Building of the Day: 1395 Dean Street, Home of Charity, Education and Baseball

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Semi-detached row house
Address: 1395 Dean Street
Cross Streets: Brooklyn and Kingston avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: 1901
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival
Architect: Wade & Cranford
Other works by architect: Houses in Ditmas Park. Daniel E. Waid – institutional buildings for Long Island Hospital, Monmouth College, Ill.; co-designed Metropolitan Life Insurance Company North Building, Manhattan.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Phase I of Crown Heights North Historic District (2007)

The story: Crown Heights North does not have very many Colonial Revival style buildings. This one has an unusual and surprising history, and came close to meeting the wrecking ball. Fortunately, Crown Heights North doesn’t have a lot of empty lots, either. Here’s the story:

This block is an interesting combination of row houses, stand alone and semi-detached large homes, and small flats buildings. The block includes the oldest house in Crown Heights North as well as apartment buildings from the 1930s.

With only a few exceptions, the row houses were built as speculative housing. This is one of the exceptions. The 1901 Colonial Revival was built on this extra wide double lot as a legal three family house. The original owners wanted to house themselves in splendor and have private spacious apartments for extended family.

You really wouldn’t realize the amount of space looking at the front of the house, but it extends back 80 feet, with an attic above, and has 4,580 square feet of living space. There was room in the back for a garage, although none stands today.

According to a real estate ad from 1927, it was originally divided into one apartment with 14 rooms, including two bathrooms, and three apartments of eight rooms each, with one bathroom each. That adds up to four apartments, but it was still classified as a three family. Perhaps there was a stairway joining two of them, or only three kitchens.

Early owners were the Seldner family. This eastern part of Crown Heights had many prominent German Jewish families living here in the beginning of the 20th century. Both Phineas Seldner, who died in 1896, and his wife Amelia were very active in Jewish charities, including the nearby Hebrew Orphans Home.

Amelia Seldner was also the head of the Brooklyn division of the Council of Jewish Women. She died here at home in 1911. The family stayed on for a few more years, as her son Rudolf was married here in 1913.

By 1920, the house was home to Everett and Sara Barnes and their four children. They were one of the four families living in this house, according to census records, but it’s unclear if they owned it, or which apartment they lived in.

Everett Barnes had gone to school to become a lawyer. He had been a school teacher for a couple of years while getting his degree. He practiced law for eleven years before abandoning the bar for his first love, education. He became the principal of PS 23 in Williamsburg in 1901. The school was located on Humboldt and Conselyea streets.

He quickly became one of the top principals in the Brooklyn school system. His name appears in the paper hundreds of times over the course of his career in connection with his school, curriculum and events. He was also the Vice President, and later President of the Brooklyn Principals Association.

Barnes was also the author of a series of history textbooks called “Short American History,” which were adopted as a source of study for over 300 NYC schools. His first books came out in 1908, and were amended and updated in the following years.

The books were praised for over 10 years, until 1922, when an ad hoc committee decided that his textbooks made the Founding Fathers too human. Far too reminiscent of efforts in some circles today, the books were criticized for depicting the Founders as human beings who argued with each other and could be petty and vindictive.

His depictions were deemed “inappropriate” because he did not characterize them as men of the “highest moral character.” In spite of that, the Board of Ed decided that his textbooks would stay in the curriculum.

Everett Barnes would remain principal of P.S. 23 for over 30 years. He died in 1930, hailed as one of the greats of the New York City school system. By that time, the family had moved from here.

Sara was a member of the Brooklyn chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution. She was very active with the DAR, and sponsored activities here at the house, and was the head of several charitable committees. When their two daughters married, they were in the society pages, as were the activities of their two sons.

The oldest boy, also named Everett Barnes, was a popular boy and a star athlete at Erasmus Hall High School. He went on to Colgate, where he became a star on their baseball team. After college, he was one of four Colgate players to be picked up by Major League Baseball.

Everett, or “Eppy”, as he was nicknamed, was one of the highest paid rookies to leave the minor leagues for the majors. He was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Like a NY sports fairytale, while still a rookie, he married his high school sweetheart, Ethelda Bernice Kenvin. She was chosen to be Miss Brooklyn at an Atlantic City beauty pageant. She won the “most beautiful” part of the contest. They were secretly married in 1923, with only their parents in attendance.

After a few years in the majors, Eppy left pro ball and went into banking. But like his father, his first love was something else. In 1939, he became the coach of the baseball team of his alma mater, Colgate. He became only the third Director of Physical Education and Athletics at the college, in 1955.

His career spanned many different sports, and he was on the NCAA Olympic Baseball Committee for the 1968 Games. Today, Eppy is a member of the American Association of Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame and The United Savings-Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame. He died in 1980 at the age of 79.

The house passed on to many other owners over the years. But by the early 1980s, it was an abandoned, burned out shell, as seen in the tax photo from that period. It belonged to the City by that point, and fortunately, they saw the wisdom in rehabbing it, not tearing it down.

Today, it is subsidized housing. The three-family home is now a 25-unit building. It’s doubtful any original detail remained after the 1980s, and if it had, it would have been removed in the conversion. Too bad — but the building remains, an elegant reminder of the storied history of this neighborhood.

Above photo: Nicholas Strini for PropertyShark