Building of the Day: 18 Sidney Place

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally private home, boarding house, girls’ residence, then Brooklyn Law School residence, now private apartments
Address: 18 Sidney Place
Cross Streets: State and Joralemon Streets
Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights
Year Built: 1838, with three story addition added in 1873
Architectural Style: Greek Revival
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: Yes, part of Brooklyn Heights HD (1965)

The story: This house was built in 1838, when Brooklyn Heights was growing by leaps and bounds, as merchant princes made their fortunes below them on the docks of Brooklyn’s piers. This simple Greek Revival house, the prevailing architectural style of the day, was a four story single family home, tucked away on Sidney Place, isolated on this one block street from the hustle and bustle of busy Brooklyn life. The street was named in the early 1830s by a Brooklyn attorney named George Wood, for Sir Philip Sidney, a 16th century British statesman and author.

The AIA Guide to New York City jokingly calls this building, “the only seven story Greek Revival house in New York.” It wasn’t like that when it was built. City records show that the house originally belonged to Thomas Cook, a United States weigher, the man who made sure scales were giving customers an honest weight. This was an important job in a city made rich by grain, coffee and other weighable commodities.

Ferry service to Manhattan was already booming when the house was built, and by the time the Civil War erupted, many of the older homes in the Heights were being used as owner-occupied rooming houses, housing mostly single men who worked in Manhattan, or in Brooklyn’s Fulton Landing business district. This house became one of those rooming houses, advertising at least a floor of rooms to gentlemen or couples of the highest quality.

Between 1868 and 1907, hundreds of ads were placed by the different owners of this establishment, advertising rooms for rent. There were also many ads placed looking for cooks, housemaids and other servants to keep the place going. In 1873, the building was hit with a violation for an unsafe framework on the roof. That may have been the year the three story extension was built, making this a seven story house, towering over its neighbors.

The extension was certainly well done, and a seamless addition to the building. They even put an Italianate cornice on the building and put in a Federal style entrance. That wouldn’t have been done today. There would not have been elevators at that time either, so whoever lived on the top floors was in good shape.

The greatly expanded building was a boarding house with both single bedrooms and larger suites, but sometimes, its owners rented it out to a single family. An advertisement in the Eagle in 1877 says the house had 36 rooms including an ice house and a laundry. In 1886, it went on the market, at auction, and was described as having 25 rooms, 2 bathrooms, and all improvements. The house was 25 feet wide, 45 feet long, with a two story, 16 foot extension.

In 1907, the building was purchased by the Women’s Branch of the City Missions and renamed The King’s Daughter’s House for Working Girls. The same organization had a similar home nearby at 163 Joralemon Street, which it had outgrown. The King’s Daughter’s House would house self-supporting young ladies, and could house 35 girls. Society had finally begun to accept women in the workplace, and this residence was a respectable haven for office workers and other single working women.

By 1932, the name of the house was changed to the Englis House. It was still a part of the City Missions, but the name change reflected the organization’s changing mission. It was now called rooms for “business girls,” only a slightly better description than “working girls.” I saw several references to the residence as the “English House,” too. The name seems to have really been Englis.

By the 1930s, the Englis House was advertised as a residence club for Protestant business girls, rooms with board, $7 to $10. By the 1950s, the building seemed to have lost much of its original religious origins and its name, and was simply advertising single rooms for rent with a communal kitchen. The apartments were still geared towards “working ladies and businesswomen.”

The building eventually became a residence for Brooklyn Law School students, and not much changed inside. An elevator was installed at some point. In 2013, the Law School sold off six of its Brooklyn Heights residential buildings, including this one. It went on the market for over six and a quarter million dollars. The old dorm rooms were reconfigured into 18 units, all one bedroom apartments. The rent has gone up a lot since those ten dollar days.

(Photograph: Scott Bintner for Property Shark)

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