Building of the Day: 302-304, 314-316 MacDonough Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 302-304, 314-316 MacDonough Street
Cross Streets: Lewis and Stuyvesant Avenues
Neighborhood: Stuyvesant Heights
Year Built: 1888-1890
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Amzi and Henry Hill
Other Works by Architect: Rest of houses on this side of same block, as well as many, many other Neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne row houses in Bedford Stuyvesant and Stuyvesant Hts, and elsewhere.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Stuyvesant Heights HD (1971)

The story: When my friend, known on this blog as “Amzi Hill”, and I give walking tours of Bedford Stuyvesant, we usually joke that Stuyvesant Heights should have been named “Hillville” instead, because the father and son team of Amzi and Henry Hill literally designed the neighborhood. Take this block, for example, one of the most beautiful blocks in Stuyvesant Heights; the Hills are responsible for more than half the buildings on this block alone. There are some blocks further east, where they designed all of the houses. They were very busy men.

Amzi and Henry designed the row that these two pairs of houses are a part of, for builder John Ryan. His name appears often in Bedford and Stuyvesant Heights as a developer in the late 1880s, as these neighborhoods literally exploded with the development of high quality speculative housing. Housing styles were transitioning then, and the Hills were quite adept at going with the flow, mixing in this group, these very distinctive pairs of Queen Anne houses, while other pairs are in the Neo-Grec style, or the Romanesque Revival, and other very different Queen Anne’s. There was something for everyone.

The whole group works well together because the Hills made all of the stoops, windows and cornices all the same heights, creating a nice line going down the street. There is unity as well as difference here, and these two pairs of houses, with their unique rooflines, add visual punch. These are really well done. If you know your Hill signatures, these houses have them; the fine patterned brickwork, the wooden trimmed gables and dormers, and the simplicity of ornament.

302 was home to the Reiss family, whose eldest son, Bert, was a rising young Republican politician in Brooklyn political circles in the first years of the 20th century. His premature death of typhoid fever, at the age of 28 was a shock to all who knew him. The Brooklyn Eagle ran the story of his illness, death and funeral for almost a week. He seemed to have been beloved by almost all.

314 was home to Byron A. Brooks, who was an early science fiction writer, “visionary” and inventor. His book, “Earth Revisited” is considered one the pioneering works of science fiction. But Mr. Brooks made history for an entirely different reason: he was the inventor of the mechanism that allowed typewriters to switch from upper to lower case letters. Before his invention, one could only type in one case. What a simple, yet great thing! And he lived right here in Stuyvesant Heights. GMAP