A REALTOR ON THE PARK SLOPE (1885)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1885, Park Slope was still expanding at a rapid clip; houses were being built and sold to those members of a future Brooklyn elite who were then moving from Manhattan across a recently completed Brooklyn Bridge. Enter John A. Schilling of 429 5th Avenue (btwn 8th and 9th streets), who cared for all of Prospect Park Slope’s realty and insurance needs. Schilling appears to have been at the Fifth Avenue location from 1882 through at least 1894, at which time, probably due to the Panic of 1893, the real estate market dried up. These bad economic times, which lasted most of the decade, would force him to go out of business and sell his office – after which he would seek other employment. With his Republican political connections, and the fact that another German, Republican Charles A. Schieren, had just been elected mayor of Brooklyn, that work came in civil service positions which had him working for various Brooklyn city agencies. Schilling was also a Civil War veteran, which was common for men his age living in Park Slope during the period. When Schilling passed in 1910 on Montague Terrace in Brooklyn Heights, he was memorialized in the press as “very popular among his associates.” Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– The […]
A TREE FALLS ON PROSPECT PLACE (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** On the night of July 11, 1901, Brooklyn experienced a “Wind Storm” that knocked down a number of trees. One of those fallen trees crossed Prospect Place between 5th and 6th Avenues. One man “barely escaped the fallen tree, with the outer limbs grazing his body.” The storm must not have done much damage, though, as this picture – in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle – was the only reference to it. Just a little over a week earlier, though, trees were falling faster than Brooklyn home prices in 2009, when a wind storm killed two men at Coney Island and caused extensive damage at Parkville (a suburb then just west of Kensington). “Great trees, four and five feet in circumference, were uprooted and hurled across fences and into yards where gardens were the pride of the household,” noted the Eagle. “When the strong winds swept across the open fields between Coney Island avenue and the Ocean Parkway between Franklin avenue and Avenue D,” the Eagle continued, “it carried away with it four frame cottages being erected by the Morris Construction Company.” When the skies had finally cleared, the locals would view the distruction – the suburb was “full of wreckage. Every street was full of fallen trees…” Follow @BrownstoneDetec Share ———————————————————————————————————————– […]
