CSI: MURDER ON THE PARK SLOPE? (1893)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 badly decomposed body was discovered in the basement of a tony Park Slope brownstone, two of Brooklyn’s best detectives were put on the case. THE SETTING “Thomas Dempsey a retired merchant, who lives with his young wife and mother in law in a handsome brown stone house at 248 Garfield place, near Eighth avenue, rushed into the Bergen street police station in a fluster late yesterday afternoon,” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, declaring “that he had just found his servant Edith lying dead in the basement of the laundry.” Dempsey was in an anxious state, the paper noted, observing that he wanted “the body removed without delay as it was badly decomposed and also to have the fullest investigation possible made by the police.” THE WEEK BEFORE THE DISCOVERY Mr. Dempsey, with his wife and mother in law, departed for a vacation trip to Asbury Park on 9 August 1893. They left the house and a pet pug dog in charge of Edith Moe, “a middle aged genteel looking woman” of 35, who was “of a very nervous disposition and who seemed dreadfully afraid to let her friends know that she was living out.” Mr. Dempsey’s mother-in-law, it was learned, had hired Edith, so Mr. Dempsey did not know […]
A RAILROAD FOR PARK SLOPE’S 8TH ST. (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Few of today’s Park Slope residents know about them. In early February of 1904, however, they suddenly appeared on Eighth Street between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue, an industrial omen in a white shoe neighborhood. These dark and foreign objects were a set of iron railroad tracks that had been – overnight – inserted coarsely into a place where they did not belong – residential suburbia. The block where these alien metals and wood had descended, had just barely been settled recently with homes (and even more recently with families). It had just seen itself partially developed with a row of eight upscale apartment houses on the north side of the street and 12 two-story & basement limestone houses on its south. With the recent spate of construction, there were – at the time the tracks appeared – a mere four families that had purchased “handsome houses” on the block, which they had taken possession of at “fancy prices.” Now, those with an interest on the block were showing “great alarm.” With the appearance of the tracks, residents fully expected their properties to be “ruined in value,” causing them to begin considering selling them at a discount and to ignominiously leaving the neighborhood. The builder of the limestones, Sen. William […]
THE SEVEN SISTERS OF LINCOLN PLACE (1906)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 the Big Bad Wolf had had anything to do with it, he would have always voted for the predictability of a good detached wood-frame villa. It had gotten him far in his day and, what’s more, it had gotten him fed. But it wasn’t the Three Little Pigs’ hairy nemesis that was making housing decisions in Park Slope, Brooklyn around the turn of the last century. Rather, it was the Pigs, themselves, who wanted more modern, sturdier, up-to-date brick and masonry structures. THE DEATH OF VILLAS In early 20th century Brooklyn, a combination of home buyers’ indicators was guiding downward the valuation of older Victorian-era properties. First of all, impacting the long-term downward trajectory, there were the laws promoting fire zones that prevented structures built with wood frames from being constructed going forward. There was also their susceptibility to fire (which prompted these fire zones in the first place). And there was their age – a large number of free-standing villas still around in Brooklyn at the time were at least 25 years old – most others were many years older that that. Most visible, however, were the tastes of the early 20th century home buyers which leaned heavily in the direction of sturdy masonry buildings. The variable, however, which […]
