139 Bainbridge St. BPL, 1928

The big white house on the corner of Stuyvesant Avenue and Bainbridge Street in Stuyvesant Heights is one of the most beautiful on this street of fine townhouses and large mansions. In Part 1 we learned who built it. In Part 2 it was home to the Sutton family, torn apart by the miserable marriage of Francis and Louise Sutton. The house was a casualty of the dissolution of their union, and by 1919 had passed into new hands. Our story continues:

This story is also about two remarkable sisters, pioneers who chose to spend their lives helping women and girls in need of support and care.

Myrtis and Mary Fish hailed from Oswego County, NY. They came with their parents and a brother to Brooklyn as children, and were educated in Brooklyn public schools. All three Fish children became respected in their chosen professions.

They were distant relatives of the powerful and wealthy Fish family of Manhattan. Hamilton Fish was the most famous member, and was a senator, a governor of New York, and Secretary of State to President Ulysses S. Grant.

Myrtis Fish graduated from the New York School of Law, and was said to be the first female attorney licensed to practice in Brooklyn and Long Island. Her brother Lawrence also became a lawyer, and was a municipal court judge in Brooklyn.

Myrtis became a probation officer, and for over 20 years was the female probation officer for the Brooklyn Night Court.

Fish felt strongly about helping the women she saw pass through the courts and in her sphere of influence. She wanted to establish a place where girls and women could find a place of refuge and help.

She enlisted the help of several wealthy society ladies, and, most importantly, her sister.

139 Bainbridge St. Dr. Mary F. Fleckles, BE, 1932

Dr. Mary F. Fleckles, 1932 Brooklyn Eagle

Mary Fish was also a professional pioneer. She graduated from the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women in 1894, and was one of the very few female doctors practicing in Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century.

Mary was a practicing physician for three years before marrying Leopold Victor Fleckles, a lawyer. That union gave her the unfortunate name of Dr. Mary Fish-Fleckles, but that didn’t stop her from doing great things.

139 Bainbridge St. L.V. Fleckles, Ancestry.com 1

Leopold Victor Fleckles, via Ancestry.com

The Fish sisters and Mrs. E. W. Southwick established the Welcome Home for Girls in 1916. A year after starting out with an office on Throop Avenue, they moved into their first home, a brownstone at 86 Monroe Street, in Bedford.

The home took in girls and women from the age of 16 through 36. Some of their charges were unwed and pregnant, others were abused, and some just didn’t have anywhere to go. The Welcome Home did not judge, they just took the women in and gave them a place to stay for a few nights, or longer.

Three years after they started, Mary became the organization’s president, a position she held for over 20 years.

The Welcome Home had many wealthy backers and was a favorite charity for many of Brooklyn’s wealthiest women. Unlike many charities of the day, it had an all female executive board, and was staffed by women. It was also non-sectarian and did not discriminate in taking in those who needed help.

By 1919, they had outgrown the Monroe Street home. It’s not recorded in the papers how they found out about 139 Bainbridge, but they put in an offer for the house and got it. Now the next hurdle was overcoming an unexpected NIMBY faction.

The Brooklyn Eagle notes that the charge to prevent the Welcome Home from relocating to upscale Stuyvesant Avenue was led by Dr. J. Richard Kevin, the commissioner of the State Board of Charities of the Second Judicial District. He lived somewhere in the neighborhood.

Acting quite uncharitably, not to mention hypocritically, Kevin protested that his neighborhood was not the place for such a home. His reasoning was there were a great many children in the neighborhood, and it was unsafe for them to be near an institution where “objectionable people would visit and be kept.”

The other objection to the home was placed by the Board of Health, which said the building was not set up correctly for use as a group home. The board of the Welcome Home promised to carry out all code requirements. The matter was tabled until they could do so.

In the meantime, the charity moved closer to its future home, and established itself at 629 Throop Avenue, near Fulton Street, in the former Cooperative Home for Girls. In 1923, the sisters purchased the house next door as well.

139 Bainbridge St. Welcome Home for Girls Ad, BE, 1926

1926 Brooklyn Eagle ad

In spite of Kevin’s protestations, the Brooklyn Welcome Home for Girls legally opened at 139 Bainbridge Street in March of 1928.

The building had no signage, or anything else that differentiated its appearance from that of the other fine residences in the neighborhood. But many a girl and woman in trouble or need made her way to its door.

Although the courts could suggest that a woman go to the home, it was not an institution or a court sponsored reform school. It received no state or city funds, and was maintained by donations alone. They conducted fundraising events year round.

The Home took in abandoned wives, abused women, homeless girls, pregnant unwed girls, unemployed women, runaways, and any other female who needed help. It was at the top of a help list at churches, hospitals, police stations, employment agencies, social services and courthouses.

139 Bainbridge St. Welcome Home for Girls Ad, BE, 1928

1928 Brooklyn Eagle ad

The Great Depression brought them their greatest challenges. Their first clients, back on Monroe Street, had been primarily poor factory workers, uneducated waifs and wives, and included many immigrants. But the Depression brought many more to their door. In 1931, they took in 316 women — a steep hike from their previous annual average of around 70 — and in 1932, they helped 120 women in January and February alone.

Their demographic had changed along with the numbers. Now the bulk of their clients were educated professional women, mostly teachers, musicians, and office workers. Their clients’ ages ranged from 13 to 45. Most of the older women had been laid off from jobs, and had no safety net.

There were also many more married women than before. But somehow, the Home managed to help them all, including many who needed not so much a bed for the night, but food and advice on how to survive.

Myrtis and Mary Fish continued to lead through this terrible time. Both worked tirelessly with the Home while continuing their own practices. Myrtis never married, and lived with Mary and her family in a large frame row house at 255 Macon Street, in Bedford Stuyvesant.

Leopold Victor and Mary Fleckles had three children, two twin sons and a daughter. Robert Fleckles became a lawyer like his father, Elliot became a minister, and their daughter Helen became a kindergarten teacher.

139 Bainbridge St. Dr. Mary F. Fleckles, BE, 1934

1934 Brooklyn Eagle

In addition to her positions at two hospitals and a nursing home, Mary was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the 17th Assembly District Republicans Club and several medical societies. She was also a member of the Central Congregational Church. By 1932, she was also a grandmother.

Leopold Fleckles died in 1920. Myrtis Fish died eight years later, on June 23, 1928. In addition to her work as a parole officer and a board member of the Welcome Home, she had been a member of the Woman Lawyers Association, a member of the Society of Old Brooklynites, and a member of the Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Mary continued as head of the Home until her death in 1935. Her funeral at the Central Congregational Church was attended by over 300 people, from all walks of life.

The presidency of the Home passed on to Mrs. Walter E. Ragsdale. The Depression continued to take its toll and donations dropped off considerably as needs rose. Perhaps the loss of the Fish sisters was the beginning of the end. In 1939, the charity had to close its doors and liquidate whatever assets it had.

The board of the organization wanted to make sure the building was passed on to another charity, and offered it to the Salvation Army, the YWCA and several other church organizations, asking them to run it much as they had done. But all turned them down.

They finally realized they would have to give up on the Home continuing, and offered it to the Brooklyn Presbyterian Home for the Aged, which purchased the building as a guest house and social center for their senior clients.

139 Bainbridge St. CB, PS

Christopher Bride for PropertyShark

On March 2, 1940, Mrs. Ragsdale, her board, and Robert Fleckles, Mary’s son, attended a luncheon in Brooklyn Heights to deliver the keys to the president of the Presbyterian Home. For Robert, as well as the others from the Home, it was a bittersweet occasion.

Despite losing its headquarters, the Welcome Home continued to aid women in need through donations to other organizations into the early 1950s; then it apparently died out. Too bad.

The building remained as a guest house for the old age home until 1947, when the Presbyterians moved their guest home to Park Slope. The building went back into private hands, and was divided up into apartments. Today it is listed as having eight residential units and one commercial unit.

This house, along with much of the surrounding neighborhood, was landmarked in 1971, part of the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District. This means, inappropriate façade paint job notwithstanding, the house will always look like the original Walter Clayton ad, posted with such pride, so long ago.

Top photo via Brooklyn Public Library

139 Bainbridge St. Ad, Bklyn Eagle, 1903

Original 1903 Brooklyn Eagle ad


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