Building of the Day: 602-610 Lincoln Place

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Two family row houses
Address: 602-610 Lincoln Place
Cross Streets: Franklin and Bedford Avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North/Crow Hill
Year Built: 1890s
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: This part of Crown Heights North, usually referred to as the Crow Hill neighborhood, wasn’t really developed until the late 1880s and early 1890s.The flanking major arteries of Bedford Avenue and Franklin Avenue were becoming major commercial streets, with stores, businesses, and homes, and slowly but surely, the streets in between were also being developed with speculative row housing and small flats buildings. Bedford, in particular, was home to many of these flats buildings built about the same time this row was.

These are quite attractive and unusual Queen Anne style two family row houses. The extended bays give the houses great street presence, and the dark brownstone, which was well on its way out by the time they were built, makes the houses stand out from their neighbors, many of which are light colored brick or limestone houses. They also represent housing stock built when the one family row house was being supplanted by two family houses, as well as flats buildings. More and more, Brooklyn’s brownstone neighborhoods were filling up, and as economics changed, and living patterns, more and more people were renting, or if they were homeowners, were seeking to augment their incomes with tenants. Two family houses were a great alternative for this market.

Most of these two family houses were designed to look like one family brownstones. There was only one entry door, but once inside the hall, the stairs rose up to the third floor, where the smaller tenant’s apartment was. The duplex below had the ground floor and second floor for their use. In houses like this, the kitchen and dining room would have been on the ground floor, perhaps with a small parlor off the hallway, facing the street, and the main parlor, bedroom(s) and bathroom would be on the second floor.

These homes belonged to just ordinary folk who tend to not make the papers until they get married, or died, if then, all except for one. Number 606 was home to Loring M. Black and his wife Beatrice Eddy, somewhere between 1910 and the early 1920s. Black was a state senator for the term between 1911 and 1912, and later, between 1919 and 1920. In 1923, he ran for and won a seat in the House of Representatives, where he served from 1923 until 1935.

Loring Milton Black was apparently quite a character. He got his undergraduate degree from Fordham University, and got his law degree from Columbia. He passed the bar in 1909. He was only 25 when he became a state senator, and he got the nickname “Kid Senator” for his youth and his baby face. He became quite well known in Albany for picking fights with the Republican opposition, and once called a fellow senator a liar in legislative session.

When he became a Congressman, he still had the nickname. He also started his Congressional career with a bang. He went to the Washington Monument, where he stood on the steps and yelled to the passersby “ATTENTION,” while swinging his fists, gyrating and getting all worked up into a lather. Had he done that today, no one would have paid him any mind, as much of Congress acts like that anyway, but in 1923, it caused quite a stir.

He was very outspoken, and did not demure in his opinions, all of which made for great press, and a lot of enemies. He once wanted to out all of the Congressmen who drank, this was during Prohibition, but was threatened with official sanction if he persisted along those lines. He figured if you were going to pass laws banning alcohol, you shouldn’t be drinking yourself. He also wanted to jail for three years anyone who referred to the religious affiliations of a presidential candidate, but was told that that would violate the laws of free speech. Regarding Prohibition, he once said that “We ought to take our dry leaders, wrap them in sanitary wrappers, and let our aviators drop them into the breweries of Germany.” I think I would have enjoyed this guy. GMAP