BROOKLYN: 66 VIEWS OF THE STORM (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. ******************************************************************************************************************************** In 1888, Adrian Vanderveer Martense, a member of an old Brooklyn Dutch family and resident of Flatbush, snapped 66 photographs throughout the 1888 Blizzard. Those photographs are with us to this day at the Brooklyn Visual Heritage. According to the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Martense family built a homestead in Flatbush which included land that is now part of Green-Wood Cemetery. Their homestead stood for several generations until the family sold it in 1889, when Flatbush was transitioning from a farming community into an inner suburb. For Adrian Vanderveer Martense, Flatbush became a subject for his photography. He documented houses, streets, and his friends and neighbors in Flatbush, as well as the momentous Blizzard of 1888. Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives Brownstone Detectives is a property research agency. Our mission is to research, document, and save the histories of our clients’ historic properties. From this research, we produce our celebrated House History Books. Each book is fully cited, featuring detailed narratives and colorful graphics, and is designed to bring the history of any house to life. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
RESCUE OPERATION ON “BOERUM HILL” (1964)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 Boerum Hill residents do not know the name Helen Buckler – but they should. While she wasn’t instrumental in building Boerum Hill, she was the reason it got its name. She also started the organization that ushered in the wave of brownstoners and brownstoning in the area, the Boerum Hill Association. Brownstoning – or the renovation of brownstones back to their former glory – is not a recent trend. Like many other movements, brownstoning appeared in parts of New York City in waves as good/bad economic times ebbed and flowed, neighborhoods fell in and out of fashion, and young professionals, who were usually the harbingers of those waves, “discovered” New York City’s 19th century brownstones. One of those waves washed over Brooklyn in the early 1960s. Helen Buckler rode, from her Dean Street brownstone, firmly atop the crest of that era’s wave. She named it Boerum Hill. BOERUM HILL BEGINS A few years after Buckler bought No. 238 Dean Street, she started the Boerum Hill Association. Then, already at the age of 70, she was no ordinary brownstoner. Her enthusiasm attracted to the organization approximately 20 like-minded families who were also interested in renovating their brownstones in the area. The purpose of the organization was to improve the community and […]
NEW YORK CITY’S IRISH HOUSE OF LORDS (1912)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “(New York City) is never the same city for a dozen years together. A man born in New York forty years ago finds nothing, absolutely nothing, of the New York he knew. If he chance to stumble upon a few old houses not yet leveled, he is fortunate. But the landmarks, the objects which marked the city to him, as a city, are gone.” – Harper’s Monthly, 1856 ******************************************************************************************************************************** It was an unassuming ancient wood-frame house – said to be one of the last of its kind in Yorkville – and it was entering its final Fenian days. The building, which had been purchased half a century before in 1860, at the princely sum of $10K, by the then-current owner, John Sheehy, had, through the death of said owner, been forced in 1912 upon the chopping block for sale to the highest bidder. The history of the structure, though, had been more known, in some ways, to the British War Department of the past half century than it had been, generally, to many of the locals of Yorktown where it had sit for more than most could remember. For, it had taken on the fantastical aura of the gathering place of patriots, as well as the auspicious mantel of the “Irish […]
HOUSE HISTORY RULE No. 23 – PARAPETS (1910)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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. ******************************************************************************************************************************** House History Rule No. 23: “The more elaborate a house’s parapet, the less likely it will survive.” When you look up to the top of any brownstone, rowhouse, or townhouse, you sometimes see a parapet, an extension of sorts above the cornice which adds a certain grandeur or majesty to any building. The problem with many of these parapets, though, was their susceptibility to the elements. Over time, they wore, rotted, and simply fell apart. Eventually, these ornate elements of design were removed to prevent further damage to the structural integrity of the houses they graced. Built by Otto Singer in 1909, these 1-Family brick houses, exist on West 8th St. & King’s Hwy., in Bensonhurst. Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– The Brownstone Detectives Brownstone Detectives is a property research agency. Our mission is to research, document, and save the histories of our clients’ historic properties. From this research, we produce our celebrated House History Books. Each book is fully cited, featuring detailed narratives and colorful graphics, and is designed to bring the history of any house to life. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
BEECHER’S BROWNSTONE GETS A RENO (1940)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1940, Nora Sullivan embarked upon a renovation of 66 Cranberry Street. It was an historic brownstone built in the mid-1800s, at some point being occupied by the Joel Osteen of his day, the great abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher probably selected the house to be close to his job next door, as the phenomenally popular preacher at Plymouth Church. Before the house had been built, like many other structures in old Brooklyn Heights, two wood frame buildings had graced the spot. These particular structures had been used as a school for boys. Later in the 1840s, though, a “foundling,” deposited on the building’s stoop “in a basket,” was “discovered in the front yard of Mr. Henry Ruggle,” the owner at the time of 66 Cranberry in its previous iteration. The scandal, though, lay in the fact that, upon the baby’s arrival at the mayor’s office – where abandoned babies were apparently brought back then – it was discovered that when the “habilments” were examined, they were “found to be of fine quality and of elaborate workmanship” which were indicative that “its late possessors are an unworthy portion of the ‘upper ten.’” Amongst the other discoveries in the baby’s basket was a “fine cambric handkerchief marked ‘E,’” which was “the […]
BODY-BUILDING IN THE GOWANUS (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Brooklyn’s Third Avenue was always just a bit gritty – even before the city decided it needed a motorway there to help ease congestion. That was when it started construction on the Gowanus Expressway in 1939. Traffic, though, had always been a large part of the avenue’s make-up. Even before the motorized vehicles, there were the horse-driven vehicles – cars, vans, streetcars, &c. But it was not just the vehicles that motored along the road that gave Third Avenue its rep – it was also those that parked alongside it – on lots, motor pools, parts yards, and other commercial properties. DONIGAN & NEILSON: BODY-BUILDERS One company that fit perfectly into its surroundings was Donigan & Neilson at 743-747 Third Avenue. This partnership’s firm catered to those commercial companies that operated using a variety of vehicles – to deliver, to haul, to move, &c. Donigan & Neilson built the bodies for those commercial vehicles – designing, building and assembling the bodies for hacks, trucks, vans, delivery wagons, and the like. This, of course, was before the assembly-line manufactured truck, when it made sense to have a commercial truck body made to order. According to their advertising, Donigan & Neilson began operations in 1875, when only horses propelled vehicles, and they were […]
