THE BOY AUTHOR OF 224 MONROE ST (1914)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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 1914, Gilbert P. Simons was being lauded for his first book. Simons, however, was no typical writer – he was a 13-year-old Brooklyn boy who had just written and published his very own book. “Shadorok Tales,” Simons’ work, was a foundational “collection of stories by him and his cousins and friends, none of whom is a great deal older than he.” WRITING THE BOOK ON MONROE STREET The entire affair began when Simons, who “in the winter lived at 224 Monroe street (near the corner of Nostrand Avenue), and in the summer at Blauvelt, N.Y.,” was given “a printing press and type by his father on Christmas of 1912,” noted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Little Simons appears to have had a leg up in his young publishing career by a father who worked for the Daily Eagle, which was Brooklyn’s newspaper of record. Simons started at first printing invitations, cards, circulars, billheads, &c., but then “the big idea of the book took hold of Gilbert and his father. “Everyone who was asked to contribute did so,” noted the Daily Eagle of the compilation volume of stories, “and soon there was enough ‘copy’ on hand to begin ‘setting it up.’” In 1915, the book was finished and printed up by the Shadorok […]
