THE “HOODOO” BURGLAR OF BEDFORD (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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “In the arrest of Roy Hyden, a 25-year old Austrian, early this morning, Brooklyn’s most active burglar was run to earth and a heavy load lifted from the police mind. “Henry F. O’Connell, a special officer, who is employed by the residents in the neighborhood of Jefferson and Marcy avenues to watch their homes at night, caught the man shortly after 3 o’clock this morning, “with the goods on him.” O’Connell espied Hyden coming down the stoop of the home of Mrs. Maria C. de Porozo, at 254 Jefferson avenue, staggering under a weight, with his pockets bulging; the bay parlor window was wide open. Before Hyden reached the bottom of the stoop he was in the firm grasp of O’Connell. The latter lost no time in calling a patrol wagon and the prisoner was hustled to the Gates avenue police station. There he was joyfully received by Detective McGann, who relieved him of his burden. “No less than sixty-four pieces of silver, including knives, forks, spoons and other small diningroom articles, weore fished out of his commodius pockets. But what pleased the police more than all “the silverware, was a steel case-opener and an electric flashlamp, which were carefully stowed away in the lining of the prisoner’s overcoat. Hyden gave […]
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 […]
