Past and Present: The Central Wood Yard

Before the social service safety net programs of the New Deal, each municipality dealt with those in need in their own fashion. A great deal of charity was provided by churches, synagogues and other religious and private organizations, but most cities and towns also had their own alms and health programs, as well. In Brooklyn, much of this effort was coordinated by the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, a private blanket organization which oversaw a multitude of smaller charitable programs. The Brooklyn Bureau of Charities was one of the many contributions to Brooklyn made by one of her greatest citizens, Seth Low.

He established the Bureau in 1878 and was its first president. Low was the son of Abiel Abbott Low, the second generation of Low’s to trade with China. His warehouses below the Brooklyn Heights groaned with the weight of the tea and other goods brought here by his fleet of ships. Even though he could have simply continued the family business, Low had a deep sense of duty and charity towards the public sector, and was a generous philanthropist. He was also the president of Columbia University, gave millions towards building its campus, and was mayor of Brooklyn twice, and in 1901, became the second mayor of Greater New York City.

The Bureau ran its operations from a large building at 69 Schermerhorn Street, between Court and Boerum. It was a large Romanesque Revival building designed by William B. Tubby in 1887. The organization had a Bureau of trustees, comprised of some of the city’s most important men. Victorians took charity very seriously, as it was seen as a duty of the upper classes, not just a good thing to do. They also had very strict and strong ideas about who should receive that charity, and what was required of those receiving it.

The Bureau oversaw health clinics called dispensaries, work houses, children’s charities, women’s and men’s residences, hospitals, homes for the aged, training schools, and work programs, among other things. One of those work programs was called the Central Wood Yard. There were at least two charitable wood yards in Brooklyn during the latter decades of the 19th century, the one in the photograph above, and another Northern Industrial Wood Yard, on Division Street, in Williamsburg.

The Central Wood Yard was located at 78-82 Pacific Street, in Cobble Hill, a central area for many of Brooklyn’s poor at the time, who were clustered around the factories and piers of the harbor. Today this is in the center of the Long Island College Hospital complex. Unlike many of the Bureau’s charities, there isn’t a lot of information about this one available. The image is one of many Brooklyn locations in the Brooklyn Eagle’s postcard series, which was printed between 1905 and 1908. A report to the annual Bureau meeting of the Bureau of Charities in 1899 provides the only information I was able to find.

The Central Wood Yard was established in 1884. Its object was to provide work for poor unemployed men in Brooklyn. Men who worked there who had homes were paid in cash, or sometimes groceries. Homeless men were paid with a voucher for lodging and meals. In order to work there, one had to go to the Bureau of Charities office and obtain a permit. As of 1899, the Wood Yard had assisted 515 men with homes. Permanent work was found for 196, temporary work was found for 677 men.

There is no information as to how the yard operated. Since it was a charity, I assume that trees and logs were donated from work sites, parks or private citizens. Perhaps they bought logs from logging operations. The men split the wood, and stacked it in the large yard. In order to pay expenses and have money to pay the men, I assume that the wood was sold to private homes or to institutions and businesses. I would imagine some of the wood also went the heat the homes of the poor. By the late 1880s, many homes were heated by coal furnaces or stoves, but the poor were burning whatever they could get.

I did not find any information as to how long the Central Wood Yard operated. From the postcard’s date, it was at least until 1908. The Brooklyn Bureau of Charities was in existence until the 1940s, when it became the Brooklyn Bureau of Social Service and Children’s Aid Society.

GMAP