Past and Present: Charles Strohm & Sons, Plumber, Atlantic Avenue

A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

Atlantic Avenue used to be Atlantic Street. Between the river and Flatbush Avenue, the avenue is a busy, bustling thoroughfare with snarled traffic, honking horns, and double parked vehicles that make it difficult to get around. Much of it is lined with mid to late 19th century storefront tenements, mingled with a combination of modern apartment buildings, civic buildings, former hotels and factories. When I think of the old Atlantic Street, I picture buildings like the ones in this 1922 photograph, a mixture of the old wood framed storefronts that have long lined the street, and the more modern four story storefront tenements.

This two story rambling wood framed storefront building stood on the south side of the street, between Hoyt and Smith streets. The building on the right of it still stands, which helped correctly place it in today’s world. A map of Brooklyn from 1869 is the earliest map I have access to that shows buildings on the streets, and in that map, most of Atlantic is quite built up by that point, and this building, as well as other wide storefront buildings like it, stretch along its length. I would imagine this building dates from the early 1850s, at least.

The first floor, at least when the photo was taken, is broken up into four storefronts. The upstairs apartments appear to have two entrances, one between the two storefronts on the left, and the other at the far right of the building. There were probably three or four apartments above, if it was a typical tenement. The shuttered windows are a nice touch, but the ceilings certainly look quite low up there.

A search in the newspapers shows that this building had many uses, many owners, over the years. In 1876, at least part of the ground floor was a bar belonging to William Strolin. The Eagle described it as a “lager beer saloon.” One of its patrons, 22 year old Adolf Spikes, in a state of inebriation fell through the window of the establishment from the street, seriously cutting him in the face and torso. He was rushed to a nearby hospital.

In 1879, a man named William Horton lived here, presumably upstairs. His name and address were listed along with many others on a letter printed in the Brooklyn Eagle, urging a man named Captain Harry O. Jones to run for the Assembly from this district. “We don’t want a political hack, but an intelligent Christian gentleman,” the letter said. Captain Jones, in a letter printed underneath this one, accepted the challenge.

By 1890, the building was home to the First Independent Schuetzen Company, Captain Ferdinand Roth. A schuetzen company is a German sharpshooting unit. The company was organized in 1858 by German immigrants as a social club comprised of former sharpshooters from the Old Country. Many of them enlisted in the Civil War, and became the most efficient unit of sharpshooters in the Union Army. By 1890, the club only had three original members left, but they had grown in numbers with younger recruits.

They sponsored marksmanship contests, and gathered here for camaraderie, drinking and singing. Saengerfests, or singing contests, were a strong cultural tradition in the German community. According to the Eagle, the organization had “handsomely decorated rooms” at this address. Whether upstairs or downstairs, they didn’t specify, but whichever it was, they had to have enough room to display all of the medals and trophies the Company had won over the last 40 years, and room enough to have a “Grand Schuetzen march” with their drum and bugle corp. This particular event was well attended, with over sixty people listed in attendance. They must have been downstairs, in the entire building.

By 1909, however, the Schuetzens were no longer here. This was home to Charles Strohm & Sons, plumbers. Their storefront appears in this 1922 photo, along with a tailor’s shop. Charles Strohm & Sons worked in private homes, as well as in jobs at the Navy Yard. The names that are associated with the company around this time are William Strohm and Henry G. Strohm, presumably the founder’s sons. In 1909, William and Henry, as well as their unnamed wives, are named as defendants in a law suite of some kind, along with a host of other people, but Charles is not, leading me to assume he was no longer living.

William dies in 1911, at the age of 50. The papers list his address as 319 Pacific Street, which would have been a building directly behind this address. William had a short commute to work. By the time this photo was taken, the plumbing shop took up one storefront for business, and it looks like they used the one on the far right for storage. Enlarging the photo as much as possible, it looks as if the shop in the middle caned chairs, and was a furniture shop of some kind. The tailor to the left seemed to be a busy establishment, and to the left of that, in the next building, we can see a man standing in the doorway of what looks like a saloon. The plumbers have a store display with a sink, toilets and basins, and there are more of the same in the window to the right.

This building is now long gone. How long it lasted, I don’t know. The building next door that may have held a saloon or restaurant was torn down, perhaps at the same time this one was, and a small park has been there as long as I’ve been in Brooklyn. A group of three new row houses was built on the site of this wood framed building. According to the DOB, they were built in 1999. They are amazingly contextual, and although the ground floor is utilitarian and bland, the buildings still fit in quite well with their neighbors. The apartments above have separate entrances for each apartment, a nice private touch. If Atlantic Avenue ever gets another plumber with a storefront, it won’t be a little guy, like Charles Strohm, it will be Waterworks, or some high end establishment like that. How things can change. GMAP