely got his shoes wet in retrieving the missive. It was certainly a distress call from the survivors of a sunken ship marooned on some unknown exotic island. Upon uncorking the bottle, Thomas fished the note out with some effort, unrolled the coarse paper, and began to read the nicely penned lines therein: “On board the good old ship Southwark the first day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and two, we, the ‘Smart Set,’ have assembled in Cabin No. 5, to celebrate the last night of a most agreeable voyage.’ Not the note that Thomas had expected, his hopes of saving the daughter of an ambassador or the owner of a large and profitable railroad company, were suitably dashed against those great rocks that had so recently been the cause of the imagined marooning. Thomas, hoping to salvage something from his discovery, read on. “A reward of $5 will be given to any mortal or immortal who will bring this note to Howard S. Parker, 414 Madison street, […]
CONEY LOOP SENDS GIRL TO ASYLUM! (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Oh, mamma! They tied me in the ‘loop the loop’ and I shall die. My head is on fire!” So cried Bertha Zwickler who earlier that day had ridden Coney Island’s latest “attraction,” the “Loop The Loop,” a sort of looping roller coaster that was among the first ever built. The day after her ride on what the New York Evening World referred to as the “idiots’ joy,” Bertha lay babbling incoherently on Ward’s Island in the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES It was a strange story. It was not the reasoning, though, behind this new “rage against the machines.” It seemed that the powers that were in the city had simply had enough of the madly raging carnival atmosphere of Coney Island, which, according to its chieftains, had broken out and gone beyond all moral and ethical boundaries for the period. The Evening World sensed this wickedness incarnate and the political atmosphere brewing, and so they decided to make hay with this story. They literally foamed at the mouth over the Loop the Loop, describing Zwickler after the event: “She was the main support of a family of seven, and in her ravings the helplessness of those to whom she devoted her young life is […]
“PEACE” COMES TO STUYVESANT EAST (1921)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 2014, The Brownstone Detectives partnered with the New York City Parks Department to help celebrate the lives of the servicemembers of Bedford-Stuyvesant Heights who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Great War. We researched these heroes to locate pictures, stories, and their descendants to be brought together for a ceremony that dedicated a new “Victory and Peace” war memorial at Saratoga Park. ******************************************************************************************************************************** After nearly three years of mourning, Stuyvesant East was ready to remember its dead in a very public way. On 11 September 1921, after neighbors in the eastern section of Stuyvesant Heights had spent two years collecting the $6,000 necessary to defray the cost of a war memorial, the Victory and Peace statue was finally delivered to Saratoga Square. With great pomp and circumstance, amid a good deal of political speech-making and the delivery of grandiose eulogies and war veterans celebrating the war’s end, the 6-ton war memorial, sculpted by James Novelli, was unveiled at the Saratoga Avenue entrance to the Saratoga Square in front of more than 3,000 witnesses. “The eastern end of the park had been appropriately decorated with the monument draped in large American flags which at the presentation were dropped by two servicemembers presenting to view the ten-foot Milford granite memorial.” Revealed was […]
