Building of the Day: 806 Quincy Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Former private house, now Varick Memorial AME Zion Church
Address: 806 Quincy Street
Cross Streets: Corner Patchen Avenue
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: Unknown, but probably 1890s
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival, with Second Empire features.
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: In 1912, a writer named Eugene Armbruster wrote a history of a part of Brooklyn called the Eastern District. According to him, and to popular thought at the time, the Eastern District included parts of Williamsburg, Bushwick, northeastern Bedford, and Ridgewood, Queens. This part of Brooklyn had been settled by the Dutch in the mid to late 1600s, and more recently, was home to a large German speaking population. Most of the successful merchants, bankers, businessmen and officials operating out of the Eastern District were of German heritage, even most of the ones who did not seem to have Germanic-sounding surnames. The ED was a successful immigrant community at the dawn of the 20th century, the economic and cultural equal of any of Brooklyn’s other districts.

The Bedford part of the ED is now the eastern-most part of Bedford Stuyvesant. It was once the suburban part of the district, home to large villas on spacious lots, with gardens and room to relax. Many wealthy merchants, bankers and brewery owners built here, establishing houses of worship, as well as businesses and shops. Today, only a handful of the villas remain, scattered on side blocks, or occasionally, on corners. Most of them have been torn down, replaced by apartment buildings and housing projects, some have burned down under suspicious circumstances, and many are now churches or group homes of some kind. To come upon one of these old mansions is always a treat, and investigating them is a look towards the Eastern District’s past.

It annoys me no end when I can’t find at least the date of a building, let alone an architect, but this one is deceptive. It’s not as old as one might think. Most of Bedford’s old villas were built in the 1870s, and are Second Empire, with a central tower with wings on both sides, and a mansard roof. They are scattered around the neighborhood. But this one is later. Maps show an empty lot in 1888, but by 1904, the next map we have, the house is here. The building itself also hold clues to its dating. The building is a light sand colored brick, a color that was not popular until after the Chicago World’s Exposition of 1893, when the White City movement captured the imagination of America’s architects. The house also has pressed metal cornices and trim. These were not used before the late 1880s. If the house had been built in the 1870s, we’d have a wooden cornice.

So – the first occupant I found, and perhaps the man for whom the house was built, was one Rudolph Burkhardt, whose fortune was made in the pharmacy and drug trade. He was also a long-time director of the People’s Bank; the main office of which was on Broadway. One of the other directors of the bank was Theobaldt Engelhardt, the Eastern District’s finest and most prolific architect. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was architect for this house, although I found no evidence to that end. The Burkhardt family lived here from at least 1902 until at least 1905.

The next family of note to live here was the Bischoff family. Bruen Bischoff was a wholesale wine dealer and a distiller. He had been born in Germany, and came to the US in 1880. When he died at the early age of 45, in 1910, he left a widow, Adeline. She lived in the house until the 1930s. Adeline was a bit younger than Bruen, and after his death, she led quite a social life in this house. There are many mentions of her in the Eagle and other Brooklyn papers, as she hosted dances and concerts at the home. One such program consisted of an evening concert followed by dancing and a midnight dinner. Another time she hosted a luncheon for groups of local ladies.

Her biggest coup was during World War I, when many German-Americans went out of their way to prove their loyalty to the United States. She hosted a luncheon for a member of the Italian aristocracy, in the form of a Baron from Genoa, First Lieutenant Enrico Scerno, who was going back to the Allied front in Europe, after recovering from wounds, here in a New York hospital. Her tables and décor were resplendent with American, Italian, French, Belgian, English and Japanese flags.

Adeline Bischoff married again, this time to an eccentric inventor named Richard Rees Brock. He had at least a dozen patents for all kinds of inventions, many of which were for household gadgets like a broom with an adjustable head that allowed it to get into corners. He was in the brush and broom manufacturing business. The Brock family lived here at 806, until sometime after Richard Brock’s death in 1930.

Unfortunately, by the end of his life, Brock had gone a bit mad, and was sometimes delusional. After his death, his will was contested because he had promised the family maid Elisabeth Hoffmann, a bequest of $1,200. His wife’s attorney’s said he didn’t have any money to bequest, and Miss Hoffman would testify that he told her that the government had given him a bag of gold. Whenever he wanted to hold it, and couldn’t find it, he accused her of taking it, and made her sift through the ashes of the furnace to look for it. He also told people he had racehorses and other things he didn’t have. Miss Hoffman said she never expected that she would get that kind of money from him, and was not surprised when she didn’t.

I found one reference to the house belonging to Richard Bohack, the grocery chain king, but although I searched through building and census records, I couldn’t find that he ever lived here. In 1949, the building became home to the Varick Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. They added an addition, fortunately, in a very similar brick color. James Varick, for whom the church is named, was one of the founders of the AMEZ church, an African American denomination dating back to 1818, when black Methodists split off from the white Methodist Church, where they were not welcome, and founded their own denomination.

The church had several names and locations over the years, but ended up in Bedford Stuyvesant around the same time many other black churches relocated from Downtown Brooklyn to the predominantly African American community of Bedford Stuyvesant. The building is in trouble today, with a vacate order on file, and I’m not sure if the Varick congregation still worships here. This house, and now the church, has a long Brooklyn history. I hope it can be saved.