THE CHANGING FACE OF MACON STREET (1908)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** While researching the history a local brownstone, we located an old postcard of a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The sepia paper photograph gives an idea of the innate promise of the neighborhood back in 1908 as it was still being built up with new brownstones, limestones, and rowhouses. That picture postcard, featured above, shows a stretch of Macon Street – replete with newly built rowhouses – that starts at the back of the Saratoga Library on Thomas S. Boyland Street (then, it was Hopkinson Avenue), and ends about halfway down the block before reaching a row of barrel-fronted 2-family houses and the one-time parking garage at the corner of Saratoga Avenue (now the Shirley Chisholm Day Care Center). Interestingly, this part of Macon Street still had its dirt (mud on rainy days) street as late as 1908. Residents of the area had been complaining to the City of Brooklyn (by 1908, the borough of Brooklyn) since the 1890s about the slow pace of street paving in the district. Home building had gone on at such a fast clip during this period that the city had struggled to keep up with the builders. The houses that are the focal point of the snapshot were the first put up on the block – what […]
TO CATCH A MACDOUGAL STREET THIEF (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. ******************************************************************************************************************************** When investigating the history of a house, we sometimes come across a jewel that details an event which took place within the structure. The following narrative from 1910 tells a story involving the homeowner of No. 274 MacDougal Street, a rowhouse in the Ocean Hill section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, who happened upon a would-be burglar entering his home through an open window late one night. The homeowner, Charles Ortman, an engineer, had recently moved to the newly-built structure with his small family. Ortman showed a presence of mind not typical of someone faced with an intruder attempting to gain access to his home. Using old newspaper stories, city insurance maps, and census records, we reconstruct the case. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 November 1910 – “Charles Ortman, an engineer last night shot a burglar who was in the act of breaking into his home at 274 McDougal street. The shooting was witnessed by his 12-year-old son, Charles, and by his wife, who had followed him out to the dining room, where the thief’s face had appeared pressed close to the window pane. “Whether the would be intruder was slightly or fatally wounded the police do not know. He had disappeared when a policeman of the Ralph avenue station arrived, in response to a summons from the Ortman home. But there was […]
THE “IMPOSING” VIEW FROM OCEAN HILL (1848)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Before there was Ocean Hill—the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood—there was Ocean Hill—the section of Green-Wood Cemetery. Whether one influenced the other is lost to the ages. What is clear, however, is that both locations got their names from a geographical point from which a body of water could clearly be viewed. “At this point, now known as Ocean Hill,” described a contributor (whose pen-name, revealingly, was Investment) in an edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published just a few years before the Civil War began, “we have reached the highest point on the avenue (Fulton Street) and the most commanding elevation of ground in the city; and which, for grandeur, beauty and variety of its scenery, cannot be surpassed. “The ocean view,” Investment continued, “is especially grand and imposing.” Investment, whose contribution to the paper existed as a thinly veiled promotional piece for Brooklyn, was describing the “advance in the value of Brooklyn real estate.” From Fulton Ferry he advanced down Fulton Avenue to “gather such information as will enable the public to form an intelligent estimate as to the present and prospective value of property on and near this great thoroughfare.” “At this point Fulton avenue is distant but a few hundred feet from Atlantic avenue on the south, and Broadway on […]
WHEN BUSHWICK MET OCEAN HILL (1923)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Ocean Hill” was still settling softly into the Brooklyn lexicon of place names as a working class suburb in 1923. Bushwick, on the other hand, was already very well-known in the borough for its German breweries and beer gardens. But where the two met – and they met, all right – there were SPARKS! (…or maybe a bank or real estate office….) This snapshot was taken at the intersection of Broadway and Hopkinson Avenue (later to be renamed Thomas S. Boyland Street). The building there on the corner in 1923 held the Bushwick National Bank and Frederick W. Erdtmann’s real estate offices. The Bushwick National Bank came into existence the same year that this photograph was taken – probably the reason for the photograph and the patriotic bunting all around the building; the bank ended up merging with the Globe Exchange Bank in 1929, and so had a short life of about six years. Frederick W. Erdtmann, a realtor who lived at 868 Macon Street and then above his real estate offices in this building, had filed for bankruptcy in 1913 before this photo was taken. He was back in the real estate business by 1919 and did well for himself in the 1920s. Who the old woman and the young […]
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 […]
OCEAN HILL VS. OCEAN HILL
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Before there was Ocean Hill, there was…Ocean Hill…. Researching the history of this Brooklyn moniker, though, points you in the direction of two very different places with two very different histories. There is the original Ocean Hill in Green-Wood Cemetery, a geographic location used famously by George Washington during the American Revolution. And then, there is the Ocean Hill in the eastern section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, created by developers in 1860s Bushwick. The only characteristic the two places have had in common – other than the name – was a view of the ocean from their perches. But, now, even that is gone for one of them. OCEAN HILL – GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY Ocean Hill in Brooklyn’s City of the Dead, Green-Wood Cemetery, is likely as old as the cemetery itself, which dates from 1838. While it was not likely known as such during the American Revolution, the high vantage point was used by George Washington before the Battle of Brooklyn to observe the British forces, which were gathering to the south (and which would subsequently drive him out of New York). Ocean Hill according to Green-Wood Illustrated (issue 1), “is one of the most elevated spots in the Cemetery,” and “it occupies the north-eastern corner of the grounds.” “The sea itself,” the […]
