Walkabout: The Most Civil of Servants-John Thatcher, Part 2

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Riverside Apartments, the Benjamin Moore Factory in DUMBO, the receiving vault at Green-wood Cemetery, PS 131, PS 134, PS 27, Erasmus Hall High School, the Polhemus Clinic, the Dime Savings Bank, the Hebrew Orphanage Asylum, facilities for Brooklyn Union Gas in Greenpoint, and the Casino Apartments on Hicks Street; what all of these buildings have in common is that they were built by the company of John Thatcher & Sons, one of the biggest and busiest building companies in Brooklyn in the late 19th through mid-20th century. From the company’s offices at 60 Park Avenue, John Thatcher oversaw the construction of the city he loved, and would give his life for.

Thatcher’s story began last time, recounting his beginnings, and his growing interest in superior tenement housing, developed from his association with Alfred Tredway White and Charles Pratt. Although his name has been lost to time, he was responsible for an innovative tenement complex called Franklin Court, located in Clinton Hill, near Our Lady of Mercy Convent. Franklin Court’s 96 apartments were airy, well-lit, and equipped with a waste disposal system, hot running water, toilets in each apartment, and a shower room in the basement for bathing, all at a modest price. The building was built in 1898, a time before the New Tenement Law of 1901 which mandated many of the features already built into Thatcher’s complex. Unfortunately, Franklin Court, and its advanced features, is gone, forgotten well before the building was torn down.

As one of Brooklyn’s busiest building companies, John Thatcher & Sons concentrated on larger projects, such as schools, municipal buildings, apartment buildings and civic structures. Although they bid, and eventually lost on enormous public projects like the Brooklyn Museum, that doesn’t mean they weren’t busy. Thatcher was a rare man in the building trade. He was fair to his workers, and honest with his clients, be they the city, or private concerns. His name only came up once in disagreements with suppliers and co-contractors. That was rare then and even rarer today.

Inevitably, his name started popping up in discussions of politicians looking to fill appointed offices pertaining to building and infrastructure. Although a member of the Republican Party, Thatcher stayed out of the contact sport that was Brooklyn politics, and was not a toady to the Party bosses, or the mayor, or anyone else. He certainly came in contact with all of them, but kept his relationships above board and businesslike. But when he was called, he answered.

In 1894, he was appointed Superintendent of Streets, by Mayor Schieren, in charge of the massive task of constructing, paving and lighting the growing number of streets and sidewalks that were being built all across Brooklyn. He was also responsible for the upkeep of the roads and sidewalks already laid. Interestingly, when the Brooklyn Eagle wrote about all of the public works department appointees, Thatcher was the only one who did not have a lot of political clout or was not high up in city political circles. Streets was a huge job, nonetheless, yet Thatcher did it, and kept his own business going strong, as well.

His job performance was noted after Brooklyn became part of Greater New York City, and when Borough President J. Edward Swanstrom needed a Superintendent of Sewers, he appointed John Thatcher in 1902. Being in charge of sewers sounds like a rather awful job, but past holders of that position had realized that instead of being a curse, the job was a blessing in terms of patronage jobs, construction kickbacks and other lucrative ways of padding one’s purse. Thatcher’s appointment was probably looked at as just another suit who would continue with politics as usual, but they were soon brought up short. Thatcher was an honest and incorruptible man. Not only did he do his job efficiently, he began a program to weed out the waste in the Sewer Department, pardon the pun.

Soon after his appointment in 1902, he started making the rounds of the system, and found utter chaos, mismanagement, and a department with broken pipes, broken down buildings, and broken trust between the city and its citizens. Tammany Hall had been in charge before he took office, and Thatcher found padded payrolls, broken pipes that had never been fixed, in spite of neighborhood complaints, and sewer department buildings with collapsed roofs. Thatcher personally put on a rubber suit, and went down into the sewers to inspect the lines himself, making it his business to try to walk the miles of tunnels under the city. Unlike many of his predecessors, he knew what he was looking at, and he wasn’t having it.

He reported to the papers that the system was in dire straits. Jobs which had been contracted were never done, or done badly. On large pipe project leading to Jamaica Bay had a collapsed tunnel, blocking an 84 inch pipe. The contractor never cleared the pipe, but just filled in the tunnel, and walked away. The corrupt engineers sent to inspect it passed it with flying colors. This particular contractor was now doing time in Sing Sing.

Under Thatcher’s watch, the Department of Sewers fired hundreds of people who had useless patronage jobs, or were just incompetent. Engineers, foremen, office men, anyone who was just taking up space was gotten rid of, although he complained that he couldn’t get rid of more. Entire projects had to be redone, costing the city millions of dollars, and holding up the new sewer projects in line for completion. In spite of that, for the first time in a long time, Brooklyn had a real superintendent in charge, and its sewers were slowly brought into the 20th century.

Thatcher did so well, and was so highly regarded, that in 1906, he took his last city superintendent’s job, that of Superintendent of Buildings. He was really in his element here, and he took charge of the massive department controlling the buildings of Brooklyn in the same way he had taken charge of the sewers. One of his first directives was to have laws passed that made builders go through a licensing process, so that no unlicensed builder could do so in Brooklyn. As a builder himself, he knew that people who didn’t know what they were doing shouldn’t be putting up buildings that other people lived in. He expected no less for the borough than what his own personal standards were. He made a lot of enemies, but he really didn’t care. The press and his friends dubbed him “Honest John Thatcher.”

While in charge of the city’s buildings, his own company was being run quite well by his son Edwin, who was an engineer and an architect. They continued to get private jobs, including building the prestigious Brooklyn Academy of Music. John Thatcher was a religious man, and was very active in his church in Flatbush, the First Primitive Methodist Church. He was also a supporter of the Flatbush Boys Club, and built a 100 bed facility for that organization’s work with homeless boys.

One day in June of 1912, John Thatcher was on a building site in Brownsville, inspecting a building that was still under construction. As always, he was up in the rafters, inspecting everything himself. Suddenly the scaffold he was standing on collapsed, sending him seventy feet to the ground. He died soon afterward in the hospital. His family and the city were stunned. His wife and daughters rushed back to the city from their summer home, and his sons had rushed to his side, but it was too late, he was gone. John Thatcher had only been 59 years old. As funeral arrangements were made, the flag at Borough Hall was lowered to half-mast in his honor. The Department of Buildings was closed on the day of his funeral, and city officials and the press praised him for his honesty, integrity and charitable works.

The funeral was held at St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church, because the First Primitive Methodist Church was not large enough to accommodate the crowds. Brooklyn and Manhattan city officials crowded the rows, as did his employees and friends. The family was all there, still in shock. The pastor of First Primitive issued a directive, declaring that “Honest John” was a man who would not be soon forgotten, that his accomplishments in business and with the city paled before his accomplishments in charity, housing and with the Flatbush Boys Club, and his church activities. No other Superindent of Buildings would ever match him. After the funeral, John Thatcher went to his rest in Green-Wood Cemetery. Even there, his company had been active, and would be, one last time.

John Thatcher left an estate worth well over a million dollars, all of it from his building business and ownership of tenements and other buildings. The money went to his widow and children, as well as large donations to his church and other charities. His company was taken over by Edwin and his brothers. In 1918, they were responsible for moving the Lefferts Homestead from its original location on Maple Street, in Lefferts Manor, to its home in Prospect Park. In 1937, they were the builders of the Art Deco Woolworth’s store on Fulton Street, near Abraham & Straus. The last reference I found for the company in the newspapers was in 1952.

John Thatcher left a fine legacy, with some of Brooklyn’s most iconic buildings to his credit, and his contributions to decent housing for the poor were exemplary, especially for its time. It’s too bad he is not remembered up there with the fine architects and philanthropists he worked with. Perhaps this article will lead to someone doing the definitive study of his life and legacy. He’s certainly worth the effort.