DRAPED IN OLD GLORY AT 159 ADELPHI (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Few men have lived lives of greater adventure and achievement than John Quevedo, whose body, in a flag-draped coffin, lies at his home, No. 159 Adelphi street, Brooklyn.” So read an article in the Duluth Evening News of 9 February 1905. “Fifty years in the United States Navy, a member of the crew that, under Commodore Perry, opened Japan to Western civilization, one of Farragut’s men in the big sea lighting of the Civil War and, greatest of all, one of the gallant crew that under Schley dared the perils of the frozen North and rescued Greely from his starvation camp at Cape Sabine. Such is the record of John Quevedo. “A Spaniard born, he had been in the American Navy since he was 16. His father was a bluejacket before him, and his son fought under Dewey at Manila, and is now instructor of gunnery at the Brooklyn navy yard. “For the past decade John Quevedo has been the storekeeper at the navy yard ever since a shell fell on his feel on board the Boston and incapacitated him from further active service. Two weeks ago the veteran was attacked by paralysis and gradually sank into death.” A GREELY RESCUE HERO “Of all his adventures, he spoke most proudly of […]
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 […]
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 […]
THE GHOST OF 281 STUYVESANT AVENUE (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “At last Stuyvesant Heights revels in the proud possession of a genuine haunted house.” This was back in 1901, when Stuy Heights was relatively young, the houses newish, and the ghosts scarce. But Stuyvesant Heights had everything back then – “a Republican Club, an amateur dramatic society,” and even “several asphalt streets where bashful maidens learn to wheel at night.” So why not a ghost? THE HAUNTING AT NO. 281 STUYVESANT AVENUE The Griffins, who had lived in the apartment house at the ground floor were terrorized by their electric bell ringing at 2 o’clock every afternoon. But they also heard “hollow groans,” “creepy sidesteps on the staircase,” and “unexpected trips from room to room of pieces of furniture.” It all got to be too much for the Griffins to handle, and so they fled. The Griffins moved to Williamsburgh. PERFECTLY GOOD EXPLANATIONS Some of the other tenants blamed the wind. A young woman who lived in the second floor apartment told an Eagle reporter that everything was perfectly explainable. “This house, you know, stands alone and the wind, when it sweeps into the vestibule, often comes hard enough to blow the whistle in the kitchen tube,” she explained. “Then it’s a fact that the pictures do move, but that’s caused […]
SHAKESPEARE AT NO. 24 BREVOORT PL (1928)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of its clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. ******************************************************************************************************************************** Henry C. Folger loved Shakespeare. His admiration for the author and his writings was such that he once paid $100K for a single folio of the bard’s work. The president of the Standard Oil Company was so smitten with Shakespeare’s works that, in 2014, a book, Collecting Shakespeare, was published about Folger and his collection. Folger, who started his relationship with Standard Oil as its director, would rise to become the chairman of its board, building a trusted relationship with the company’s owner, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. While frugal in the management of his money, Folger’s position with the largest oil company in the world certainly allowed him plenty of it to use in the pursuit of everything Shakespeare. And everything Shakespeare that he purchased for his collection eventually made its way to the library of their rented house at No. 24 Brevoort Place in Brooklyn, where the couple would live from 1910 through the early 1930s. FOLGER, BREVOORT, & SHAKESPEARE Henry Clay Folger’s collection of Shakespeareana included 35 copies of the 1623 first folio edition, of which only 200 copies were then known to be in existence. These earliest texts of William Shakespeare’s works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. While quartos are smaller volumes, folios are large, tall volumes, roughly […]
GUERRILLA MARKETING IN A DRESS (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** When Brooklyn saloon owners saw Carrie Nation entering their Broadway establishments carrying her ax, their first thought was to protect their liquor. But when that grand and radical old figure of the Victorian temperance movement approached their bars, they were stunned at her request. “Gimme a drink – or else!” The original goal of Nation’s ax-swinging was to promote the temperance movement through the visual image of the destruction of its foe – liquor. It brought new prominence to a movement whose most visual image to date had been old women lambasting the drinking ways of men. When she started swinging that ax, though, she got attention, and so, in extension, did the temperance movement. CARRIE NATION – COMES TO BROOKLYN? But Nation, whose anti-saloon message was promoted primarily in Kansas, was a shocking sight in the Eastern District of Broadway. She had recently visited New York City, though, and so no one was willing to challenge that ax in the bars up and down the avenue – even so close to the liquor center of Brooklyn – Bushwick Avenue. “Dressed in a plush sacque, a neat fitting skirt, an old fashioned bonnet and carrying in one hand a dilapidated carpet bag and in the other a wooden ax, a person, […]
HOW CASEY THE COP SPELT “KOSCIUSZKO” (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. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish military officer who helped the U.S. to gain independence from the British during the Revolutionary War. Because of his dedication there are numberous public locations named after him – including a street in Bed-Stuy. Even more numerous, though, are the tales about the difficulty in spelling the man’s name. The best tale, though, involves a tail – and a horse and a policeman. SPELLING KOSCIUSZKO “There was once an Irish policeman who was responding to the presence of a dead horse on Kosciuszko Street. Upon arriving at the scene of the dead horse, Casey began to write his report. When he got to the part where he was supposed to write the location in which the horse was discovered, the policeman faltered. “He did not know how to spell the street name. “So, Casey looked at the horse and then at his report, and he thought. A few moments later, he shoved the half-finished report in his cap, grabbed the horse by its tail, and began dragging it down the street to the corner of Marcy Avenue. Once there, he stopped, pulled the report out from his cap, and added the ‘location’ of the dead horse – ‘Marcy Avenue.’” By the way, back 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.
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 […]
