HITLER’S BROOKLYN BROWNSTONE (1940)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** I know. I know. So dramatic, right? You must be thinking that we’re using a figure of speech in a misguided attempt to characterize a Brooklyn slumlord, right? I mean, he’d have to be a really nasty landlord to get the Hitler comparison. Takes your deposit and keeps the heat off in the winter? Goes into your place when you’re not there? Charges you part of the common area bill? What a dictator! But hold on, because there’s actually a story behind this. A good one… WHAT TO DO WITH A “CRUMMY BUILDING”? Once upon a time, in the City of Churches, two Manhattan attorneys – who had allowed the mortgage payments to lapse on a certain “crummy building” they owned – were discussing legal strategy. These two gentlemen, Julius Freilicher and Martin Auslander of 1 Park Place, had a $3,300 mortgage on their tenement – 541 Clinton Street in Carroll Gardens – with the Dime Savings Bank. The two advocates had determined that it was not in their best interests to pay the mortgage, but they also did not like the idea of losing. They were attorneys, you know. So, they opted for a scheme that would be the next best thing. One day when the bank was about to […]
MURDER AT No. 248 PRESIDENT ST (1916)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Joseph Russo had a good reputation. He was a 26-year-old longshoreman with a strong work ethic. But when his wife was discovered with a bullet between her eyes, Detective Coughlin figured he would search the place. And when the dust had settled, the police were in possession of nine weapons and Russo was in lock-up. INVESTIGATING THE CRIME Carroll Gardens by this time had changed from the lower middle class Irish neighborhood that it had once been, into a working-class Italian community with numerous Italian criminal gangs. Violence was a common daily occurrence and reports of abductions, shoot-outs, and kidnappings for ransom were often in the papers. Still, the police had, during the investigation, come to believe that “the bullet that killed his wife was fired accidentally.” Russo told the police that he had been “cleaning an automatic pistol about 10 P.M. with his wife seated across the table from him with the baby, Anthony, in her lap.” After Russo had removed the magazine, he had forgotten that “a cartridge had been left in the chamber.” Then, apparently, continuing to clean and oil the weapon, Russo pulled the trigger and the cartridge “exploded.” First, gracing the face of the baby, whom Rose had seated on the table, the bullet then “entered […]
HORSEWHIPS, HARLEYS & HEROES ON CLASSON
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** “Every house has a story to tell.” That is how the Brownstone Detectives visualizes every structure, building, and house – as historical repositories for their human narratives. And the Brownstone Detectives, a for-hire historical research team, has investigated many of the stories that are a part of these narratives. And Brownstone Detectives has literally seen them all – from accounts concerning a house’s residents (unrequited love, murder, discrimination, &c.) to those involving the buildings themselves (explosions, fires, hidden rooms, &c.). “If you’re sitting in an old house right now – anywhere in this country – the human drama that’s taken place all around you would surprise the heck out of you,” said lead detective Brian Hartig. …NOW TO THOSE HORSEWHIPS… To give an example of the veritable goldmine of stories linked to every Brooklyn house, the detectives recently scratched the surface on a row of four connected tenement buildings in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn. The brick and brownstone tenement buildings at Nos. 820-832 Classon Avenue display a cross-section of the colorful tales that newspapers used to cover in their beats. In fact, due to the transient nature of the residents of these specific buildings over the 120 years of their existence, these structures hold an even larger number of the […]
REDEMPTION COMES FOR A BOY FIREBUG (1913)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** (Ed.’s Note: A few weeks ago we received a letter from out of the blue. The writer claimed something fantastic – something astounding. It was a coincidence that spawned a story which gave life to an incredible – but true – tale. A story that we had written in a Brownstone Detectives blog several months earlier had recently popped up in this gentleman’s Google search about his great-grandfather. His great-grandfather, though, was no ordinary Brooklynite. For months in 1899 he had set fires in the houses – and fear in the hearts – of the Brooklynites of the Eastern District. He had also set the city to talk about, theorize on, and fabricate what had been causing the fires and where they would blaze next. The story you will read lays out the very particulars and the characters involved in the case. It is written by a particularly credible and relevant source of the information, information that was uncovered through some keen and dedicated detective work. For the gumshoe detective work behind this piece of crime investigation was performed by a man who only last year came to learn of this fantastic and amazing tale – fantastic because it was about his family, and amazing because no one in his family […]
