706 Nostrand Ave,Composite

A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

Every time I see a new photograph of a long vanished building on St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights, it makes me want to have access to a time machine, so I could see what these blocks looked like at the turn of the 20th century, as they are now almost entirely covered with large apartment buildings. Here’s another great photo of a long gone building, published in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1902.

It shows 706 St. Marks Avenue, which was a huge property on the southeast corner of Nostrand Avenue. This house was in many ways typical of the houses on this and the following block. It was a huge single family house, with a lot of grounds around it. This particular property framed the entrance to the famed St. Marks District, an exclusive enclave of wealthy people living in suburban splendor.

Large Second Empire mansions like this one were generally built between 1865 and 1880, so there is a wide margin for the date of this house, but it does seem to be in place by 1880. We do know that this part of Bedford was being marketed as a quiet suburban retreat for the wealthy. The most prominent house in the area was the Dean Sage house two blocks up on St. Marks, which was built in 1869. There were also many wood-framed country villas on this street, as well.

The history of this area is similar to that of Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill. First came the wooden country villas, back in the 1860s and 70s and then, during the Gilded Age, those houses were torn down and replaced by impressive brownstone, brick and limestone mega-mansions. Many of those mansions survived on Clinton Avenue. In the St. Marks District, they were almost all torn down and replaced by elevator apartment buildings. This house was built in stone from the very beginning.

The newspapers are of no help helping me date the house, but the maps are interesting. The house, or at least A house, distinctly made of masonry (pink outlines), not wood (yellow) is in place on this corner in 1880. The outline of the structure, which corresponds to the 1902 photograph, becomes much clearer in the 1888 map. In that map, this property is to the far right of the map. As you can see, the lot includes the large house, with a front porch, a masonry outbuilding, perhaps a carriage house, and a wood-framed outbuilding. The lot is huge, and extends all along Nostrand Avenue to Prospect Place.

I wasn’t able to find the first owner, but depending on when the house was really built, our story begins with the second owner. In 1883, Byron W. Clarke bought the house, and he and his family lived here between 1883 and 1902. Twenty years isn’t bad for this neighborhood. Wealthy people seemed to move quite often back then, chasing the next prime neighborhood to live in, or leaving when someone died.

Byron Clarke was a successful real estate man, born and educated in western NY State, near Rochester. I don’t know if that meant he was an investor, broker, developer or speculator. From the records, he did do some speculation, but not enough to warrant a fortune, at least not under his name. Whatever he did, he was doing it quite well. The family moved here from another address on St. Marks Avenue, one much closer to Flatbush Avenue. Byron Clarke, his second wife Helen, and his three daughters and one son lived here, with several servants. His first wife, Adeline, had died many years before.

Being rich does not make one immune to tragedy. The Clarke’s second daughter, Addie, was named after his first wife, Adeline. One day in 1880, when the family still lived down the street, Addie, who was 22, got dressed in her oldest and least fashionable clothes and announced to her family that she was going to go down to Fulton Street and buy a new wardrobe. She left with only her purse and never came back.

Her panicked family searched through her things for a clue as to where she went, and found notes to friends which said that she felt that she needed to be independent and obliged to go out and make it on her own. She wrote that she couldn’t do much, but she could find a job as a chambermaid or a nurse. Another note said that no one would ever be able to find her, and yet another piece of paper announced that she would be dead soon, and gave instructions as to the Scripture verses and hymns she wanted at her funeral.

The police looked everywhere for her, but couldn’t find a trace. Almost a week later came news that a young woman had jumped from the decks of a steam ship into the Irish Sea. The body was never found. A photograph of Addie made its way to the ship steward who confirmed that the woman had been Addie Clarke. She had come aboard the ship in New York only hours before it had sailed, and had paid top price to get on board. The steward remembered her because she had insisted on getting a berth, and had pulled out a wad of money for the ticket, telling him to take it all, as she wouldn’t be needing it.

Once on board, she had stayed in her cabin, until the day she came out and jumped overboard. Her devastated family could give no reason for her actions. She had no reason to feel that she had to earn her keep, and they could never figure out why she killed herself. Moving to 704 St. Marks may have been their opportunity to leave a home that was filled with painful memories.

Byron Clarke died on November 13, 1894, at the age of 66. He’s buried in Green-Wood cemetery. His wife and eldest daughter Camilla were the executrixes of his estate. They continued to live here for another eight years. Their social lives seemed to have improved after his death, as announcements for committee meetings and luncheons appear in the society pages towards the end of the century.

But this part of town was growing fast, and the Clarke’s were getting a lot of new neighbors. The lots that were sparsely built on in 1880 were full twenty years later. Plots that had wood-framed houses surrounded by large lawns were now filled with much larger masonry houses, carriage houses and large lawns. A look at the maps shows that this block had only nine houses on the south side of the block. The Clarke’s had also expanded their property, adding a carriage house and another wooden outbuilding.

Nostrand Avenue was also expanding, becoming a major thoroughfare with many mixed use buildings, with trolley service and other traffic increasing down its length. In the vicinity of this house, there were now apartment buildings and flats buildings, almost all with storefronts on the ground floors. The entire side of the Clarke property faced Nostrand, and it must have been getting noisy and less private, even with fencing. In 1902, the family decided to sell.

That was the reason the photograph of this house appeared in the paper on October 4th, 1902. The announcement of the sale of the property to Strauss & Charig, well-known developers and builders, was part of an article about the state of the real estate market. The article noted that St. Marks Avenue was seeing many changes, as some of the older mansions, especially at the ends of the blocks, were being bought as development sites for apartment hotels.

Strauss & Charig built all kinds of structures, but specialized in apartment buildings, hotels and theaters. They were purchasing the Clarke house with the intentions of tearing it down and building a large new apartment hotel. Another single family property, just two blocks away, on Nostrand and Park Place, was going to be torn down for an apartment hotel, as well. That project was being undertaken by a different developer.

The Clarke family moved on. But the apartment hotel was never built. I could find no reference to the project, and a look at the maps after 1904 show that a large building was never built on this lot. What did happen was that the lot was subdivided, and built on in increments. The Prospect Place end of the property became the site of flats buildings, and over the course of the next ten to twenty years, storefront buildings were built along Nostrand Avenue. The house and the carriage house were still standing in 1904, two years after the Eagle article.

Most of the new buildings were small one and two story buildings, and at some point, a vaudeville theater was midblock, where the supermarket entrance is today. The theater and several other small building were replaced by the taxpayer supermarket building at some point. The house, facing St. Marks Avenue, was torn down and replaced by a non-descript three story brick building that seems to date from the 1920s. It has been bricked up for decades, and the ground floor is now part of the Key Food Supermarket that takes up almost half the block.

The gateway to the mansions of the St. Marks District has been obliterated. All but two of the mansions in the 1904 map are gone, the block is now a series of apartment buildings, with the remaining mansions sandwiched between them. They all disappeared between 1900 and 1930, as the neighborhood transitioned from wealthy to upper middle class to middle class. Apartment buildings were the future, and the Gilded Age was over.

(Thanks to Morgan Munsey for sending me the article with this photograph.)

GMAP

Photograph: Brooklyn Eagle, Oct. 4, 1902
Photograph: Brooklyn Eagle, October 4, 1902
Photo: Google Maps
Photo: Google Maps
1880 map. Property is right above "Nostrand." Map: New York Public Library
1880 map. Property is right above the word “Nostrand.” Map: New York Public Library
1888 map, New York Public Library. Property is on far right side.
1888 map, New York Public Library. Property is on the far right.
1904 map. New York Public Library. Property now subdivided. House and carriage house still standing in 1904.
1904 map. New York Public Library. Property now subdivided. House and carriage house still standing in 1904.

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