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143 South 8th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States
Designed by William H. Gaylor, the Long Island Business College was built by Henry C. Wright, who founded Wright’s Business College in Williamsburg in 1873. Like other such colleges of the time,
Wright trained clerical workers, primarily young men and women, for careers with the many large banks, insurance companies, and industrial concerns that were proliferating throughout Brooklyn and the then- separate city of New York. Enrollment in Wright’s college boomed, and in 1890, he purchased the lot at 143-149 South 8th Street for a grand new home for the school, which would be renamed the Long Island Business College.
The $90,000 building opened with a reception attended by Brooklyn’s mayor; Wright called it “perhaps the only [building] in the country erected and devoted solely to the work of business education.”
Among the school’s students was John F. Hylan, who would go on to serve as New York City’s mayor from 1918 to 1925. In 1920, the college itself was sold and moved to a different Brooklyn location, and in 1922, the building reopened as Public School 166.
During its time as the Long Island Business College, the building’s assembly hall hosted the meetings and lectures of the Brooklyn Philosophical Association, one of the country’s leading freethought organizations during the period that has come to be known as freethought’s “golden age.”
Many prominent speakers lectured there, including anarchist Emma Goldman, labor leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, future mayor William J. Gaynor, sitting mayor John Purroy Mitchel, and anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. In 1943, it became an early home of the Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary of America, serving as both a teachers’ academy and as a day and boarding high school for girls. After World War II, the building, which is a significant landmark in the development of South Williamsburg’s Jewish community, became a magnet for hundreds of young Holocaust survivors who sought to further their studies.
Gaylor based the school’s design on Brooklyn’s recent public schools. The building, which combines the Romanesque Revival and Second Empire styles, and incorporates elements of other contemporary styles, features rough-faced brownstone trim, a five-part facade with central tower and end pavilions, slate-covered mansards, and a convex roof with square cap. Well-preserved today, the Long Island Business College building remains a commanding presence in South Williamsburg, one that is as rich in cultural history as it is architecturally.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Constructed in 1891-92, the Long Island Business College is located on South 8th Street between Bedford and Driggs Avenues in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. In 1802, Richard M. Woodhull, a prosperous Manhattan merchant, purchased a 13-acre tract at the foot of present-day North 2nd Street, which he named Williamsburgh after its surveyor, Col. Jonathan Williams. Williamsburgh was incorporated as a village in 1827; its population more than doubled between 1840 and 1845, and grew even more rapidly in the 1850s with the arrival of large numbers of German immigrants.
In 1851, the state granted a city charter to Williamsburgh, which then had more than 30,000 residents and was the 20th-largest American city. Industries were attracted to Williamsburgh’s East River waterfront by its deepwater piers, available land, and cheap labor provided by a booming population; docks, shipyards, distilleries, foundries, mills, sugar refineries, and glass and pharmaceuticals factories made Williamsburgh a major industrial and commercial center. It would remain independent only until 1855, when Williamsburgh was consolidated with the City of Brooklyn and Town of Flatbush. At that time, the “h” at the end of its name was dropped, and Williamsburg, along with Greenpoint to its north and Bushwick to the east, became known as the “Eastern District.”
By the 1850s, a number of institutions had emerged to serve Williamsburg’s burgeoning population and thriving businesses. The post-Civil War commercial boom brought redevelopment to Broadway, Williamsburg’s most important commercial street and main thoroughfare, one block north of the Long Island Business College. Significant new commercial buildings arose along Broadway, including the Kings County Savings Bank (King & Wilcox, 1868), at 135 Broadway; the Smith, Gray & Company Building (attributed to William H. Gaylor, 1870), now at 103 Broadway; and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank (George B. Post, 1870-75), now at 175 Broadway, all designated New York City Landmarks. Although ferry service between Manhattan and Williamsburg had been a key to the neighborhood’s residential and commercial development, population surged with the construction of the Williamsburg Bridge (Lefferts L. Buck and Henry Hornbostel).
Proposed in 1883, the bridge opened with considerable fanfare in 1903, serving all forms of transportation, including trolley cars and rapid transit. Thousands of Eastern European Jews from the Lower East Side crossed the bridge to settle in Williamsburg, and Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Russian Orthodox enclaves also developed. Many of the neighborhood’s most prosperous residents left during the Depression, and by the late 1930s, Williamsburg, especially the area south of Broadway, was a magnet for Hasidic Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. Puerto Ricans, attracted by the neighborhood’s large manufacturing base, settled there in large numbers beginning in the 1950s.
Older buildings were demolished for the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and new public housing complexes; the exodus of manufacturing left abandoned industrial and residential buildings in its wake. Starting in the 1970s, musicians and artists began moving to Williamsburg’s Northside, which has seen substantial redevelopment and gentrification in the past two decades. In addition to the large Hasidic community on Williamsburg’s Southside, the neighborhood has a sizeable Latino population, including Dominican immigrants who began settling in the neighborhood in large numbers in the 1980s; substantial African-American, Italian, and Polish communities are also present in Williamsburg today.
Long Island Business College and Its Building
The founder of Long Island Business College, Henry C. Wright, was born in 1843 in a small village near Brockville, Ontario on the St. Lawrence River. He received informal business training from his father, who owned his own company, and attended the Friends’ College (now Pickering College), followed by the Toronto Normal School. Wright, who married the former Adelaide Brownscomb in 1866, taught in Canadian public schools after his graduation. Around 1870, the Wrights moved to Philadelphia, where Henry worked in an accounting business. After about a year, they moved to Brooklyn, where Henry found employment at a business college. Three years later, he founded his own school, Wright’s Business College, on South 6th Street in Williamsburg, which occupied “one unpretentious room with the most meager facilities.” Wright was the sole faculty and staff member, “acting as proprietor, principal, teacher, and janitor ... with a mere handful of students.”
Commercial colleges like Wright’s first appeared in the mid-19th century, paralleling the rise of large banks, insurance companies, and industrial concerns, many of which were located in Brooklyn and the then-separate city of New York. Too complex to be overseen by any single person, these entities required sophisticated, bureaucratic management “based on a steady flow of information from clerical workers.” At that time, few students attended secondary schools— Brooklyn’s first public day high school would not open until 1878—and commercial schools offered young people who were not interested in pursuing an academic course entry to the business world via the burgeoning clerical field, which grew from 77,000 workers in 1870 to almost 700,000 in 1900.
Primarily, these schools taught the “fine hand” required for drafting business documents, as well as mathematical, compositional, and stenographic skills. Students could be as young as 12 or 13, although they generally ranged from 17 to 20 years of age; schools ranged in size from a few dozen students up to 900. Women initially made up a small fraction of pupils, but typing was seen as “women’s work” from its very start, and as typewriter use soared in the 1880s, their enrollment surged. By 1892, one-third of commercial school students were female, and by 1900, three-quarters of all stenographers and typists were women. Around the turn of the 20th century, public high schools began competing with private business colleges by offering similar commercial courses, and within the next two decades, mechanization replaced many clerical positions, leading to a decline in business college enrollment after 1920.
Soon after its founding, Wright’s Business College moved to the Kings County Savings Bank Building on Broadway. By 1880, the school had six teachers in addition to Wright, including one woman, Miss M. Rowe, who taught stenography, or phonography as it was known at the time. Wright’s college, according to its catalog, was intended to “thoroughly educate boys and young men for a practical business life”—although women had been admitted from the school’s earliest years—“and to fit them to enter upon advanced scientific and classical courses of study.” Three general courses were offered; the commercial course, for those embarking on a business career, provided lessons in bookkeeping, commercial arithmetic, penmanship, letter- writing, English composition, spelling, grammar, commercial law, business ethics, and “familiar[ity] with all kinds of business papers, from the making out of a simple bill to the most elaborate statements and balance sheets.”
Wright’s classical course was intended to prepare students for college, including instruction in Latin, Greek, philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, and history. Wright’s third course, the academic course, appears to have been remedial, with instruction in spelling, word definitions, reading, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, grammar, history, penmanship, chemistry, and anatomy. Wright promoted the school’s proximity to New York City—“the financial heart of the continent”—as well as its easy access from Manhattan by ferry and from all parts of Brooklyn by streetcar. Day and evening sessions were held, and Wright reached out to area business owners and managers in helping to place his students. the college continued to grow, and by 1887, it had more than 400 students and occupied the entire Kings County Savings Bank Building above the ground floor.
By the end of the 1880s, the college had exceeded 500 students, and in 1890, Wright purchased the future site of the Long Island Business College building, a 76’-wide-by-100’-deep plot on the north side of South 8th Street, for $18,500. As reported in the Newtown Register,
It is Mr. Wright’s intention to erect thereon in the near future a commodious and handsome college building that will accommodate upwards of 1,000 students. Mr. Wright’s present facilities have been taxed to their utmost during the past two years to accommodate the constantly increasing numbers of students, and it has been apparent during this time that increased facilities would soon have to be secured. Mr. Wright, with his keen foresight into business as well as matters educational, has taken the initial step towards what, we are certain, will prove to be an important feature among the growing interests of the Eastern District and a source of large profits to himself.
In April of 1891, architect William H. Gaylor filed the application for the new building, and on June 23, 1891, its cornerstone was laid. At that time, it was reported that the college’s name would be changed to the Long Island Business College with the opening of its new home. On the evening of February 5, 1892, the doors of the new building were thrown open for a reception, with guests including Brooklyn Mayor David A. Boody.
The Brooklyn Eagle reported that the building, which was lighted entirely by electricity, was “brilliantly illuminated” for the event. It also noted that the new Long Island Business College had a capacity of 800 students and was “supplied with numerous windows, assuring an abundance of light and ventilation”; its ground floor contained a large assembly room of 60 by 60 feet, and the second and third floors contained six classrooms each. The janitor’s quarters, a lunchroom, and “a few classrooms” were located on the top story. The main, central entrance on South 8th Street was for visitors only; male and female students entered through gates on each side of the building.
According to Wright, the building, which cost more than $90,000, was “perhaps the only one in the country erected and devoted solely to the work of business education.” By 1896, the college had its own long-distance telephone, “which has become a necessity of modern life, and is particularly useful to an institution to which many business men have learned to look whenever they need the services of trained assistants.” It also contained a bank, which provided students with a convenient place to deposit and withdraw money and for an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the banking process.
The school’s curriculum had broadened since the 1880s, with Wright adding preparatory courses for the state Regents and federal, state, and municipal civil service examinations. Its geographic reach had also expanded, as the school had started advertising in newspapers as far afield as Hempstead and Sag Harbor, noting its accessibility via the Long Island Rail Road. By 1897, enrollment exceeded 700 students. Among the school’s pupils in the 1890s was John F. Hylan, who would go on to serve as New York City’s mayor from 1918 to 1925. Hylan, who had moved to Brooklyn in 1888 from his boyhood home in the Catskills, worked as an engineer on a Brooklyn elevated railroad while studying for the Regents exam at nights at the Long Island Business College. After passing the Regents, Hylan enrolled in New York Law School, which he graduated from in 1897.
The Long Island Business College continued under Wright’s leadership until October of 1907, when he was incapacitated by illness. In May of the following year, Wright, in the
presence of his wife Adelaide and their daughter Lois S. Bissell, entered into an agreement with Edwin Leibfreed, the former dean of the American Commercial Schools Institution, which sought to raise the standards for commercial instruction by training commercial-school teachers. Under this agreement, Leibfreed, for an annual fee of $7,250, leased the Long Island Business College from Wright for ten years. He was required to operate the school under its existing name and was given the right, at the end of the agreement, to purchase the school and its building from Wright for $100,000. Wright died in 1909, and in 1914, Leibfreed apparently became ill, and the agreement was terminated. At that time, Lois’ husband, John Newton Bissell, the former vice president and general manager of the New York-Queens Electric Light and Power Company, became the college’s new leader. Six years later, Bissell sold the school to Drake Business School, which moved it to the Shubert Theater Building on Monroe Street and Broadway and operated it as the Drake Long Island Business College. The Long Island Business College building was sold to the City of New York in 1921 and reopened the following year as Public School 166, which had previously been located at South 4th and Havemeyer Streets.
The Brooklyn Philosophical Association
From the year of the building’s opening to 1918, the ground-floor assembly hall of the Long Island Business College hosted the meetings and lectures of the Brooklyn Philosophical Association. Founded in 1873 “for the attainment and diffusion of knowledge on scientific, social, ethical, and religious subjects, and for the comparison of ideas by means of lectures and discussions,” the association was one of the country’s leading freethought associations during the period, between the 1870s and World War I, that has come to be known as freethought’s “golden age.”
New York City was a major center of freethought, whose followers reject organized religion and “believe in the use of reason, in the value of ethics, and in the elimination of superstitions of all kinds from the minds of men.” During this period, freethought was an eclectic movement, and many of its followers held positions that were outside of the political mainstream. In favor of the separation of church and state, and for uncensored political speech and unfettered artistic expression, freethinkers of the time fought for “expanded legal and economic rights for women that went well beyond the narrow political goal of suffrage; the necessity of ending domestic violence against women and children; . opposition to capital punishment and to inhumane conditions in prisons and insane asylums; and, above all, the expansion of public education.”
Workers’ rights and the free dissemination of birth-control information were other major freethinker causes.
Although freethought journals existed at the time—the most influential, the Truth Seeker, was published in New York—lectures were the primary means by which freethinkers promoted their ideas to the broader populace, attracting “a larger public that was interested in but did not define itself by religious skepticism.” In the assembly hall of Long Island Business College, the Brooklyn Philosophical Association hosted several lectures by leading figures of the political left, including anarchist, feminist, and free-love advocate Emma Goldman, who lectured there at least twice, in 1898 and 1906.
In February of 1898, a lecture by labor leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs, one of the most prominent political figures of the day, “served to fill the hall of the Long Island Business College to its doors.” Carrie Chapman Catt, who had succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, spoke there in 1901, and in the following year, the hall hosted writer and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Hubert Henry Harrison, the Caribbean-American political activist described by A.
Philip Randolph as “the father of Harlem radicalism,” addressed the Association in 1912. Perhaps the most surprising speaker was Anthony Comstock, the leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who had been deputized, with the 1873 passage of the so-called Comstock Act, as a special agent of the postal service. In this position, Comstock was empowered with arresting senders of materials deemed to be obscene, including birth-control information and fine-art publications depicting nudes. “Never in all of his vice hunting career did Mr. Comstock face such a turbulent throng,” the Eagle reported, as he did “from the exponents of free thought and free love” at his 1902 speech at the Long Island Business College.
Other notable speakers hosted by the college’s assembly hall included publisher and prohibitionist Isaac K. Funk, and suffragist and temperance advocate Mary Elizabeth Lease, in 1897; populist politician William Sulzer, who lectured as a congressman in 1898 and again in 1914, following his impeachment as Governor of New York; and judge and future mayor William J. Gaynor, in 1899 and 1901. Two leading proponents of birth control, Dr. Frederick A. Blossom and Dr. William J. Robinson, spoke in 1916 and 1917, respectively, and in the latter year, the association also hosted Mayor John Purroy Mitchel and the novelist and minister Bouck White, a major Socialist figure of the time.
Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary
Following its 1922 conversion into Public School 166, the Long Island Business College building remained a city school through the 1930s. In March of 1943, the City sold it to Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary of America, which was then located at 505 Bedford Avenue.
The Bais Yaakov, or Beth Jacob, educational movement was established in Krakow in 1917 by Sarah Schenirer. A seamstress who had educated herself in Jewish scripture and philosophy, Schenirer founded the first Bais Yaakov school seeking to “fight the spread of secularization and acculturation among Orthodox women—who until then had received no formal Jewish education.” By 1937, Bais Yaakov schools had been established throughout Poland as well as in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Lithuania, and teacher training seminaries were operating in Krakow and Czernowitz (now the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi).
In America in the mid-1930s, no schools above the elementary school level existed specifically for Orthodox girls. Williamsburg parents and religious leaders were concerned that their daughters were being secularized by the public schools, where they participated in “social activities that clashed with Orthodox proprieties.” The Beth Jacob Teachers Seminary of America, the first such school in the country, was founded in Williamsburg in 1938 by Vichna Kaplan, nee Eisen, a star student of Schenirer’s at the Krakow seminary who had recently married the American-born rabbi Boruch Kaplan. The goal of the seminary, which also functioned as a high school for boarding and day students, was to supply teachers for a network of Bais Yaakov schools in the U.S. The first American Bais Yaakov school was established in Williamsburg; by 1945, others were open in Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Brownsville, East New York, and Brighton Beach.
The seminary made headlines soon after its move to the Long Island Business College building when its executive director, Rabbi Samuel Rubin, enlisted in the Merchant Marine in November of 1944. Rubin had emigrated to the U.S. in 1938 from Poland; his family members, who stayed behind and later escaped to Czechoslovakia, had gone missing and were presumed killed by the Nazis. “Determined to do as much as he [could] to liberate peoples persecuted by the Nazis,” the Brooklyn Eagle reported, Rubin, who was in his 30s, tried to enlist in the Army, but was rejected because of his age. After his swearing-in to the Merchant Marine, Rubin shaved his beard and reported for training in Sheepshead Bay. Following the war’s end, the seminary became a magnet for studious young survivors of the Holocaust.
The first was 14-year-old Reise Gruenzweig, who was a survivor of Auschwitz, where most of her family was killed. After nearly starving there and being liberated by the Allies, she stowed away on a ship to the U.S. and was detained for several months on Ellis Island before receiving a visa that allowed her to stay with Brooklyn relatives. Gruenzweig enrolled in Beth Jacob Seminary in 1946. By 1948, 175 of the school’s 600 pupils were European refugees, most of whom had labored in concentration- camp munitions factories and lost all of their European relatives. Many of the girls sought to return to Europe following the completion of their studies, as all of the European seminaries had been destroyed, leaving a dearth of teachers there.
The seminary remained in the Long Island Business College building until the mid- 1960s, when it moved to 132 South 8th Street. The function of the building between this time and 1980, when it was listed as United Talmudical Academy Torah Vyirah, is unclear. In 1984, Beth Jacob Seminary sold the building to a group of artists including Lars Cederholm, Doug Ohlson, Hiroshi Kariya, Bernard Kirschenbaum, and Susan Weil, who soon converted it into loft spaces. It remains an artists’ co-op today. Having served as the Beth Jacob Teachers’ Seminary during its early formative years and as an academic refuge for young Holocaust survivors, the former Long Island Business College building is a significant landmark in the development of South Williamsburg’s Jewish community.
William H. Gaylor
The architect of the Long Island Business College, William H. Gaylor, was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1821 and apprenticed with the prominent carpenter and architect Edwin Bishop before moving to Williamsburgh, where he worked for builders Golder & Folk. Gaylor opened his own architectural office at age 21, and around 1863 “entered on the business of Master Builder.” In 1876, Gaylor, along with architect Arthur Crooks, were appointed by the Brooklyn Board of Aldermen to inspect the city’s public buildings for safety.
Six years later, Gaylor was appointed Commissioner of Buildings by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low, a position he held through Low’s administration. Gaylor was a prolific architect, designing public, commercial, and residential buildings throughout Brooklyn. He is most widely known for his cast-iron-fronted commercial buildings, including 2 Wooster Street in Manhattan (1871-73, in the SoHo Cast Iron Historic District), and a series of three buildings erected for the firm of Smith, Gray & Co.: the Lyceum Building (1873-75); 894-896 Greenpoint Avenue (1877-78, in the Greenpoint Historic District); and 126 Broadway (1884, erected by Thomas and William Lamb, builder). The design of the cast-iron-fronted Smith, Gray & Company Building at 103 Broadway in Brooklyn (1870, a designated New York City Landmark) has been attributed to Gaylor, who also designed the Bedford Theater building (1891) at 109 South 6th Street. One of his sons, Edward F. Gaylor, also became an architect, working for his father for 14 years prior to establishing his own practice in 1882.
From the early 1870s to his death, in 1895, Gaylor’s office was located at 110 South 8th Street, close to the site of the Long Island Business College building.
Design of the Long Island Business College
William Gaylor based the design of the Long Island Business College on Brooklyn’s most modern and impressive schools of their day: the public schools designed by James W. Naughton, Superintendent of Buildings for the Brooklyn Board of Education from 1879 until his death in 1898.
Brooklyn’s public schools began to acquire a readily identifiable character as public institutional buildings in the late 1850s following the appointment of Naughton’s predecessor, Samuel B. Leonard, as the school system’s chief architect. Leonard’s preferred style was the Rundbogenstil, or “round-arch style,” a German style related to the early Romanesque Revival, which was imported to America in the mid-1840s and introduced to New York by architects Richard Upjohn, James Renwick, and Leopold Eidlitz.
In the 1870s, Leonard changed his approach and began incorporating elements of the French-inspired Second Empire style, chiefly its prominent pavilions and mansard roofs, which add plasticity and verticality to facades and create bold, picturesque rooflines. Red brick and brownstone were the primary materials used. A central entrance tower was often employed in conjunction with the style, functioning as a central pavilion in the design and “carrying the eye upward with pleasant relief.”
The use of Second Empire style features elevated the neighborhood public school, giving it an air of cosmopolitan modernity recalling the grand buildings and palaces of Napoleon III’s newly redesigned Paris; the mansarded public school with its tower vied with the church steeple as the most prominent element in the skyline of the 19th-century Brooklyn neighborhood. When Naughton succeeded Leonard, he continued his approach, combining the Second Empire with other styles, in works such as Girls’ High School (1885-86, with a 1912 addition by C.B.J. Snyder), Public School 71K (1888-89), and Public School 73 (1888, with an 1895 addition), all of which feature five-part main facades, each with a central tower and projecting end pavilions. Girls’ High School may have been an especially appealing model for Gaylor and his client, Henry Wright: one of the first public secondary schools in what would become New York City, Girls’ High School was among Brooklyn’s most prestigious educational institutions, associated with high-achieving girls.
Wright undoubtedly sought to convey the same air of distinction and academic quality to the girls and young women who were making up an increasing proportion of his school’s enrollment.
Faced with Philadelphia brick and Connecticut brownstone, the Long Island Business College is four stories high. One story taller than the typical Naughton school and sited on a comparatively narrow lot, it has a strong vertical thrust that makes it an especially imposing presence on South 8th Street. As with many of Naughton’s later schools, the building mixes the Second Empire style with other contemporary influences. Its symmetrical five-part main facade with end pavilions and central tower crowned by a convex mansard roof with a square cap, and its slate-covered mansards crowning the second and fourth bays, are representative of the Second Empire style, while its rough-faced brownstone trim, curved bricks, and round-arch-headed openings are characteristic of the Richardsonian Romanesque, which was then at the height of its popularity in Brooklyn.
The finely carved ornament within the spandrels of the main-entrance arch, as well as the columnar third-story mullions and carved rosettes at the second through fourth floors, are classical in influence and typical of the contemporaneous Queen Anne style. Italianate influence is seen in the grouped round-arch-headed dormer windows crowned by heavy moldings; the brick corbelling above the fourth-story windows of the central tower and end pavilions is a holdover from the early Romanesque Revival used by Leonard for his early Brooklyn schools.
The building remains well-preserved. Today, the Long Island Business College building remains a commanding presence in South Williamsburg, one that is as rich in cultural history as it is architecturally.
Description
The Long Island Business College is a three- and four-story educational building on the north side of South 8th Street, designed in the Second Empire and Romanesque Revival styles, and incorporating elements of the Queen Anne, Italianate, and early Romanesque styles.
Primary South 8th Street Facade
Historic: Five-bay facade with projecting central tower and end pavilions; four-story main facade with straight and curved red Philadelphia brick and smooth- and rough-faced brownstone; brownstone stoop with cheek walls; round-arch-headed main-entrance opening flanked by pilasters with granite shafts and brownstone foliate capitals with egg-and-dart moldings; rough-faced brownstone main-entrance arch with pointed voussoirs and classical foliate ornament within the arch spandrels; historic main-entrance door frame with twisted engaged columns, classical denticulated transom bar, and wood transom frame; bluestone basement sill; square-headed basement window openings; rough-faced brownstone basement with smooth lintelcourse; smooth-faced brownstone first-story sillcourse; rough-faced brownstone blocks flanking main entrance, first story of end pavilions, heads and sills of first- story windows, and central second-story bay; square-headed first-story window openings crowned by pointed flat arches; round-arch-headed second-story window openings with roughfaced brownstone keystones and springers on central bay; square-headed third-story windows with classical columnar mullions and egg-and-dart moldings on central bay; window openings crowned by brownstone arches with chamfered corners at fourth story of central bay and third story of second and fourth bays; segmental-arch-headed window openings with rough-faced brownstone springers at second story of outer bays; segmental-arch-headed window openings with rough-faced brownstone springers and keystones at second story of second and fourth bays; round-arch-headed windows with rough-faced brownstone springers at third and fourth stories of outer bays; rough-faced brownstone panels and brownstone corbel blocks decorated with carved rosettes at second through fourth stories; mansard roofs faced with octagonal slate shingles crowning second and fourth bays; tripartite round-arch-headed dormer windows crowned by heavy moldings; corbelled brick coursing crowning central and end bays; denticulated cornices; convex mansard roof with square cap crowning central bay.
Alterations: Sash replacement at all stories; brownstone stoop and portions of brownstone trim resurfaced; two basement window openings filled with stucco panels; westernmost upper basement sash replaced with wood panel with metal grille and conduit; security grilles at basement and first story; main-entrance doors replaced; non-historic light fixture on main- entrance transom bar; cornices above third story of second and fourth bays replaced or covered with metal; bird spikes on dormer windows; visible rooftop railings over second and fourth bays; removal of shallow pyramidal roofs with finials that originally crowned the end pavilions; replacement roofing materials on convex mansard roof over central bay.
Secondary East Facade and South Facade of East Wing
Historic: Four stories at southern portion, and three-story east wing and northern portion of east facade; red brick laid in common bond; square-headed window openings with plain (flush) stone lintels and plain projecting stone sills; primary facade cornice continued to southern portion of east facade; corbelled and denticulated brick cornice at northern portion of east facade and south facade of east wing; brick chimneys.
Alterations: Security grille at southernmost second-story window; replacement sashes; three chimneys painted and/or parged; metal downspouts.
Secondary West Facade and South Facade of West Wing
Historic: Four stories at southern portion, and three-story west wing and northern portion of west facade; red brick laid in common bond; square-headed window openings with plain (flush) stone lintels and plain projecting stone sills; primary facade cornice continued to southern portion of west facade; corbelled and denticulated brick cornice at northern portion of west facade and south facade of west wing; brick chimneys.
Alterations: Security grilles, conduit, camera, and light fixtures at basement and first story; replacement sashes; dryer vents at first through third stories; metal downspouts; three chimneys painted and/or parged.
Site Features
Concrete front areaway with bluestone border, and non-historic metal hatch and grille; non-historic metal gate in front of western portion of property, shared with adjacent lot; non- historic metal gate in front of concrete east areaway.
- From the 2013 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Neon sign with multiple reflections
With blood analysis only inches from food there must be Vampires about.
Visual Analysis of the Learning experience for the "Digital Footprint" lesson plan, created with the "Learning Designer" tool
Analytical chemists (from left) Carolyn Koester and Heather Mulcahy work in an environmental reference laboratory at the Forensic Science Center to develop and validate sensitive methods for analyzing chemical warfare agents.
I'm guessing about the authors of these three pieces of graffiti written on a ventilation shaft of the MTR at Kowloon Tong station: there were three teenage, female, native English speakers, who shared the same felt tip pen while waiting for a bus. One or more was smoking a cigarette (because it's hidden from street view). The thoughts are interesting/sensitive, but they didn't finish one of them because their bus had arrived. I note the same mistake of a dotted "i" while the rest of the letters are capitalized. However, the mistake was probably made by different authors suggesting they are in the same class at school, and were taught the same mistake/were not corrected. The writing is delicate, suggesting the authors were female, but the "quiet hope" sentence was written with a heavier hand, suggesting either confidence or possibly a male author. There is some inconsistency about the dots at the end of each sentence, with most placing three, one four and one five.
before looking at others with judgement you must first judge yourself.
Big thanks to MONDO RODRIGUEZ for helping me out with this shot !
enjoy :]
“The Analysis of Beauty” by Disinformation - immersive soundscape installation, exhibited at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Nov 2014
“Mesmerising... hypnotic and captivating... sublime” (Aesthetica Magazine)
See also - www.flickr.com/disinfo/52404108274/
See also - www.flickr.com/disinfo/55446745985/
Tottenville, Staten Island, New York City, New York
The George Cunningham Store at 173 Main Street, Tottenville, built c. 1892, is a rare and intact vernacular commercial building in the Queen Anne style from a significant period of development for Tottenville and its downtown Main Street. Its robust bay windows with decorative brackets are rare survivors of a once popular feature of early American commercial architecture. The building also features a distinctive decorated gable end that gives this small one-story building great presence on the street. It is the best preserved of the early shops remaining on Tottenville’s Main Street and perhaps one of the few shops with bay windows remaining in New York City.
In the 19th century, Tottenville became the largest town on Staten Island’s South Shore. It was founded in the 1840s on the industries of oyster fishing and shipbuilding. The 1890s, when this shop was built, were an expansive era in Tottenville’s history. On a prestigious residential block, the little shop represented the emerging commercial success of the town’s Main Street. From 1892 to 1913, for 21 years, this was George G. Cunningham’s Butcher Shop. From 1913 to 1957, for 44 years, it was Benjamin Williams’s Real Estate and Insurance Office. Their combined occupancy spanning 65 years documented Main Street’s long-lasting commercial viability.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Tottenville
Tottenville is located on the shore of the Arthur Kill near Ward’s Point, the southwestern tip of Staten Island and the southernmost point in New York City and New York State. Far from the urban culture of Manhattan, Tottenville remains a small isolated village. Across the Arthur Kill lies the city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. South of Ward’s Point is Raritan Bay. The village of Tottenville came into being around 1840. Its economy and culture arose from oyster fishing, shipbuilding and ship repair, and agriculture. Its trade routes with New Jersey and New York City linked it to the metropolitan region and the greater world. It became the largest town in Westfield, the historic name for this quarter of Staten Island. Even today, though encroached upon by modern suburban culture, the feeling of a small coastal town prevails, with characteristics unlike any other place on Staten Island. Tottenville residents prize their isolated location.
Before There Was Tottenville
Long before Europeans arrived in the New World, Native Americans of the Lenni Lenape group of the Delaware Nation were attracted to the beauty of the elevated shoreline and the abundance of oysters growing in the Arthur Kill and Raritan Bay. Major archaeological evidence of their encampments and burial grounds has been found on Ward’s Point. By 1670 the Lenape had sold their land to European colonists and had departed from Staten Island.
Christopher Billopp, an Englishman, was the first European to settle in the area. He arrived in New York harbor with Major Edmund Andros in 1674. Andros became the Royal Governor of New York and Billopp, an officer in the British navy, was commissioned Lieutenant. In 1677 Billopp laid claim to 932 acres on Staten Island, soon thereafter building an imposing two-story stone house on the shore overlooking Perth Amboy. In 1687 he was given a royal charter for 1600 acres (including the original 932 acres) and made Lord of the Manor of Bentley. The manor would include today’s Tottenville, Richmond Valley, Pleasant Plains and part of Prince’s Bay. Billopp owned slaves and as captain of the ship Depthford he was involved in the slave trade. Although Billopp stayed on Staten Island only intermittently, his wife apparently lived in the manor house and improved his land for farming. His grandson Thomas Farmar, who changed his surname to Billopp, inherited the manor in 1732 and lived there full time. Thomas Farmar Billopp also owned slaves Thomas’s son Christopher Billopp (17321827) lived in the stone house through much of the American Revolution. During his ownership the house was plundered by both Hessian soldiers and American patriots and Christopher sought refuge in his father-in-law’s house nearby. During one of these raids the patriots carried off Billopp’s cattle, horses and a slave. Little else is known about the actual daily life of the manor. The Billopp House was the meeting place for the Peace Conference held on Sept. 11, 1776. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge met with Lord Howe. The conference was unsuccessful and the war continued. (Today the Billopp House, a designated New York City Landmark, is called the Conference House.) In 1782 Christopher Billopp began to sell large portions of the manor. Among the buyers were members of the Totten family. In 1783 Billopp left Staten Island.
The Totten Family
John Totten (d. 1785), a weaver, was probably the first Totten to settle on Staten Island. In 1767 he purchased land on Prince’s Bay from the executors of the estate of Thomas Billopp. Gilbert Totten (ca. 1740-1819), John Totten’s son, purchased four parcels in what would become Tottenville. Gilbert was a farmer and according to the 1790 census owned five slaves. Gilbert and Mary Butler Totten, his wife, were among the founders of the Woodrow Methodist Church, the mother church of Methodism on Staten Island. Impressive Greek Revival style obelisks mark their graves in the church’s cemetery.
Tottenville, the Town the Oyster Built
The creation and growth of Tottenville in the 1840s were fueled by the increasing demand for fresh oysters. As New York’s population grew and oyster beds became depleted from over harvesting it was discovered that oyster “seed” (young oysters) could be brought from other locations in New York harbor, Long Island, and the Chesapeake Bay and “planted” in the waters off Staten Island. The brackish water of Prince’s Bay and parts of the Raritan River and the Arthur Kill was ideal for growing oysters. The young oysters were allowed to grow for a year or more and harvested in the fall. The success of this systematic oyster “farming” fostered the growth of Staten Island’s maritime industry. The first documented instance of oyster planting in New York harbor occurred in 1825 in Prince’s Bay. Mariners Harbor on the North Shore also grew at a swift pace through the 19th century because of the oyster industry.
Sandy Ground, the African American community in Westfield, came into being about 1850. By 1880 African American oystermen from Virginia and Maryland had located there. Tottenville also attracted black oystermen. The Cooley family from Virginia settled in Tottenville after Abraham Cole Totten, a mariner sailing regularly to the South, sold property to them. Other free black oystermen have recently been identified in an historic resources survey of Tottenville now underway.
According to one local history, the name “Tottenville” may have been in use as early as 1832. The Bethel Methodist Church, Tottenville’s first church, was built in 1841 on land given by John Totten Sr. The first printed reference to the name “Tottenville” is found on Butler’s Map of 1853. This map shows an unnamed street, today’s Main Street, with about 20 houses, and another 20 houses on what became Amboy Road.
Oystermen required ships and ship repair facilities and this industry became a dominant employer in the town, second only to the oyster industry itself. By the end of the 19th century there were at least eight shipbuilding or repair shops on the Arthur Kill in Tottenville.
The further growth and diversification of Tottenville were assured in 1860 when it became the terminus of the Staten Island Railroad, which afforded access to Staten Island’s North Shore and Manhattan. For many decades the Staten Island Railroad operated the ferryboat Maid of Perth to Perth Amboy. Several hotels/boarding houses were located in Tottenville on Main Street near Totten’s Landing. By the 1880s Tottenville had entered the golden age of oyster fishing, as the following period source indicates:
To arrive in Tottenville is to become sensible of the importance of the oyster. Anchored out in the Kill; made fast to the little wharves; under sail in the offing, white-hulled oyster sloops meet the eye on every side. Below the bluffs, the beach is lined with oyster floats, upon which the bivalves in the fall are taken to the fresher waters of New Jersey rivers to be fattened for the market; oyster shells are everywhere. The largest and most comfortable houses in and about the village, we are told, belong to oystermen, active and retired, whose modest fortunes have been raked from the great oyster-beds covering the bottom of the Lower Bay from Staten Island to Keyport. .... Here the oyster is king.
A major new industry, Atlantic Terra Cotta, opened its factory in Tottenville in 1897. By 1906 it employed over 450 men. The Tottenville Copper Company, also a large employer, was established in 1900. Later it became the Nassau Smelting Company. The oyster industry, and shipbuilding and ship repair, continued into the 20th century.
Oyster beds were declared unsafe due to water pollution. About 1915 “authorities found that some shipments from the bay were making people as far away as Chicago sick with typhoid fever and intestinal diseases.... New York dealers became reluctant to purchase oysters from the bay. The industry declined, and finally in 1925 oyster planters abandoned the bay amid much negative newspaper publicity about polluted oysters being sold.” The closing marked the end of an era.
The rise of the automobile brought suburban life and more change. The Outerbridge Crossing opened in 1928. The opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964 and the construction of interstate highways on Staten Island fostered rapid population growth on the South Shore. Tottenville, along with the rest of Staten Island has seen dramatic population growth.
History of Main Street
In 1834, when John Totten Jr. purchased a five and one-half acre waterfront property, he gained the “privilege of a road to and from the main public road,” today’s Amboy Road. In 1836 when his brothers James and William purchased a six-acre riverfront lot adjoining John’s to the east there was a “right to pass” between the two properties to the main road. John Totten Jr. built Totten’s Dock about 1837 and his brothers established a shipbuilding and repair facility on their property. The dock gave access to the waterways of the region, assuring the commercial success of Tottenville. With steamships to Manhattan stopping here and the ferry to Perth Amboy, the dock became the focus of the emerging town.
The road leading from the dock to Amboy Road was for many years unnamed. By 1845 John Totten Jr. had divided his property into building lots and the new owners built houses facing this road. By 1859 the road was called “Totten Street.” The name Main Street appears intermittently in the 1880s and 1890s, and was finally made official in 1897.
Main Street runs straight in a northwesterly direction from Amboy Road to the Arthur Kill. The street is divided by two cross streets creating three large blocks. The northern end, terminating at Totten’s Dock, is known as lower Main Street. The town’s first commercial area developed here. In the late 19th century the middle section of the street was dubbed “Quality Row” because of the large residences built there by elite members of the community. The Theodore F. and Elizabeth De Hart House at 134 Main Street (a designated New York City Landmark) and the Dr. Walker Washington House at 127 Main Street are located here. The southern end of the street is could be called upper Main Street. This area became predominately commercial in the first decades of the 20th century and remains so today.
Beginning in the 1960s, the historic character of the street was greatly compromised by the demolition of historic homes and the construction of town houses and insensitive commercial buildings, making the surviving and intact nineteenth and early twentieth century buildings rare reminders of Tottenville’s historic development.
Commercial Development of Main Street
Tottenville’s first commercial buildings were constructed on the east side of Main Street near Totten’s Landing. Walling’s Map, 1859, shows “E. J. Totten’s Store” on the east side of Main Street and “L. S. Hopping’s Store” on the west side. These pioneer buildings were demolished before 1900. The Staten Island Railroad, running from Vanderbilt’s Landing in Clifton to Tottenville, was completed in 1860. Its Tottenville station was located on the east side of Main Street. Commercial buildings soon went up nearby, including stores, hotels and a bank.
By 1895 the east side of lower Main Street was one continuous commercial row. Some of these buildings are still standing, but greatly altered. In 1896, when the Staten Island Railroad moved its station and terminus to Bentley Street, the character of lower Main Street changed and its commercial viability declined.
By the 1870s a few commercial buildings had been built in this residential section of middle Main Street, which begins on the other side of Broadway (today’s Arthur Kill Road). The 1874 atlas shows D. S. Decker’s house and store at today’s 145 Main Street. This store was right on the sidewalk. The owner lived in the house on the same lot. It was destroyed before 1917. The Pepper and Joline General Store, 180 Main Street, at the corner of what would become Arents Avenue, was in place by 1874. W. Wood’s store and Post Office at today’s 179 Main Street was on the opposite side of the same corner. In 1882 druggist Rinalder Fisher built 103 Main Street on the northeast corner of Main Street and Arthur Kill Road. This three-story brick building was the largest commercial building in Tottenville for many years. It still stands but its shop front has been disfigured. The shop at 173 Main Street, the subject of this report, was built ca.1892 as a butcher shop for Georgenia and George Cunningham. The small shop was built in front of, but to the right of and not connected with, the residence already on the property. The commercial development of this section of Main Street continued through the 1920s. In 1895 Rinalder Fisher built 111 Main Street near his earlier building. It may have been used by the coal dealers, Cole Brothers, and was later acquired by them. In the 1940s Benjamin F. Bedell and Marie P. Bedell purchased the building for their grocery store and residence. They later purchased and resided in the Theodore F. and Elizabeth De Hart House at 134 Main Street, across the street from the store.
Twentieth-century buildings on this section of Main Street were more monumental in scale. In 1915 the Tottenville National Bank purchased W. Wood’s store at 179 Main Street and constructed a new building there designed by the architectural firm Slee and Bryson of Brooklyn. Built of limestone, this is the most impressive commercial building ever erected in Tottenville. It still stands today and is a branch of the Richmond County Savings Bank. Organized in 1906, the Tottenville National Bank was originally located on lower Main Street. In 1922 New York City constructed the 123rd Police Precinct at 116 Main Street. This large limestone building was designed by Staten Island architect James Whitford. It still fulfills its original purpose.
The development of upper Main Street started in 1909 when the Huguenot Masonic Lodge built their building, designed by Staten Island architects Charles Schmeiser and Charles
U. Thrall, at 234-236 Main Street. For a time this building, which features handsome terra cotta decorations, housed the Post Office on its street floor. Soon after 1915, at 190 Main Street, the Richmond County Federal Savings and Loan Association built a building designed by James Whitford. In the 1920s several large commercial buildings were constructed on both sides of Main Street near Amboy Road. “The Flats,” a large three-story apartment building at 239-241 Main Street, went up around 1923 and the Stadium Theatre at 217 Main Street opened in 1927. In the 20th century upper Main Street, together with Amboy Road nearby, became the primary commercial section of Tottenville. It flourished until the 1960s when several of its major stores moved to the shopping center on today’s Page Avenue. The Staten Island Mall opened in 1973, further diminishing Main Street commerce.
Early Owners of 173 Main Street
On Feb. 11, 1892, Georgenia Cunningham (1854-1895), wife of George G. Cunningham (1850-1915), a butcher, purchased the William B. Butler property on the east side of Main Street. The property, with a 58-foot frontage, included the Butler house (today’s 169 Main Street). Soon after purchasing the property they built the butcher shop (today’s 173 Main Street) on the right side of the lot. A directory from 1893-94 lists Cunningham as the owner of a meat market on Main Street, Tottenville.
George G. Cunningham was born in Northfield, Staten Island. His father, Charles Cunningham, was born in Scotland. His mother Elizabeth was born in New York State. Charles Cunningham is listed in the 1850 census as the proprietor of an “Oyster Saloon” in Northfield. Son George is one year old. By 1860 George, aged 10, is living with Nicholas and Eliza Van Pelt in Northfield. Nicholas Van Pelt’s vocation is “fancy D[ry] G[oods] store.” It appears that Charles Cunningham had died and that Elizabeth had married Nicholas Van Pelt.
By 1870 George, aged 20, is living in Tottenville with John and Malinda Sharrot. John Sharrot was a butcher. George was in all likelihood apprenticed to Sharrot to learn the butcher trade. The John Sharrot home, located at 198 Main Street, is standing today. The small shop still standing in front of the house may be the original butcher shop, but this is not certain. It has not been determined when George established his own butchering business, nor when he married Georgenia. After her death George remarried around 1898, but by 1910 he is again a widower. On Oct. 29, 1913, George Cunningham sold the Main Street house and shop. On the same day the land on which the shop stood was made a separate lot and sold to Benjamin Williams.
Benjamin Williams, a successful Tottenville businessman, was born around 1871 in Newport, Kentucky. He attended schools in Cincinnati, Ohio, and New Brunswick, New Jersey, before settling on Staten Island ca. 1888. His wife, Elizabeth, was born in Pennsylvania. In the Standard Directory of Richmond County, 1893-94, his vocation is listed as “insurance,” a business he practiced for the rest of his life. Subsequent directories also specify “real estate.”
Precisely why he came to Tottenville is not known. His arrival in the late 1880s is indicative of Tottenville’s growing prosperity and its attraction to professional businessmen. On Oct. 24, 1902, Williams purchased a lot at 73 Hopping Avenue. He soon built a house and came to reside at this prestigious address. He may have done business at more than one address, for some Staten Island directories give office addresses both on Main Street and Arthur Kill Road. He was a representative of the Insurance Company of North America for over 60 years. In 1906 Williams was one of the organizers of the Tottenville National Bank. He became vice president and later president of the bank board. He was treasurer of the Richmond County Savings and Loan Association and a member of the Chase Manhattan Bank advisory board when that bank took over the Tottenville bank in the 1950s. Benjamin Williams died on December 29, 1957. In 1958 Williams’s executor sold the shop at 173 Main Street to David Becker, who sold it two months later to the Roselli Fuel Company.
The Design of 173 Main Street
Shop bay windows with supporting brackets were found on American commercial buildings in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. The bracketed bay window brought the display area into the street, capturing the attention of passersby. The Ayscough Gun Shop at Colonial Williamsburg, an original 18th-century building, has one small multi-paned bay window supported with simple structural brackets. The Eltingville Store at Historic Richmond Town, built c. 1860 (a designated New York City Landmark) has one bay window supported by decorative brackets. This window is quite similar to the windows at 173 Main Street, except that it is multi-paned.
According to 1940 tax photographs, nearly all the commercial buildings on lower Main Street had bay windows, as had several buildings on middle Main Street. On lower Main Street, No. 77, c. 1860, survives, but greatly altered, its shop windows shorn off. On middle Main Street, No. 103 is standing but it too has lost its shop windows. No. 111, ca. 1895, has its bracketed shop windows enclosed in aluminum. Only 173 Main Street has its windows intact.
Middle Main Street stores built in the early twentieth century do not have bay windows. No. 169, built ca. 1910 on the north side of 173 Main Street, has wide plate glass windows, the center section canted in toward the central doorway. No. 175 on the south side, also built ca. 1910, had a similar design for its display windows.
Bay shop windows exist elsewhere on Staten Island’s commercial streets. Several can be found intact today in Tompkinsville: 9-11 Corson Street and 53 Victory Boulevard, both built ca. 1880, have bracketed bay shop windows. In Clifton, 1253 Bay Street also survives, its bay windows in a fine state of preservation. These are three-story, three-bay commercial buildings.
Gable end decoration similar to that of 173 Main Street is found on numerous Queen Anne style houses in Tottenville. The house at 236 Lee Avenue, built ca. 1894, has barge boards with a circle motif and spindles at the peak, as does 5301 Arthur Kill Road, built ca. 1896. Ready-made gable decoration could be ordered from catalogs such as that published by Blumer & Kuhn Stair Co., Chicago, 1893. Although 173 Main Street is much smaller than a typical Queen Anne residence, its fish-scale clad gable, robust barge boards and elaborate spindle decoration justify its being described as a Queen Anne shop.
The designer or builder of 173 Main Street has not been documented. Documentation may eventually come to light about the many carpenters practicing in Tottenville: Sixteen Tottenville carpenters are listed in the Standard Directory of Richmond County, 1893-94. The George Cunningham Store with its bracketed bay windows and Queen Anne style decorated gable remains a rare, intact example of Tottenville’s late-nineteenth century commercial architecture.
Description
The George Cunningham Store at 173 Main Street is a small, three-bay, one-story commercial building composed as a single rectangular block. The end of its gable roof faces the street. The brick foundation has four courses above ground. The foundation stands about 18 inches away from the property line with the bay windows extending out to the property line. The brick entrance steps of two risers with shallow stoop extend part way into a modern concrete sidewalk. The stoop has a modern iron railing. There are no landscape features.
The front façade is composed of a central door with a bracketed bay window on either side. Each bay window projects beyond the façade about 20 inches, supported by a pair of heavy brackets. The sides of the bay window are slightly canted inward. The total width of the central portion of each window is 49 inches. The hipped convex roofs of the bay windows are covered with non-historic material. The central window of each bay has one sheet of glass. The sides are divided by a center muntin, creating a one-over-one sash. Above these windows are transom windows now filled with plywood. (Earlier photographs show that the transoms were composed of small, multi-paned squares.) The brackets supporting the bay windows have ogee curves whose carved rays reach toward the edge. The brackets are canted inward echoing the side windows above. The windowsills are covered with aluminum. The wall beneath each bay window has two recessed rectangular panels.
The doorway is marked by slender fluted pilasters five and one-half inches wide with plain rectangular bases and capitals. The thin cornice is undecorated. The transom is filled with plywood. A non-historic aluminum storm door hides the inner door, which is also non-historic.
The attic wall of the gable end is covered with fish-scale shaped wood shingles. The lower edge flares outward slightly. A small square multi-paned window lights the attic. Cutwork barge boards and a scroll with a series of cutout circles decorate the edge of the roof and the peak is screened with multiple turned spindles.
The northern elevation. The clapboard on the wall has a four and one-half inch exposure. There is one window near the front. A door near the back is filled with plywood. There are no visible gutters. The roof is clad in non-historic shingles.
The southern elevation. The clapboard wall has one window near the front. The window surround is plain, as is the sill. A drip board is on top. The window is filled with plywood and an air conditioner is mounted at the top of the window opening. There is no door on this elevation.
The east elevation (rear) is not visible.
- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Analysis of iron in water from Pacific surface region by the Flow Injection analysis in the Chemistry Lab.
Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel exhibit now at The Kuma Museum his tent from document Kassel d13 , 2012 ( unsolicited )
that created debates about contempoarary art , started occupy movement in front of Fridericianum museum ... got confiscated , inspired marble tent installation documenta14
read more here :
www.emergencyrooms.org/documenta_kassel.html
Geoffroy normally works with art formats like the EMERGENCY ROOM
to stimulate urgent expression by artist about today 's emergencies :
The art work can be asking about "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian "where Manet paint an " after excecution moment "
Is art always too late ?
Can art prevent accidents ?
Does art always comes after the shooting or can art sometimes prevent it ?
Can artists have an impact ?
Could it be an art that could prevent and stop accidents not only witness and express about them ?
Thierry Geoffroy/ Colonel will be exhibiting in the museum Kunsthalle Mannheim from october 2018 part of the exhibition Konstruktion der Welt .Kunst und Ökonomie
Constructing the World: Art and Economy 1919-1939 and 2008-2018
10/12/18 to 02/03/19
Ten years after the peak of the global financial crisis in 2008, which profoundly shook the economic systems of America and Europe and had a lasting effect on present-day life, this topical exhibition is the first to illustrate the economy’s dramatic influence on art and to make global comparisons, demonstrating these in an analysis of two separate eras. Economic phenomena in the classical modernism of the 1920s and 30s are not only explored by focusing on art from the German Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and the United States, but also juxtaposed with artists of the present day.
Curatorial team: Dr. Eckhart Gillen (Berlin), Dr. Ulrike Lorenz, Dr. Sebastian Baden
Project Lead: Dr. Inge Herold, Assistence: Lisa Valentina Riedel, M. A. mult., Elisabeth Bohnet, M.A.
How does contemporary art reflect the world of work today? The catalogue for the second part of the exhibition Constructing the World at the Kunsthalle Mannheim takes a look at this question. The focus of it is primarily on artistic positions of the past decade that deal with the social, political, and economic effects of the most recent economic crisis after 2008. The works address and interrogate new production conditions and developments on the labor market as well as political conflicts. The accompanying publication provides fascinating insights into the diverse artistic positions.
Artists participating 2008-2018
Maja Bajevic - BBM (Observers of Operators of Machines) - Bureau d'Études - Claire Fontaine - Jacques Coetzer - Abraham Cruzvillegas - Szilárd Cseke - Chto Delat - Jeremy Deller - Simon Denny - Tatjana Doll - Harun Farocki & Antje Ehmann - Thierry Geoffroy - Andreas Gursky - Thomas Hirschhorn - Olaf Holzapfel - Sanja Iveković - Charles Lim Yi Yong - Maha Maamoun - José Antonio Vega Macotela - Tobias Rehberger - Oliver Ressler & Dario Azzellini - Mika Rottenberg - Superflex - Zefrey Throwell - Volume V - Maya Zack - Artur Żmijewski
Artists participating 1919-1939
Berenice Abbott - Gerd Arntz - Lester Thomas Beall - Thomas Hart Benton - George Biddle - John Biggers - Peter Blume - Margaret Bourke-White - Jacob Burck - Clarence Holbrook Carter - Charlie Chaplin - Ottilie Cieluszek - Ralston Crawford - Francis Hyman Criss - Stuart Davis - Alexander A. Deineka - Rudolf Dischinger - Otto Dix - Nikolaj A. Dolgorukow - Arthur Durston - Sergej M. Eisenstein - Fred Ellis - Walker Evans - Philip Evergood - Conrad Felixmüller - Hans Finsler - Max Gebhard - Hugo Gellert - John R. Grabach - Otto Griebel - William Gropper - Carl Grossberg - George Grosz - Hans Grundig - Kurt Günther - O. Louis Guglielmi - John Heartfield - Werner Heldt - Karl Hubbuch - Eric Johansson - Joe Jones - Grethe Jürgens - William Karp - Lewis W. Hine - Hannah Höch - Heinrich Hoerle - Edward Hopper - Hermann Otto Hoyer - Edward McKnight Kauffer - Gerhard Keil - Gustavs Klucis - Käthe Kollwitz - Pawel D. Korin - Valentina N. Kulagina - Wilhelm Lachnit - Fritz Lang - Wladimir W. Lebedew - Jack Levine - El Lissitzky - Arkadi Lobanow - Louis Lozowick - Sergej A. Lutschischkin - Reginald Marsh - Carl Mayer - László Moholy-Nagy - Dimitri Moor - Reinhold Nägele - Otto Nagel - Alice Neel - Oskar Nerlinger -Solomon B. Nikritin - Alice Lex-Nerlinger - Gerta Overbeck - Werner Peiner - Kusma S. Petrow-Wodkin - Juri I. Pimeno w - Natalia Pinus - Michail M. Plaksin - Jackson Pollock - Curt Querner - Climent N. Redko - Albert Renger-Patzsch - Serafima V. Rjangina - Alexander Rodtschenk o - Theodore Roszak - Walter Ruttmann - Leni Riefens tahl - Nikolaus Sagrekov - Alexander N. Samochwalow - Paul Sample - August Sander - Arkadi S. Schaichet - Rudolf Schlichter - Wilhelm Schnarrenberger - Georg Scholz - Franz Wilhelm Seiwert - Ben Shahn - Charles Sheeler - Georgi und Wladimir A. Stenberg - Warwara Stepanowa - Paul Strand - Miklos Suba - Ernst Thoms - Alexander G. Tyschler - Bumpei Usui - Konstantin A. Vialov - Karl Völker - Wladimir A. Wassiljew - Dsiga Wertow - Piotr W. Wiljams - Grant Wood - Gustav Wunderwald - Ekaterina S. Zernova - Heinrich Zille
www.colonel.dk contact : emergencyrooms@gmail.com
#artformats #artformat #formatart #biennale #biennalism #biennalecritic
#ARTIVISM #streetartist #politicalartist #activistartist #Epigrammatists #socialcommentary
#premonitionart #avantgardeart #inadvanceart #urbanartist #InstitutionalCritique
#artintime #onlineart
#toolate
thierry.geoffroy #thierrygeoffroy #artistrole
#biennalist #Biennalism #biennalecritic
#venicebiennale
#documentakassel #documenta #d13 #documenta13
#manet #edouardmanet
#exhibition #contemporaryart #
#artandeconomy #kunsthallemannheim #museum #mannheim#thierrygeoffroycolonel
#kuma #kumamuseum
With the CCTV image applied to the scan, it was then possible to identify the post impact position of the ejected occupant in a detailed 3D scene model. This allowed us to confirm that the only opportunity for an occupant to leave the vehicle without being subsequently struck or ran over by it is following the rebound from the tree impact.
Someone came out with this visual poster of Twitter, weighted by followers. What are the patterns here? Why do they have large followings and what do the do on twitter? Does topic affect it? Gender? Promotion? Community leadership?
It's no surprise to me that daringfireball and majornelson are there. Mac and XBOX fans, yeah. Easy following. We have some TV types also. The two Twitter guys Ev and Biz might be an exception, it's their product.
Have fun! :)
Analysis of iron in water from Pacific surface region by the Flow Injection analysis in the Chemistry Lab.
Analysis of iron in water from Pacific surface region by the Flow Injection analysis in the Chemistry Lab.
As a computer tries to analyze this football play, the superimposed boxes show where the computer thinks the players are at the moment – and usually it’s right. This type of analysis is helping to develop artificial intelligence systems that can see, learn from and eventually improve complex operations. (Graphic courtesy of Oregon State University)
I've written a software that analysis the movement of the seesaw.
white: data from acceleromenter
red: fourier-transformed data from accelerometer
vertical light grey bars: extremes
green: intensity of movement
grey: beats per minute
light blue: regularity of the movement
blue: endurance
Please note: all data will be available as OSC messages on a local WIFI network at dockville festival. The art-exhibtion of Dockville opens on 2nd August. I will be at the festival area the following week. If you want to make some sound/music based on BumTschack Wippe please come by!
Grymes Hill, Staten Island, New York City, New York, United States
Summary
This large neo-Renaissance mansion with Arts and Crafts detailing is an excellent example of early-twentieth- century country house design. The house was built for Louis A. and Laura Stirn in 1908 to the plans of Kafka & Lindenmeyr. One of the few houses of its size and type surviving on Staten Island, it is prominently sited on Grymes Hill where it commands a spectacular view of New York Harbor. Grymes Hill was developed with large estates in the 1830s and 1840s and by the early 1900s, had become a fashionable residential neighborhood favored by wealthy German businessmen. Stirn, a German emigre, was a prominent silk commission merchant and owner of textile mills. His wife, the granddaughter of bridge builder John Roebling, was an expert on botany and horticulture. Modeled after an Italian Renaissance villa, the Stirn house is a two-and-one-half-story structure composed of a symmetrical center block and flanking dependencies. Clad with stucco and capped by red tile hipped roof with dormers and deep bracketed eaves, it has Ionic porticos on the front and rear facades and a gabled porch at the entrance to the kitchen wing. Arts and Crafts details include the polychrome terra-cotta frieze, iron balconies, and stained glass rondels. The building incorporated a number of technologically advanced features including glazed polychrome terra cotta, cast concrete, and Portland cement stucco facings.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Grymes Hill'
Located in northeastern Staten Island, where it commands a magnificent view of New York Harbor and the Verrazano Narrows, Grymes Hill is bounded on the northwest by Victory Boulevard, on the east by Richmond Road and Van Duzer Street, on the south by the Staten Island Expressway, and on the west by Clove Road. This land was part of the 5,100-acre manor which was granted to Governor Thomas Dongan (1634-1715) in 1687 and subsequently passed to his nephews and their heirs. In the 1830s, the hill began to be developed with estates. The neighborhood took its name from Madame Suzette Grymes, wife of the noted New Orleans lawyer John "Randolph Grymes. who began buying property near the present-day intersection of Howard Avenue and Grymes Hill Road in 1836, creating an estate known as Capo di Monte.
Other notable landowners included Orondates Mauran, who built a summer house in 1831 on property extending along the west side of Howard Avenue between Eddy Street and Ada Place, and Major George Howard, who purchased forty-two acres on Grymes Hill between 1830 and 1833, including all the land on Howard Avenue between Louis and Eddy Streets. Howard, a former soldier who served as boarding officer for the port of New York and later as keeper of the public stores on Staten Island, built a house for himself on the southwest corner of his land. The northern half of his property was divided into fifty-foot-wide lots which were sold at auction in August 1836. The property now occupied by the Stirn house was part of a larger group of lots purchased by real estate investor Caleb Tompkins Ward. In 1841 Ward sold his Grymes Hill lots to Harvey North, an importer, from New Orleans. In 1853, North moved to France, selling his property to Thomas Eakin of Nashville who built a house known as "East Over" to the designs of James Renwick. In 1879. Eakin's heirs sold a tract of land to the actor- journalist Henry Sedley, owner of the adjoining property at 37 Howard Avenue. In 1895, Henry Sedley sold his house on Grymes Hill to Eleanor Phelps Sedley. In June 1907 she sold the land acquired from on the Eakins family to Louis A. and Laura Stirn. The property had a frontage of about 275 feet on Howard Avenue and extended down the hillside about 600 feet to Sunset Terrace. (The lot now measures 274 feet by 200 feet.)
In 1907, when the Stirns bought their property, Grymes Hill was considered one of the most "attractive residential sections of Staten Island" featuring a mix of large estates, suburban houses, and institutions that complemented the residential character of the neighborhood. These included the Church of Our I^ady of Good Counsel (1899) at 44 Austin Place and Notre Dame Academy which was established in an old house (built c. 1850, enlarged 1903) at 21 Howard Avenue in 1904, and moved to its present quarters (built c. 1854- 57, enlarged 1920s, 1930s) at 76 Howard Avenue in 1906. Additions to the neighborhood also included two new enclaves of large developer-built suburban houses: Brighton Heights Park and Morningside (c. 1906). In addition to Louis Stirn, several businessmen were erecting large mansions for their private use. These included silk merchant C. Allan Blyth who built a Craftsman-inspired residence, designed by the noted architect Henry Atterbury Smith, at 103 Howard Avenue (1907-08) and brewer William Horrmann who erected an eccentric mansion modeled after a Bavarian castle at 189 Howard Avenue (completed 1910, demolished). During this period a number of German families began settling on Grymes Hill. In addition to the Stims and Horrmanns, "prominent German families who called Grymes Hill home for generations [included | the Heinrichs, the Badenhausens, the Strohmeyers, [and] the Druckliebs.""
Louis A. and Laura Stirn
Louis A. Stirn, the son of a prominent Lutheran clergyman Rev. Samuel Stirn and his wife, Emma Kauffman Stim, was born in 1853 in the village of Eschersheim, a suburb of Frankfurt, Germany. In 1877, at the age of fourteen, Louis Stirn left Germany to move to New York City where he found employment in the silk business. In 1884 he became a partner in the firm of Oscar Schoenherr, who was a commission merchant representing several German manufacturers of velvets and woolens. Stirn established his own firm in 1894. Three years later, his brother Edmund became a partner in the firm, which was known as L. & E. Stirn. Initially, the firm was an import house dealing in ribbons, silks, velvets, and chiffons which it distributed to such leading firms as Marshall Field & Co. By the 1910s, it had become an export house and commission agent specializing in the sale and distribution of domestic cloth. Louis and Edmund Stim also controlled the Concordia Silk Mills which had operations employing several thousand workers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Watertown, New York, and Johnstown, Tennessee.
Louis A. Stirn moved to Staten Island in 1882. Six years later, he married Laura Natalie Methfessel, daughter of Professor Anton Gottlieb Methfessel and
Laura A. Roebling Methfessel. Professor Methfessel (1829-93) was one of the most prominent educators on Staten Island, who in 1862 founded the Methfessel School, a boys' boarding and day .school that became the Staten Island Academy and Latin School, the island's most prestigious private primary and secondary school. His wife, Laura A. Roebling Methfessel, was the daughter of John Augustus Roebling, the famed bridge builder and manufacturer of wire cable, who planned and oversaw the early construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (1867-83, a designated New York City Landmark), completed under the direction of his son Washington and daughter-in-law Emily.
The Stims took an active part in the community life of Staten Island. Louis Stirn was a member of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, the Staten Island Civic League, and the Richmond County Country Club. He was also active in several national trade organizations and was a member of the Manhattan Club. Laura Stirn was a founder of the St. Cecilia Society of Staten Island (a women's singing society) and was a member of the Staten Island Institute of Arts & Sciences, the Staten Island Bird Club, and the Garden Club of Staten Island, where she was known for her collection of rare plants. She was also active in several charitable organizations, including the Stapleton Day Nursery and the Staten Island Hospital, where she served as a member of the board of trustees.
Kafka & Lindenmeyr
Organized around 1906. Kafka & Lindenmeyr was the successor firm to Hugo Kafka & Co. Hugo Kafka, Sr. (1843-1915), the firm's founder, was bom in Prague and was educated at the Polytechnikum in Zurich, where he studied under Gottfried Semper. In 1874. he immigrated to Philadelphia to work with Herman Schwarzmann on the Centennial Exposition of 1876. In 1878, Kafka moved his architectural practice to New York. He had numerous commissions for apartment buildings and houses. He also designed Saint Peter's German Evangelical Reformed Church, now the Free Magyar Reformed Church, in Kreischerville, Staten Island (1883).
During his career Hugo Kafka [Sr.J formed several partnerships. At the turn of century Kafka established the firm of Hugo Kafka & Sons with Hugh (aka Hugo, Jr., b. 1875) and Frederick P. Kafka (b. 1876), a civil engineer. In 1903, Hugo Kafka. Sr.. began to curtail his involvement with the firm due to rheumatoid arthritis. He retired entirely in December 1905. By May 1906, Frederick P. Kafka also left the business to pursue a career in the manufacture and installation of fireproof building materials. In June 1906, Ludwig
Lindenmeyr, a twenty-six year old New Jersey-bom architect, became a partner in the firm of Kafka & Lindenmeyr. Hugh Kafka and Ludwig Lindenmeyr worked together until around 1912, when Hugh Kafka left the firm to become the manager of the New York office of the Bay State Pink Granite Company. Ludwig Lindenmeyr continued to practice under his own name until around 1918. He died prior to 1920, when his wife was listed in the Manhattan directory as a widow. During the mid- 1920s, Frederick and Hugh Kafka were partners with Pierce Taylor in the Kafka-Taylor Building Construction Company in New Rochelle, where the Kafkas had resided since the early 1900s.
The Earlv Twentieth-Century American Country' House and the Design of the Louis and Laura Stirn House
In the 1890s, the increasing density of America's cities created "a nostalgia for the healthier and more tranquil world of the countryside." A new interest arose in nature, gardening, outdoor recreation, and country living, fostered by such publications as House and Garden, Country Life in America, American Homes and Gardens, House Beautiful, and Town and Country. Within a few years, a boom developed in country and suburban house building which lasted through the 1920s. This movement was fueled by a rapidly expanding economy which greatly enlarged the ranks of the wealthy. It was also aided by improvements in public transportation and the advent of the automobile which made commuting to the suburbs and country much easier, and by large-scale immigration which provided the numerous workers needed to build and staff large country houses and maintain estate grounds. In contrast to the country houses of the Victorian period, which were often erected as vacation homes in resort areas, the country houses of this period were usually permanent residences that were located in the environs of a major city and were occupied year round.
An excellent example of early-twentieth-century country house design, the Stirn house presents an interesting blend of formal classicism with an Arts and Crafts aesthetic. This melding of design traditions was a fairly recent innovation in the field and is usually associated with such leading designers of the period as Charles Piatt and Robert W. Gardner. In keeping with current theories which stressed the integration of country houses with their surrounding gardens and landscape, the Stirn House is set well back from the road behind a broad expanse of lawn and a semi- circulardri veway. The house is located just at the edge of the hillside with its rear porch extending onto a slight jut of land that formerly commanded a spectacular view of Stapleton (now obscured by trees) and the harbor. The choice of the Italian Renaissance style for the house may have been suggested by this siting, since Italian villas are often built on hillside sites and usually have terraced gardens. In addition, Italian Renaissance villas and their gardens were becoming an increasingly fashionable source of inspiration for designers and writers on design during this period, notably for the influential architect and landscape designer Charles Piatt, whose Italian Gardens of 1894 was the first illustrated book in English on the Italian Renaissance garden, and Edith Wharton, who published the popular Italian Villas and Their Gardens with illustrations by Maxfield Parrish in 1905.
While far from a direct copy of a Italian Renaissance villa, the Stifn house exhibits such characteristic features as the block-like form of the main portion of the house, the symmetrical treatment of the principal facades, the stucco cladding, the low- pitched hipped-roof covered with terra-cotta tiles, the deep overhanging eaves supported by brackets, the columned porticos, and the arched first-story windows surmounted by smaller rectangular windows. Other elements of the design, such as the stylized Ionic capitals of the porch columns and bracketed keystones of the window surrounds and the decoration of the wrought-iron balustrades, the polychrome terra-cotta frieze and elaborate bracing beneath the roof eaves reflect the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. The simplicity of the moldings and the emphasis on the textured surfaces of the stuccoed walls and tiled roofs are also typical of Arts and Crafts design.
Though designed in a historic style, the Stim House incorporated the latest in mechanical equipment and construction materials, including concrete window surrounds, cast "composition" column capitals, fireproof terra-cotta roof tiles, and Portland cement stucco facing materials which were deemed to be permanent in color and texture and therefore maintenance free. The polychrome terra-cotta used for the frieze was also a recent innovation and was very unusual for a suburban house of the period.
Construction and Later History of the Stirn House
Kafka & Lindenmeyr filed plans for the Stirn house with Staten Island Department of Buildings in March 1908. Construction began almost immediately and was completed in December 1908. The cost of construction was $32,000. excluding the land which had cost 514,000.
The large house provided accommodations for Louis and Laura Stirn. their five children, Laura Stim's widowed sister, Emily Wicchers, her son Manolo, two maids, and a cook. According to Laura Patrick, the Stirns' granddaughter, there was a great hall, living room, music room, conservatory, dining room, kitchen, pantry, and powder room on the first floor; six bedrooms, a sitting room, and two bathrooms on the second floor; and two large bedrooms, and three maid's rooms, on the third floor.
The Stirns continued to occupy their "charming residence... known for its splendidly appointed gardens and beautiful view of the surrounding country and adjacent waters" until their deaths- Laura Stim died in 1943, Louis Stim in 1962. During the 1920s Stim built houses on Howard Avenue for his son Albert Stim (No. 55) and son-in-law Arthur Benbow Elliman (No. 56) and their families. Following Louis Stim's death the house was sold to Reuben Gross, a prominent attorney and leader in the Jewish community, and his wife Blanche Gross. The house is now owned by the Estate of Blanche Gross.
The house remains remarkably intact. Changes to the exterior have included a sympathetic modification of dormer windows on the south gable in the 1910s, replacement of the original trellised siding on the conservatory with modem materials in the 1970s- 1980s, and replacement of most of the attic dormer windows in the 1990s. It is, together with Ernest Flagg's Stone Court (1898 to c. 1917, a designated New York City Landmark), one of the rare surviving examples of the early-twentieth-century country house design on Staten Island and is one of the few houses of its size and type within the city limits.
Description
The Louis and Laura Stirn House is located at the center of a trapezoidal mid-block lot which has a frontage of 274 feet along Howard Avenue and is approximately 200 feet deep. The house is approached by a semi-circular driveway. An Italian Renaissance- inspired villa with Arts and Crafts detailing, the house is constructed of stucco-clad masonry and is capped by a clay-tiled hipped-roof with overhanging bracketed eaves. Approximately sixty-six feet wide and forty- seven feet deep, the building has a symmetrically arranged two-and-one-half story main block which is flanked on the north by a two-and-one-half story service wing and on the south by an enclosed porch (originally a conservatory). Aside from changes to the south porch, the house retains most of its original detailing. The first and second stories have original wood multipane sash and casement windows including several windows with stained glass rondels. The
original attic windows have been replaced with non- historic six-over-one vinyl sash windows. Western Facade:
Main Block The primary facade facing Howard Avenue features a columned portico which extends across the three recessed center bays of the main block. The porch is articulated with paired Ionic columns and Doric comer piers which support a full entablature and a paneled parapet. The concrete columns, entablature, and parapet are painted. The floor of the porch is covered with terrazzo tiles bordered with concrete. The recessed entry wall at the rear of the porch has three openings. At the center of the facade, a rectangular window is divided by mullions and transom bars into a large central opening (with paired casement windows), sidelights, and transoms. The windows retain their original leaded glass; the center casements and transom are decorated with stained-glass rondels. The south entrance bay retains its original Arts and Crafts wood door with an arched window protected by a wrought- iron grille. The north window is a sash window which has its original multipane leaded-glass lights. The comer pavilions have floor-length windows at both the first and second story. The arched first-story windows have recessed surrounds set off by bracketed keystones. The openings retain their original paired multilight French doors, curved transom bars, and transoms with radiating lights framing central lunettes. Decorative wrought-iron railings extend across the base of the window openings. Matching railings are used for the balconies beneath the second story windows. The rectangular second-story window openings have their original paired single-light French doors topped by multi-light transoms. Partially screened from view by the parapet surmounting the porch, the three rectangular windows in the recessed center section of the facade have original six-over-one wood sashes. The north and south windows also retain their original lou vered wood shutters. The second story is surmounted by a paneled terra-cotta frieze. Extending from the frieze are heavy shaped brackets that support the bracing for the shaped rafters beneath the overhanging eaves of roof. Wire mesh has been installed in the spaces between the brackets and eaves to prevent birds from nesting. The building's low-pitched hipped roof has hipped cross gables capping the projecting comer pavilions. At the center of the facade are three hipped-roofed dormers with stucco walls and simple wood surrounds which set off non-historic six-over-one vinyl sash windows. An old pipe vent projects from the roof between the north dormer and the hipped roof of the north pavilion. Ser\'ice Wing The service wing, which projects from the main block on the north side of the building, consists of a hipped-roofed two-and-one-half story block and a shed-roofed one-story extension. The wing is lower in height than the main block and is capped by a simple cornice. An entrance on the west wall of the extension is set off by a wood porch resting on a masonry base. The porch is approached by four stone steps which are flanked by masonry plinths with stuccoed walls and cast concrete capstones. The porch is sheltered by a gabled roof which is supported by paired square columns with bracketed capitals. The gable pediment is articulated by molded raking cornices and horizontal comer cornices which frame the shallow arch of the vaulted porch ceiling. Non-historic metal numerals reading "79" are affixed to the pediment. On the sides of the porch the space between the columns and the west wall of the service wing is filled by original wood lattices decorated with an arch motif. The segmental arched entrance on the west wall of the service wing retains its original paneled wood-and- glass door. The entry is lit by a non-historic light fixture. To the south of the entrance the western facade of the two-and-one-half story portion of the service wing is pierced by a large segmental-arched opening at the first story and a rectangular window opening at the second story. The segmental opening retains it original molded wood surround which is divided into a pair of four-over-one sash windows, two-over-one sidelights, and multilight transoms. The second story also retains its original wood-framed window which consists of a pair of multilight leaded casements topped by a multilight transom with a central stained glass rondel. The basement windows, which are almost completely below ground level, also retain their original multilight wood sash. North Facade:
The north facade is divided into three parts: the west comer bay which is articulated to match the primary facade facing Howard Avenue, the east comer bay which is articulated to match the building's eastern (hillside) facade, and the northern facade of the service wing.
West bay At present the first story of the west comer bay is concealed by shrubbery. Historic photographs show that it is lit by a pair of narrow rectangular window openings which originally contained two-over- one wood window sash. The rectangular second story has its original four-over-one wood sash but has lost its louvered shutters. The attic dormer located near the service wing has a non-historic vinyl sash window in place of its original paired triple-light casements. Ser\'ice wing The shed roof of the projecting first- story extension of the service wing is set off by heavy brackets. The first-story facade features a central wood and stucco oriel flanked by oculus windows with keyed enframements. The oriel retains its original paired casements which are divided by wood glazing bars into a four-over-one arrangement. The casements are surmounted by a transom which retains its original multipane leaded glass and central decorative rondel. The angled sides of the oriel are pierced by narrow lights which have their original two-over-one wood casements. The oculi also retain their original multipane wood sash. The second story of the service wing is lit by a single window at the center of the facade. It retains its original six-over-one wood-sash window. At the center of the attic is an tripartite dormer consisting of a tall gabled center bay with an arched window flanked by lower shed-roofed bays with square-headed openings. Th£ wood casement windows in these sidelights and the wood fanlight in the arched transom in the center bay are original, but the lower portion of the center bay contains a non-historic six- over-one vinyl sash window.
East Bay A massive stuccoed chimney is set into the comer where the east bay meets the service wing. This bay contains the building's basement entrance which is approached by concrete stair and paved areaway which are protected by a non-historic iron pipe rail. The basement entrance has a historic six-light wood door which is surmounted by a triple-light transom. At the first story, the rectangular window opening has its original wood casement windows which are topped by a transom. At the second story the window retains its original six-over-one wood sash window. Eastern facade:
Main block The articulation of the eastern facade is similar to that of the Howard Avenue facade except that it has an elliptical portico and the windows are larger. Because the site slopes to the east, the facade has a high basement which is screened from view by a terrace that extends across the entire length of the main block. The terrace is approached by a graceful curving masonry staircase which leads to the portico at the center of the facade. The original balustrade with turned posts which extended the perimeter of the terrace has been replaced with a non-historic concrete block balustrade; however the terrace retains its historic brick floor laid in a herringbone pattern. The porch has its original wood ceiling. It has a non-historic light fixture at its center. Chains have been suspended from the ceiling to support a non-historic wicker swing seat.
At the rear of the porch, the door and window openings align with the openings on the Howard Avenue facade. The entry has a historic multi-pane glass-and-wood door, the large window has a tripartite transom with a center stained glass rondel surmounting a single clear pane in a historic wood surround. The porch is also accessed by a doorway on the south wall of the north pavilion which retains its original paneled wood door with multi-pane windows and multi-pane transom.
The comer pavilions flanking the entrance porch have original projecting wood bay windows at the first story and large segmental arched openings at the second story. The wood bases beneath the bays have been modified but the windows remain intact. They are divided into a large central light and sidelights which are surmounted by transoms with multipane leaded glass and a central stained-glass rondel. At the second story the arched openings contain a pair of French doors with four-light-over-single-light windows flanked by narrower sidelights with two lights over a single light. The windows open on to small balconies screened by curved wrought- iron railings above the first story bays. Like the Howard Avenue facade, the eastern facade is lit by three dormer windows which have non-historic vinyl sash.
Service wing The basement of the east wall of the service wing is partially excavated to accommodate the staircase down to the areaway and basement entrance. There are three large square-headed basement windows which retain historic multipane wood window sash and are protected by historic iron grilles. A smaller rectangular window with a historic iron grille is located at the base of the shed-roofed extension. The first story has a large segmental arch window opening which retains its original window sash featuring a pair of four- light-over-one-light casements and two-light-over-one light sidelights and is topped by a tripartite transom with leaded stained glass. The square-headed second- story window has an original four-over-one wood sash window. South Facade
The south facade is divided into three sections by a pair of massive chimneys. The narrow outer bays have arched window openings at the first story and square headed window openings at the second story. The first story windows are original and match the comer pavilion windows of the Howard Avenue facade. The second story windows retain their original four- over-one sash windows. The center section is distinguished by its elliptical one-story enclosed wood porch which originally served as a conservatory. The porch retains its elegant bowed cornice, pilasters, and bracketed keystones, but the window openings have been partially enclosed with non-historic wood in-fill; the window glass has been replaced, and decorative wood trim which created a latticework pattern on the pilasters has been removed. The porch retains its original entrance at the center of the facade, but the door and transom are non-historic replacements. The center bays at the second story have the same articulation as the outer bays and retain their original large hipped roofed dormer which has four windows with non-historic vinyl sash.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
Downtown Brooklyn, New York, New York City, United States
Erected between c.1835 and 1847. these four houses are unusually intact survivors from the early nineteenth century residential neighborhood that once flourished on the blocks east of Brooklyn's civic center. In contrast to wealthier Brooklyn Heights and the working class district near the Navy Yard, this neighborhood evolved between the late 1820s and 1840s as a upper middle-class enclave and remained downtown Brooklyn's leading middle-class neighborhood throughout the nineteenth century.
Moved two blocks to their present site in 1990, these houses were originally located on Johnson Street between Bridge and Lawrence Streets on one of several blocks developed by Rev. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, who had inherited a portion of his grandfather's colonial-era farm. Three of the houses were constructed by Johnson; No. 184 was erected in 1847 as an investment property by merchant Francis Chichester.
Nos. 182, 184, and 186 display aspects of the Greek Revival style. No. 186 is especially noteworthy as one of the few surviving row houses in the city with a free-standing Greek Revival portico. No. 188, an 1830s house remodeled in the early 1880s, is ornamented with a combination of Queen Anne and Second Empire elements including an elaborate bracketed porch hood. During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, these houses were occupied by merchants, lawyers, brokers, engineers, teachers, builders, and shipmasters.
Residents included surveyor John S. Stoddard, credited with laying out the streets in many of the older sections of Brooklyn, who owned No. 188 in the 1850s and early 1860s, and teacher Helen Lawrence who conducted a private school in No. 182 from the mid-1850s through the mid-1870s. The houses remained in residential use through the 1980s. They were moved to their present site as part of the MetroTech redevelopment plan in 1990. Today they survive as a significant reminder of the history of downtown Brooklyn and of the evolution of Brooklyn's middle-class residential architecture.
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Early Brooklyn and the Johnson Estate
In the mid-eighteenth century the village of Brooklyn was a small hamlet centered around the highway (modern-day Fulton Street) and the ferry that linked the farming communities of western Long Island with New York City. In 1755, Barent Johnson, a prosperous farmer of Dutch descent, purchased a pie-shaped tract of land of about forty acres which extended from the highway to Wallabout Creek (near present-day Navy Street) between present day Willoughby and Tillary Streets.
Barent Johnson died in 1777 of wounds he received fighting on the American side during the Battle of Long Island." Johnson left his property in trust for his orphaned nine-year-old son, John Barent Johnson. John Barent Johnson attended Columbia College and became a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.3 In 1803, Rev. Johnson and his wife Elizabeth Lupton Johnson became ill and died with a few months of one another. They left three young children who were raised by Elizabeth Johnson's half-brother, Peter Roosevelt, an Episcopalian minister at Newtown.
Both of the Johnsons' sons, William Lupton Johnson (1800-1870) and Samuel Roosevelt Johnson (1802-1873), attended Columbia and became Episcopalian ministers. Their daughter, Maria Laidlie Johnson (1798-182?), married Rev. Evan M. Johnson, an Episcopalian minister from Rhode Island who served as curate at Newtown from 1814 to 1826. In 1823, when Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, the youngest of the three Johnson heirs, reached the age of majority, the heirs entered into a partition agreement to divide their Brooklyn property which was subdivided into city blocks and lots.
By that time the village of Brooklyn was growing rapidly due to the opening of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1801 and the introduction of steam ferry service between Fulton Street in Manhattan and Fulton Street in Brooklyn in 1814.
The village was incorporated in 1816 and in 1819 began an ambitious program to map and improve its streets. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought increased growth to Brooklyn. New warehouses were built along the Brooklyn waterfront and new factories were erected on the outskirts of the village; a thriving commercial district developed along Fulton Street.
The new opportunities for employment brought many new residents to the area. At the same time the expansion of New York City's downtown commercial district led many businessmen who had formerly made their homes in Lower Manhattan to look to Brooklyn for convenient suburban residences. A wave of speculative residential building began. At first, most of the new houses were concentrated in Brooklyn Heights and in the neighborhood around the Navy Yard. In the late 1820s and 1830s, however, the heirs to the farms east of Fulton Street began to develop their property.
By 1834, Brooklyn had a population of 24,310 and was incorporated as a city. In 1836, construction began on the foundations for a magnificent city hall, located on a triangular site at the junction of Court, Joralemon, and Fulton Streets, just opposite the southwest corner of the Johnson Estate.
Development of the Johnson Estate began in the mid-1820s, moving east from Fulton Street along Myrtle Avenue, then expanding to the north and south. Rev. Evan Johnson, who had inherited his wife's share of the estate, was instrumental in this development. In 1826, he sold his farm in Newtown and moved to Brooklyn where he established St. John's Church at Washington and Johnson Streets.
(Churches were an amenity that attracted home buyers to a neighborhood). According to the historian Henry Stiles, Rev. Evan Johnson regarded the civic growth of Brooklyn as a key factor in enhancing the value of the family's real estate and actively promoted the development of "its City Hall, its parks, its ferries, its streets."
Moreover, Stiles credited to Rev. Evan Johnson's "exertions and perseverance.... the opening of that great eastern wing of the city Myrtle Avenue."9 All three of the Johnson heirs contributed to the growth of Brooklyn by selling the right-of-way through their property for Adams Street and Tillary Street to the city at the cost of only $1 in 1826.
The heirs also gave considerable importance to the development of Johnson Street, entering into an agreement in May 1833 to develop the street "in a uniform manner so as to render it pleasant and desirable for private residences" and establishing restrictive covenants that required all the houses be set back ten feet from the edge of the lot.
Thus, they tried to ensure that their property would attract well-to-do buyers and that the neighborhood would develop as a fashionable enclave.
Construction and Early History of the Johnson Street (now Duffield Street) Houses
In the mid-1820s, Rev. Samuel R. Johnson, sold a few unimproved lots (mostly on Bridge and Tillary Streets) to builders and investors. In most cases he held mortgages on the properties. Development increased in the area in the 1830s and Johnson began to erect houses on his lots which he either sold or leased to tenants. He began developing the block bounded by Bridge Street, Johnson Street, Lawrence Street (formerly Barbarin Street), and Myrtle Avenue around 1835.
By 1840, when a street directory was published listing occupants of residential buildings by their addresses, there were four houses standing on the south side of Johnson Street between Lawrence and Bridge Streets including the houses formerly at 108 and 110 Johnson Street (now Nos. 186 and 188 Duffield Street), four houses on the east side of Bridge Street between Johnson and Myrtle Streets (demolished), one house on the north side of Myrtle Avenue between Lawrence and Bridge Streets (demolished), and two houses on the west side of Lawrence Street between Johnson Street and Myrtle Avenue (demolished). The occupants included shipmasters, builders, a butcher, and several merchants.
Johnson continued to build houses and sell vacant lots through the 1840s. In 1839-40, he erected a house at 100 Johnson Street (now No. 182 Duffield Street), which was acquired by his cousin Oscar Johnson in April 1840 and sold to a widow, Elizabeth Liscomb, in June 1840. Liscomb resided at 100 Johnson Street until around 1844-45. In January 1842, she purchased the vacant lot at 106 Johnson Street from Samuel R. Johnson that she sold to Charles H. Baxter, a sandpaper manufacturer, in 1845. In February 1847, Francis H. Chichester, guardian of Henrietta Chichester, purchased the vacant lot from Baxter and erected a house at 106 Johnson Street (now 184 Duffield Street), which was leased for a period of five years beginning in May 1847.
During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Rev. Samuel R. Johnson resided in Lafayette, Indiana. For most of the period, his real estate affairs were handled by his nephew, Samuel E. Johnson, a distinguished attorney and judge, who was the son of Maria Laidlie Johnson and Rev. Evan Johnson. In 1847, Samuel R. Johnson returned to Brooklyn and took over the pulpit of St. John's Church. In 1850, he was appointed Professor of Systematic Divinity at the General Theological Seminary and moved to Manhattan. That year he sold his remaining rental properties on the block.
The house at 110 Johnson Street (now 188 Duffield Street) was acquired in 1850 by John S. Stoddard, a surveyor and civil engineer who was responsible for laying out the streets in a large portion of Brooklyn and who served in the late 1850s and early 1860s as chief engineer for Brooklyn's municipal water company.
In 1866, Stoddard's widow sold the house to investor Alfred E. Lyman who leased it to furrier Thomas Finnigan through the mid-1870s. In the early 1880s it was occupied by clothing dealer Isaac Cohn and his family. In 1881, the building was sold to Catherine Bagley, who raised the attic to a full story and altered the facade.
Occupants included John McDonald, a carpenter, who occupied the house with his family in 1900, William J. Cummings, an engineer, and Joseph Henderson, an undertaker, both of whom resided in the house with their families in 1905.
Samuel R. Johnson sold 108 Johnson Street (now 186 Duffield Street) to merchant George Hastings in 1850. It was acquired the following year by attorney Henry Hagner (1824-1880) who had offices on Court Street in Brooklyn. It was occupied until 1910 by members of the Hagner family, including Henry Hagner, Jr., who also practiced law in Brooklyn, his sister Mary H. Lyman and her husband Robert A. Lyman, an officer, at a coal and wood company.
No. 100 Johnson Street (now 182 Duffield Street) changed hands several times in the early 1850s. In 1856 the house was purchased by schoolteacher Helen W. Lawrence who conducted a school on the premises with her sisters Sarah and Margaret until the early 1870s. It was leased to Zebulon Post, a fish merchant at the Fulton Market, in the late 1870s and occupied by members of the Lawrence family in the 1880s.
No. 106 Johnson Street (now 184 Duffield Street) was purchased in 1852 by Charles B. Prindle, a grocer with a wholesale business on South Street in Manhattan. After his death in 1858, his heirs retained the house as an investment property. Around 1860, it was leased to Sarah Halstead, a widow, who kept a boarding house for two or three tenants at a time including a lawyer, a printer, and a bookkeeper. In 1880, it was leased to Jacob York, a brick mason, and in the 1890s was occupied by I. Craven, a broker, and his wife. William Nolting, a physician, and Archibald Crowe, a bookkeeper, and their families resided there in the early 1900s.
This occupancy by professionals and well-to-do merchants was typical of the neighborhood which evolved as an upper-middle class enclave and remained a middle-class residential neighborhood until the early 1900s. To a certain extent this evolution sets it apart from downtown Brooklyn's other nineteenth-century residential neighborhoods.
Brooklyn Heights, while retaining a significant amount of its older middle-class housing, became a neighborhood of the wealthy following the construction of large numbers of elegantly-appointed new houses along Montague Street, Montague Terrace, Remsen Street, and Columbia Heights in the 1840s and 1850s.
It remained Brooklyn's most fashionable and aristocratic district throughout the nineteenth century. The Fulton Ferry neighborhood, which had initially incorporated a mixture of housing and commercial enterprises, became
exclusively commercial and industrial by the mid-nineteenth century.
The neighborhood to the south and west of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, developed largely between the mid-1830s and the 1850s and built up with modest rowhouses, became a working-class enclave. As immigrants flocked to the neighborhood to take advantage of the jobs provided by the Navy Yard and neighborhood industries, it became one of Brooklyn's most densely populated areas and was popularly known as "Irishtown" or "Vinegar Hill," for the large number of residents of Irish descent.
By the mid-nineteenth century other middle-class enclaves began to develop just beyond the downtown, including the neighborhoods now known as Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Clinton Hill, and Fort Greene, but the neighborhood to the east of City Hall, now Borough Hall, retained its desirability, probably as a result of its convenience to Brooklyn's commercial and governmental center.
The Desink of the Houses'
Erected between c. 1835 and 1847, these two-and-one-half-story and three-story brick and clapboard-covered frame houses are representative of the urban residential buildings that once lined the blocks east of Brooklyn's civic center and for the most part have now been replaced or severely altered.
Three of the four buildings display aspects of the Greek Revival style, which dominated American architecture from the late 1820s to the late 1840s, and is characterized by its emphasis on planar wall surfaces, simple massive forms, and classical ornament primarily derived from classic Greek sources. No. 188 Duffield Street (formerlyllO Johnson Street) a mid-1830s house remodeled in the early 1880s, features a combination of Queen Anne and Second Empire decorative elements. In accordance with the agreement the Johnsons had made regarding the development of Johnson Street, the houses originally set back from the street along a uniform building line and had small front gardens with iron picket fences. (This arrangement was replicated when the houses were moved to Duffield Street).
No. 182 Duffield Street (formerly 100 Johnson Street), constructed c. 1839-40. is a Greek Revival style, three-bay-wide, two-and-one-half-story, brick townhouse with a peaked roof. This house was originally located on the comer of Johnson and Lawrence Streets and its north wall is articulated by two lines of windows that are now mostly sealed.
The north gable is capped by paired chimneys joined by a parapet, a characteristic Greek Revival feature. On both the primary and north facades, the window and door openings are set off by the simple marble lintels and sills. The wide marble stoop with cast iron railings has not survived.
The tall parlor windows may be an original feature since such floor length windows were just becoming fashionable around 1840 or may be the result of an early alteration. Historic photographs show that the other windows originally had six-over-six wood sashes which have been replaced. The building's most notable feature is the crowning wood entablature composed of a tripartite architrave, fascia board frieze pierced by horizontal attic windows, and denticulated cornice.
Similar attic friezes and entablatures are found on such notable examples of the Greek Revival design as the houses at 1 -13 Washington Square North (1831-33) familiarly known as "The Row" in the Greenwich Village Historic District and the houses in Cushman Row (1839-40) at 408-418 West 20th Street in the Chelsea Historic District.
Alterations to the facade have included the replacement of the original wood entrance surround, doors, and transom with paired paneled wood and glass doors and single-light transom, probably in the 1880s or 1890s. These handsome doors are enriched with beaded moldings and the transom bar above the entrance is decorated with an unusual stylized classical motif.
The two-story extension at the rear of this house was probably added in the 1870s or 1880s. Its north wall, which is partially visible from Duffield Street through the alley between this building and 3 MetroTech Center, has lost its first story angled bay visible in historic photographs of the house.
No. 184 Duffield Street (formerly 106 Johnson Street), constructed in 1847, has a restrained design typical of mid-and-late 1840s urban vernacular buildings influenced by the Greek Revival style. As was characteristic for houses in the late 1840s, it has a full third story surmounted by a flat roof. This house is designed using an English basement plan, a type of house plan modeled on English precedents that was just coming into vogue in New York in the late 1840s.
In an English basement house the first story is set only a few steps above street level and contains a formal dining room and a stairhall which leads upstairs to a double parlor on the second floor. This plan is expressed in the exterior design of the house by the tall windows at the second story which extended to the parlor floor to provide adequate light and ventilation for the large room.
A stone band course between the basement and first story and a string course beneath the second-story windows emphasizes the dining room floor. These stone courses create strong horizontal lines to counter the tall proportions of the building and the height of the second-story windows. Also characteristic of the period is the use of dark stone trim (probably bluestone or brownstone which is now painted white) rather than the limestone or marble customary in the 1830s and early 1840s and the employment of somewhat heavy sills and lintels. The facade is capped by a Tuscan Doric entablature with a boldly projecting crowning cornice.
No. 184 also originally incorporated some Gothic Revival details, including the trefoil pattern cast iron railings and fences (no longer extant) and the cusped arch panels which may survive on the paired wood doors (now covered with metal panels). The entry retains its original molded wood door surround and single-light transom. The house originally had a basement entry and small basement windows which were not recreated when it was set on the present foundation.
At the rear extending across the back of the house is a two-story porch with brick side walls and a wood- framed rear wall clad with non-historic wood siding. In the 1840s and 1850s such multi-story galleries were a popular feature for urban houses. Typically these galleries opened on to the back rooms of the house through floor-length windows or French doors which ensured adequate light and ventilation and provided a view of the back garden. In many instances one or more stories of the porch was enclosed with framing and lit by multiple windows. When an enclosed porch opened off the back parlor it was often used as an informal sitting room or "tearoom."
Here, it appears that the first-story porch opening off the dining room was an open porch and had steps leading down to the back garden.
The second story porch was probably always enclosed and used as a tearoom-sitting room. Because rear porches were usually not built on as firm a foundation as the rest of the house during this period many galleries and tearooms have disappeared making this porch something of a rare survivor.
No. 186 Duffield Street (formerly 108 Johnson Street), constructed c. 1835-38, was built as a pair with the house at 188 Duffield Street (formerly 110 Johnson Street) with which it shares a party wall. A two-and-one-half-story frame house, faced with clapboard siding above a masonry basement (originally brick), No. 186 displays elements of the Federal and Greek Revival styles. Its most notable feature is the freestanding Greek Revival portico with square Doric columns supporting a heavy entablature. According to architectural historian Charles Lockwood, "the high cost of cutting ... columns and building a freestanding porch limited this [type of] doorway to only the finest row houses" during the Greek Revival period. Surviving examples of such porticos are rare in New York City and are exceptionally rare for frame row houses.
No. 186 also is distinguished by the handsome Greek Revival entrance surround with its narrow sidelights framed by pilasters, and tripartite transom set off by console ornaments and a transom bar ornamented with a beaded molding. The house retains its original wood door articulated with two long narrow recessed panels. The articulation of the door, entrance surround, and portico may have been adapted from plate in Minard Lafever's The Modern Builder's Guide (1833),20 a popular source for builders and architects of the period.
The parlor and second story windows are framed by molded wood surrounds and have historic six-over-six wood sashes. The facade is crowned by an entablature composed of a wide frieze and a denticulated cornice which was modified by the addition of small decorative brackets in the late nineteenth century and by the removal of a decorative architrave molding sometime after 1940.
The building is surmounted by a peaked roof with two pedimented dormers at the front of the house and a single dormer at the center of the rear facade. The use of such dormers is typical of the Federal style and points to the early date of this house. Another early feature is the irregular arrangement of windows at the second story of the rear facade, where the northernmost window is somewhat lower than the other windows since it lights the staircase landing.
No. 188 Duffield Street (formerly 110 Johnson Street), built as a pair with 186 Duffield Street (formerly 108 Johnson Street) with which it shares a party wall, was raised from two-and-one-half stories to three stories and given a new facade enriched with Queen Anne and Second Empire details when it was remodeled in the early 1880s.
Faced with clapboard siding, it has molded window surrounds with decorative lintels and two-over-two wood window sashes. The entrance is sheltered by an elaborate bracketed hood which may to have been adapted from an earlier portico roof. This surround features decorative spandrel panels including stylized foliate forms and sunflowers, a favorite motif of British Aesthetic movement, which became an emblem of the Queen Anne style.
Historic photographs show that doorway contained paired Queen Anne style paneled doors which were replaced by the current door, side panels, and transom by the 1980s. The facade is capped by a Second Empire style metal comice enriched by a paneled frieze, modillions, and console brackets. A large two-story wing at the rear of the house was demolished immediately prior to the house being moved to this site. While all of the window casings appear to be historic, the present wood clapboard siding and brick side wall facing were installed c. 1990.
Later History'
By the time of Consolidation in 1898, the area around Brooklyn's City Hall (subsequently Borough Hall), had become its financial, commercial, transportation, entertainment, and governmental center. While much of this development took place in the area south and west of Borough Hall, Fulton Street remained the Borough's prime commercial artery with businesses radiating outward for several blocks. The western portion of the former Johnson Estate (Washington, Adams, Pearl Streets, at Willoughby Avenue, Myrtle Avenue, and Johnson Street) became a commercial area with many of the borough's leading shops, hotels, theaters, and major office buildings.
This development was assisted by improvements in transportation, notably the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge (John A., Washington, and Emily Roebling, 1867-83, a designated New York City Landmark) which terminated in Brooklyn at Sands Street between Fulton Street and Washington Avenue where it connected with the Kings County Elevated line, which ran along Fulton Street, and with the Brooklyn Elevated line, which ran along Washington Street and Myrtle Avenue. Within a few years of the opening of the elevated.
Myrtle Avenue was transformed into a commercial and manufacturing corridor with buildings such as the Wilcox Millinery Company factory (1889) at the northwest comer of Myrtle Avenue and Bridge Street and the McEnnery and Mullins & Son furniture warehouses on the south side of Myrtle Avenue at Lawrence Street (pre-1903). For about twenty years Johnson Street and blocks to the north remained residential and middle class. However, the opening of subway service to downtown Brooklyn in 1908, the construction of the Manhattan Bridge and the Flatbush Avenue Extension in 1905-09, and the opening of a new Long Island Railroad terminal at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in 1906 made downtown Brooklyn even more accessible and led to a further expansion of the downtown business and entertainment district.
At the same time Brooklyn's manufacturing sector, which had traditionally been located near the Navy Yard, was also expanding. A number of new factories and warehouses opened along the Flatbush Avenue Extension. In 1920, the American Safety Razor Corporation erected the first building of its factory complex on Lawrence, Johnson, and Jay Streets. By that time, many of the older houses in the neighborhood had been altered to accommodate commercial uses at the first story and most of the houses had been converted from single-family occupancy to boardinghouses or multiple dwellings. These changes were reflected in the occupancy of the houses on Johnson Street by 1915 when the census indicates that all but No. 108 (now 186 Duffield Street) were being used as multi-family dwellings with residents employed in such occupations as teamster, newspaper dealer, nurse, stenographer, and printer.
The majority of occupants were of Irish descent but No. 106 (now 184 Duffield Street) was occupied by a Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company conductor from Guinea who leased rooms to a number of fellow countrymen. By 1925 a number of the houses were occupied by Italian working-class families.
In the post-World War II era several blocks east of Fulton Street were demolished to create a new Civic Center centered around Cadman Plaza. A portion of Fulton Street between Pierrepont Street and the old ferry landing was renamed Cadman Plaza West and Washington Street was widened and renamed Cadman Plaza East. Tillary Street was also widened to provide an easier approach from the Flatbush Avenue Extension to the Brooklyn Bridge.
The elevated tracks that had formerly descended from the Brooklyn Bridge on Fulton Street and Myrtle Avenue were removed. As factory jobs and long-time residents moved to the suburbs in the 1950s and the Brooklyn Navy Yard closed in 1966, the downtown business and residential districts began to contract. Many of the historic stores along Fulton Street closed and a number of houses in the neighborhood east of the civic center became derelict or were demolished.
The neighborhood began to experience new growth in the late 1950s when the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now Polytechnic University) acquired and renovated the American Safety Razor Company's old buildings on Lawrence Street. In 1977 construction began on the Fulton Mall. In the early 1980s plans began for MetroTech, a sixteen-acre complex of new and renovated buildings developed as joint venture by Polytechnic University and Forest City Ratner Corporation.
As part of the development, the Johnson Street site was redeveloped for Polytechnic University's Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology, 5 MetroTech Center. These four houses were moved from their original site to Duffield Street in 1990 where they adjoin historic St. Boniface's Church. Today they survive as a significant reminder of the early history of the neighborhood and of the evolution of Brooklyn's middle-class housing stock, representative examples of what Walt Whitman described in 1861 as "the architectural greatness" of Brooklyn, "the hundreds and thousands of superb private dwellings, for the comfort and luxury of the great body of middle class people."
Description
Moved to their present location in 1990, the four houses are located on a single tax lot which extends 98.4 feet along Duffield Street and is 100.3 feet deep. A low non-historic wrought-iron fence set on blue stone foundation borders the property on Duffield Street and divides the front yards of the individual houses. A non-historic metal gate extends across the narrow alley between the north wall of 182 Duffield Street and the south wall of 3 Metrotech Center. The matching gate across the alley between 188 Duffield Street and St. Boniface's Church (190 Duffield Street) is partially on church property. The north wall of the handicap ramp to the church and a cyclone fence bordering the south side of the rear yard of No. 188 mark the division line between the two properties. The houses set back several feet from the fence and are approached by non-historic bluestone pavers and small grass plots. The houses were stabilized and refurbished when they were moved to this site in 1990.
No. 182 Duffield Street is a Greek Revival style, three-bay-wide, two-and-one-half-story peaked-roofed brick rowhouse with a two-story flat-roofed extension. The house rests on a non-historic basement (constructed when the house was moved) which is parged with brownstone-colored stucco. The basement window openings contain one-over-one wood sash and metal grilles which were salvaged from the building's old basement. A small spigot is set between the north window and the northeast comer of the building. A small areaway in front of the basement windows is protected by a low non-historic stuccoed masonry wall that is coped with bluestone.
The house is approached by a high stoop, which appears to incorporate a historic masonry base that has been parged with stucco and new brownstone-tinted concrete steps. The wrought-iron railings were installed when the house was moved. The iron gates under the stoop were salvaged from the old basement entrance.
Above the basement, the house is faced in brick laid in running bond and has marble window sills and lintels on its Duffield Street and north facades.
The parlor-level entrance is set off by a marble lintel. The brick facades and the lintels and sills on the north facade are painted. The entry contains a pair of historic wood doors and a single-light transom in a historic molded surround that probably dates from the late nineteenth century. The doors are decorated with recessed panels and are lit by tall windows. The transom bar above the doors is enriched with an unusual stylized egg-and-dart molding. The current wood one-over-one window sash and wood surrounds at the first and second stories are non-historic.
They replace one-over-one aluminum sash and frames that had been installed by the mid-1980s. A photograph from the 1930s shows six-over-six sash in most of the windows and late-nineteenth-century two-over-two sashes in the front parlor windows which were lengthened. The facade is capped by a wood entablature composed of tripartite architrave, fascia board frieze pierced by attic windows, and denticulated cornice. The paired wood casement windows are historic.
The north elevation of the main portion of the house is visible from Duffield Street. Above the basement, the facade is articulated by two lines of windows. On the east side of the facade, the first story is lit by a non-historic one-over-one wood window. The second and third story windows are sealed and may have originally been blind windows. The western line of windows have non-historic one-over-one wood sashes at the first and second story.
The attic window is sealed with brick. This wall is capped by a pair of chimneys that are joined by a parapet. Both of the chimneys were rebuilt after the house was moved in 1990. The one-bay deep, three-bays-wide, two-story extension is faced with brick. On the north wall of the extension the former first story oriel has been removed and the opening sealed with brick. The second story is lit by a single window.
No. 184 Duffield Street is a three-story, twenty-feet-wide, brick rowhouse with a two-story porch extension. Its facade is designed in a restrained style typical of mid-and-late 1840s urban vernacular buildings influenced by the Greek Revival style. The building rests on a non-historic masonry foundation. A small pipe head and round metal vent are located at the north end of the base. There is a small spigot just north of the stoop. The low masonry stoop and iron side rails are non-historic.
Above the base the building is faced in red brick laid in running bond. The windows and entrance are set off by brownstone sills and lintels. The lintels are painted; the sills and a sill course beneath the second-story windows have been rebrownstoned. The entrance retains its historic molded wood surround, single-light transom and paired paneled wood doors with long single lights.
The bottom part of the doors have been covered with painted sheet metal. Metal numerals reading 184 are affixed to the top of the south door. A non-historic metal light fixture has been installed between the entrance and the middle window at the first story. Non-historic metal window grilles have been installed on the doors and the first story windows. All of the window openings on this facade have historic one-over-one double-hung wood sash. The facade is
capped by its original molded wood cornice which is edged at the top with non-historic sheet metal flashing.
The rear elevation rests on a tall non-historic basement which is faced with stucco. Above this base the wall is faced with common brick. Much of the facade is concealed by the historic two-story porch which has brick side walls (painted). None of the fenestration or cladding on this porch appears to be historic but the presence of an enclosed porch at the second story, the brick sidewalls and framing of the porch, and the use of a shed roof are historic.
At the third story the rear facade is articulated by historic segmental window openings with trabeated wood surrounds. The windows have non-historic aluminum sashes. The facade is capped by a denticulated brick cornice.
No. 186 Duffield Street, constructed c. 1835-38, is a twenty-four-feet-wide, two-and-one-half-story clapboard-covered frame house which displays elements of the Federal and Greek Revival styles. It rests on a low non-historic foundation which is faced with stucco. There is a small spigot just north of the stoop. The entrance porch and steps are supported by non-historic foundations which are stuccoed.
Non-historic wood lattice screens cover the openings beneath the stairs and porch. The stoop has non-historic wood steps and railings dating from the 1990s, however, the porch floor appears to be historic. The heavy entablature of the Greek Revival entrance porch is supported by square wood Tuscan Doric columns and pilaster responds that frame the entrance. Extending between the columns and pilasters at the sides of the porch are historic wood lattice screens which have small wood benches built into their bases.
The elaborate Greek Revival entrance surround features a central paneled door which is flanked by narrow sidelights and surmounted by a tripartite transom. The pilasters framing the door are ornamented with anthemions and the transom is enriched by a egg and dart molding and by richly carved console brackets. A non-historic recessed light fixture has been installed in the porch ceiling. The door has non-historic hardware and a non-historic mail slot. Non-historic metal numerals reading "186" have been applied to the lintel above the entrance. The house retains its original wood clapboard siding and molded window surrounds and has historic six-over-six wood window sash.
The non-historic louvred wood shutters date from the 1990s. The facade is capped by an entablature composed of a wide frieze and a denticulated cornice which was modified by the addition of small decorative brackets in the late nineteenth century and by the removal of a classical architrave molding sometime after 1940. The gabled roof and gabled dormers are covered with standing seam sheet metal. The wide piers framing the paired windows in the dormers were once ornamented with classical motifs (probably brackets) which were removed after 1940. The historic brick chimney on the south side of the roof was largely rebuilt in the 1990s. The metal pipe vent at the northeast corner of the roof was installed prior to 1940.
The rear elevation is also faced with historic wood clapboards. This facade has a one-story shed- roofed porch which was completely enclosed and entirely clad with non-historic wood clapboards after the house was moved in 1990. The present stoop and paneled door are non-historic additions from the 1990s. At the second story the facade has three window bays, the northernmost set slightly below the others. All three have six-over-six wood sashes. At the attic level, there is a central gabled dormer which is identical to the dormers on the Duffield Street facade. Its paired window openings contain non-historic one-over-one wood sashes.
No. 188 Duffield Street is a mid-1830s twenty-four-foot-wide frame rowhouse which was raised from two-and-one-half stories to three stories and given a new facade enriched with Queen Anne and Second Empire details when it was remodeled in the early 1880s. It rests on a low non-historic foundation which is faced with stucco. There is a small spigot just south of the stoop and a round metal vent cover at the south corner of the base.
The entrance is approached by a historic wood stoop which rests on a non-historic masonry base and has non-historic wood railings. The upper stories are faced with wood clapboard siding. The windows retain their original Queen Anne style molded window surrounds with decorative lintels and historic two-over-two wood window sashes. The entrance is sheltered by an elaborate bracketed hood with sawn and turned decorations including spandrel panels featuring stylized foliate forms and sunflowers.
The entrance retains its original molded wood surround with paneled jambs. The current door, sidelights, and single-light transom are non-historic infill replacing paired Queen Anne style doors visible in c. 1940s photographs of the house. The facade is crowned by a Second Empire-style metal cornice enriched by a paneled frieze, modillions, and console brackets.
The south wall of the building was faced with brick when it was moved to its present site. A large two-story extension at the rear of the building was also removed.
- From the 2001 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
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