Bedford Stuyvesant

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 244-254 Gates Avenue
Cross Streets: Franklin and Classon Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1885
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Parfitt Brothers
Other Buildings by Architect: Montague, Berkeley, Grosvenor Apts-Bklyn Hts; St. Augustine Catholic and Grace Methodist Churches-Park Slope; Truslow House-Crown Hts North; many other row houses and buildings throughout Bklyn.
Landmarked: No, but this block should be.

The story: John Gibb was a very rich and successful merchant, engaged in the lace importing business. By 1887, his company; Mills & Gibb owned a huge warehouse on Broadway, in what is now SoHo, and was one of the city’s largest lace and fine goods importers and distributors. He had a huge mansion built for himself and his large family on Gates Avenue, near Classon Avenue, on the border of Bedford and Clinton Hill. Early on in his rise to wealth, he had the foresight to put his money in real estate, and bought up most of the undeveloped land surrounding his home, owning land on Gates, Classon, and Franklin, among other places. As Bedford and Clinton Hill both began to grow as upscale communities, he began developing his property, filling it with high end speculative housing. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Private house
Address: 201 Chauncey Street
Cross Streets: Malcolm X and Patchen Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: Unknown
Architectural Style: Vernacular Victorian
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: Huddled here, the last of its kind on this block, this house won’t be with us much longer. It’s going to get swallowed up by modernity, mediocrity and progress. It has value, not because it one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, and not because it is some great architectural wonder, but because it sits on a nice big lot – 50×108.5 feet of New York City real estate. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: semi-detached houses
Address: 76-104 Bainbridge Street
Cross Streets: Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenues
Neighborhood: Stuyvesant Heights
Year Built: 1919
Architectural Style: Alternating Neo-Georgian and Spanish Renaissance groups
Architect: W.F. McCarthy, for the Prosser Construction Company
Other Buildings by Architect: an architect/builder by same name is listed in Cleveland, building homes, in the 1920s. Not much other info found.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Stuyvesant Heights HD (1971)

The story: The opposite side of the street on this block consists solely of Queen Anne row houses designed by the great Magnus Dahlander, yes, the entire row of thirty-three houses. These are some of the most interesting and varied designs to be found anywhere in the neighborhood, the work of a master, so it is not surprising that people tend to gawp over there, and miss this group of houses just across the street. That’s too bad, because there is some interesting stuff going on over here, especially evidenced in this group of houses built twenty-seven years after the Dahlander group. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally Eastern Mission Home for the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), now belongs to Eastern Star Baptist Church
Address: 265 Gates Avenue
Cross Streets: Franklin and Classon Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1917
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival
Architect: attributed to Frank Holmgren
Other Buildings by Architect: Eastern Star Baptist Church, next door, buildings in Crown Heights North, Ocean on the Park HD, and Sunset Park
Landmarked: No

The story: In 1916, the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, bought a large plot of land on the corner of Gates and Franklin Avenues. There, they built their first Brooklyn church, called the Eastern States Chapel and Mission. The Chapel was a Frank Lloyd Wright; Prairie School influenced, and stucco clad building which still has a commanding presence on the corner of this lot. It was designed by Eric Holmgren, a Brooklyn based, Swedish-American architect, who was quite busy designing affordable housing, as well as middle class Colonial Revival houses in various parts of Brooklyn. Holmgren’s design for the Chapel is right out of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design book for the Unity Chapel in Oak Park, IL. This house, built a year before the chapel, resembles some of the work of Holmgren’s contemporaries, Slee & Bryson. (more…)