FINDING $1.5M IN YOUR BROWNSTONE (1934)
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?
********************************************************************************************************************************
Does a small fortune lie secreted away within the walls of your brownstone?
If you live in a certain Park Slope brownstone, you may want to start looking…
THE FORTUNE AT NO. 292 12th STREET
(The following story comes from the Friday, 2 November 1934 edition of the Home Talk section of The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.)
She died as she had lived—alone.
Miss Louisa Herle, 74-year-old wealthy recluse, of No. 292 12th St., was the Hetty Green of South Brooklyn, and although she slept on a dilapidated leatherette lounge in her kitchen, she left a fortune of $1,500,000.
The dead body of the aged spinster was found lying on the lounge Wednesday, where it had lain for three days. She had removed her shoes before she lay down, and her stockings had been placed over the arm of a rocking chair.
In the squalid two rooms on the street floor of the old brownstone house, Miss Herle had lived since 1916, when her brother had died. Following his death she closed the upper floors of the-house, and the rooms, inches deep in dust, and piled high with broken furniture, had never been opened since.
Three heavily barred doors led into the living room where an old fashioned safe stood. Miss Herle, who had been almost totally deaf for a number of years, never heard the doorbell. But she could hear the bark of a dog, and for that reason she kept one.
A hungry Boston terrier was beside the body when it was found.
That she lived in constant fear of robbers was revealed by her next door neighbor, James Scarry. Miss Herle frequently reminded her neighbor that she possessed a police whistle, and that if ever he heard her blow three blasts, he was to rush to her aid—for it meant trouble.
Frugality, shrewdness and courage were the factors that aided Miss Herle to amassing the immense fortune. She abandoned the grocery store business of meager profits that Her father Jacob Herle carried on in 1884 at 12th St. and 5th Ave., and which she and her brothers George and Henry had carried on after his death. Clever in matters of finance, she began buying mortgages, property that was foreclosed, and promising land sites.
She owned extensive holdings in store front property in South Brooklyn.
MEETING THE SCARRY’S
Miss Herle never spoke of business affairs when she called on the Scarry family, and it has been only during the last year that she became friendly with them. The friendship began when Mrs. Scarry received a C. O. D. package addressed to Miss Herle, which arrived while the aged woman was away on one of her many business calls. Mrs. Scarry paid the charge^—thus establishing herself as a “friend.”
Wearing old clothes and buying scantily of food, Miss Herle spent her money sparingly. About once a month she visited the office of her attorney, Elmer J. Ashmead, to Jamaica, making the trip by street car. The fare was five cents each way and the round trip consumed about four hours.
A few battered chairs and tables, a gas stove and a rusty coal range and a rickety secretary were the only furnishings in the rooms Miss Herle called “home.”
Ornaments of cheap glass and chinaware clutter the mantel and the dirty floors were bare. The washstand and the kitchen sink though were immaculately clean. On the former were laid a silver-backed hairbrush and comb.
Two pictures were hung on the walls—large framed prints of “The Last Supper” and the “Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.” From a crowded pigeonhole of her desk spilled a handful of cards reading: Louise Herle, At Home Thursday, From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mortgagors called at her home to pay interest and no one would be received after 2 o’clock.
“Miss Herle was a well informed woman,” a neighbor stated. The only books that she owned included a hand-size Bible and a dictionary and two other books entitled “Every Man His Own Lawyer-Business Form Book, by Wells” and “The Gentleman’s New Pocket Farrier: A General Description of the Noble, and Useful Animal, the Horse, 1865.”
A moldy set of harness and sleigh bells hung in the entryway.
Miss Herle liked to read the daily papers and her neighbors say that she went out at 6:30 in the morning for her morning paper. She read two editions daliy of The Brooklyn Eagle, the early and late editions.
The strange and lonely woman liked to putter around her house and made repairs herself in plumbing-even wired the two rooms for electricity. From one base plug in the front room, she had extended crudely tacked wires up the wall and along the ceiling to a drop light over the table. A similar hookup was used to light the kitchen. Old gaslight fixtures were unused.
About ten days ago she painted a high board fence adjoining her home. She performed the tedious task with a two-inch brush. It was the carpenter who built the fence who aided in discovering the body of Miss Herle. He had called to collect his pay for the fence building job.
REMINISCING ABOUT WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
In her occasional visits to the Scarry home, Miss Herle would delight in reminiscence. Of the rides to Coney Island with her father in their horse drawn “buggy,” their old home on New York Ave. – and the wonderful pies and cakes that her mother baked. She told, too of a romance that began in her childhood–and ended only last year with the death of her former suitor.
She wouldn’t tell his name, the gentleman who presented her with a ring when she was 17 years old. They planned to marry, but Louisa was needed in the grocery store. Later, after the death of her father, Louisa was needed to help her brothers carry on the business.
So the wedding was postponed from year to year, as related by the elderly romanticist, until finally the gentleman married someone else. Following the death of his wife, many years later, the thread of friendship was picked up again. But there was no longer talk of marriage.
It was true love,” Miss Herle told Mr. Scarry one day. “He never knew that I had any money.” She often stated that she would have liked to have married and had four children.
PROBATUS
In a bewildering state of disorder, Miss Herle’s shabby home is guarded today by a police guard. The sealed safe stands amid a clutter of rags, papers and other debris, that has been turned over and over by searchers for the will of the deceased woman.
Although the lawyer, Mr. Ashmead, professes to know nothing of the existence of such a document, Mrs. Bernhard Christian Baumgarten, of Woodhaven who served Miss Herle as secretary, expressed the opinion that a will had been drawn up.
The nearest relatives of Miss Herle are four second cousins. They are Mrs. Ashmead, wife of the lawyer, Mrs. Grace Hamilton, of Jamaica, and Mrs. Frederick May and Miss Katherine Herle of Germany.
Miss Herle will be buried this afternoon at 2 o’clock from the funeral home at No. 187 S. Oxford St, with interment taking place in Evergreens Cemetery, where her parent and brothers are buried.
———————————————————————————————————————–
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.
