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.
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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 twice the size.
These were a part of Folger’s private library at No. 24 Brevoort Place which consisted of some 25,000 volumes.
“In the quality of its items it is not surpassed even by the British Museum,” noted Henry Putnam of the Library of Congress.
For the unique Gwynn volume of nine plays (1619) he purchased in 1920 for $100,000 from the Rosenbach Company in Philadelphia.
An English biographer, writer, and critic, Sir Sidney Lee, told the Shakespeare Society of London that he had written to Folger recently “asking him particulars about one of his copies.
“He replied that his books were in packing cases in his cellar and that there was not much likelihood of their being quickly released. He seemed to think first folios ought to be put in bins in cellars like first vintages.”
“That he will ever seek to fill a wine cellar with boxed-up first folios is simply unthinkable,” noted an editor for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Thus, it is was a detail of historical note that these highly valuable and rare folios of Shakespeare’s were stored – at least for a time – in the wine cellar at No. 24 Brevoort Place, in Brooklyn. It was around the 1920s, however, that Folger began to think of his legacy and where the folios (and the rest of his library) would end up when he passed.
“While a number of American universities offered to house the collection,” noted author Stephen H. Grant in Collecting Shakespeare, “the Folgers wanted to give it to the American people.
“Afraid the price of antiquarian books would soar if their names were revealed, they secretly acquired prime real estate on Capitol Hill near the Library of Congress. They commissioned the design and construction of an elegant building with a reading room, public exhibition hall, and the Elizabethan Theatre.
“The Folger Shakespeare Library was dedicated on the Bard’s birthday, April 23, 1932.”
FOLGER & THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
It was announced in 1928 that Folger would erect a library in Washington, D.C., in the rear of the Library of Congress, to house his collection and make an endowment for its maintenance.
According to the library’s Wikipedia page, “The cornerstone of the library was laid in May 1930, but Folger died soon afterward. The bulk of Folger’s fortune was left in trust, with Amherst College as administrator, for the library.
“Early members of the board included Amherst graduate and former president Calvin Coolidge, second chairman of the Board of Trustees. Because of the stock market crash of 1929, Folger’s estate was smaller than he had planned, although still substantial.
Emily Folger, Henry’s wife, spoke at the Cambridge Club after the Library’s opening. Her subject was “The Dream Came True.” The dream that came true was the imposing white marble library building devoted to the works of drama of Shakespeare that was dedicated on 23 April 1932, Shakespeare’s birthday.
Every year the Library holds events which commemorate the bard and its collection of his works that began in the house on a small street in Brooklyn – No. 24 Brevoort Street.
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