Building of the Day: 185 Stratford Road

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Private house
Address: 185 Stratford Road
Cross Streets: Albemarle and Beverley Road
Neighborhood: Prospect Park South
Year Built: 1901
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival
Architect: John J. Petit
Other Work by Architect: 131 Buckingham Road (Japanese House) as well as many other houses in Prospect Park South. Also Saitta House in Dyker Heights, and other works in Brooklyn.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Prospect Park South HD (1979)

The story: This house is one of John J. Petit’s most inventive takes on the Colonial Revival Style. Petit, as the head architect of Dean Alvord’s Prospect Park South development, was unsurpassed at mixing styles and motifs, and his houses in Prospect Park South are a lasting testament to this talent. Where else would one see a Japanese/Queen Anne/Foursquare? Or a block with Tudor, Mediterranean, classic Queen Anne and Colonial Revival Temple front houses, all within sight of each other, all somehow managing to work as a neighborhood whole?

The Landmarks Preservation Commission loved this house. Here’s what they said about the design: “John J. Petit’s imaginative juxtaposition of a symmetrical double-tiered veranda against the front of an asymmetrically-fenestrated dwelling block creates the mannerist effect of a complex, screen-like facade, whose two contrasting layers are unified under a flaring hipped roof. This visual ambivalence — similar in concept to much Post-Modernist design of the 1970s — is intensified by the application of richly-modeled Classical elements to the open porch framework, while the house itself is enclosed by spare, shingle planes with simply framed doors and windows.”

It really is a great house, and the paint job it has now really highlights the classical details of the house. Kudos to the owners. The first occupant of the house was Francis P. Harbough, a real estate man who was the head of the Interstate Park Realty Company, which was responsible for the development of Bellaire, Queens. He had an office in Downtown Brooklyn at the Temple Bar Building. The Harboughs lived here with their two children.

Francis Harbough led a successful life, in a blessedly unmemorable state, until one night in 1906 when he and his brother John, who was visiting from Baltimore, were arrested on the streets of Coney Island, mistaken for “Chicago crooks.” The police had no real evidence of any wrong doing, but thought the two well-dressed me on the boardwalk at night looked “suspicious.” When the brothers told the desk sergeant that they had their car parked nearby, which had business cards and correspondence and other identification in it, the police refused to investigate. They wouldn’t let them contact their families, either, and tossed them in a cell for the night. The next day, their identities were established, and they were released, with an apology. The Harboughs planned to sue.

The next owners of 185 Stratford were the Westfall family. The Westfall children made the news this time. Sons Francis and Samuel Westfall were both star athletes, and were both Brooklyn tennis champions. Samuel was the top tennis player in Kings County in 1910. He had a promising career ahead of him, but tragically, collapsed and died of a weak heart in 1914. His brother, Herbert, was also a Brooklyn champion, but would cut his professional career short to enlist in the Navy in 1918, during World War I. He won the Brooklyn Tennis Championship in 1917. He was stationed on the U.S.S. Bridge.

Earlier, in 1908, Gertrude Westfall, the daughter, married a man named Irving Child, a wealthy young man worth over a million dollars. The couple soon had a child, but the marriage soured. They divorced, but he refused to pay alimony, charging that she had abandoned him, and had gone back to live with her parents, here on Stratford Road. She countersued, charging that he always carried a revolver around, and when he got drunk, which was often, he would wave it around, shooting it off in the house, and that is why she left him, fearing for her child and her own safety. The courts bandied the case around, until it was finally kicked up to the State Supreme Court. A year after the initial suit, the court ruled in her favor, and Child was ordered to pay $1000 a month in alimony.

There are a million tales taking place behind the genteel facades of many of our Brooklyn houses. GMAP