WHICH LANDMARKS TO DEMOLISH? (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?
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In 1913, Brooklyn was looking to tear down long rows of stately brownstones.
These brownstones were “substantial residences” in the “Court Street Section” comprising Nos. 24 to 40 Schermerhorn Street and Nos. 141 to 137 Clinton Street.
The owners of these homes, upon discovering that their residences were in the path of the newest Brooklyn courthouse, were, understandably, up in arms. Eminent Domain or no, they were having none of it, and they started a campaign to force the city to locate a building site more suitable.
Apparently, these men got to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which published this spread showing their houses – along with their names (5 out of the 7 of whom were doctors) – and compared their residences (favorably, of course) to an alternative site that they had seclected comprised of “several blocks of lodging houses, dance halls and the like in the Bridge Plaza District,” asking the question:
Playing upon the morals of the people of Brooklyn, it would be clear which site would meet the wrecking ball when, the following day, an assemblyman from Brooklyn by the name of Burr announced that the New York State Assembly would soon adopt his bill “taking from the Supreme Court judges the power to select the courthouse site.”
“Anybody who has given the subject the slightest thought will see at once that the proper place for the new courthouse is on the bridge plaza,” said the Assemblyman Burr. “It is absurd to propose tearing down valuable residences to make way for the courthouse on a site which only half a dozen persons favor.”
The last portion of Burr’s comments could not have been lost on the court’s six judges.
Thus, lodging houses and dance halls (“and the like”) being the less powerful group, and being on the rather dispensable side (especially when compared to the residences of Brooklyn doctors), were suddenly the buildings that were soon to be demolished.
We also see, with a little help from Google Maps, that all of the houses in question – on Clinton and Schermerhorn streets – still grace the landscape of the Downtown section of Brooklyn.
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