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Building of the Day: 1050 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
(Photo from 2010)
Name: former Packard Automobile Showroom
Address: 1050 Atlantic Avenue
Cross Streets: Corner of Classon Avenue
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: Unknown
Architectural Style: Renaissance style showroom
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No
The story: I’ve wondered about this building for years, and always thought it was an important facility for which ever company had it built. But information on almost anything on Atlantic Avenue is hard to come by. The architects of factories often aren’t lauded, and the newspapers rarely run features on industrial buildings, unless there is another story along with them. And the newer the buildings are, as in the middle of the 20th century, the harder it is to find anything. But when Brownstoner announced a while back that this building would become another storage facility for Storage Deluxe, one could only hope that the beautiful details on this mystery building would be preserved. Up until a few weeks ago, the façade read “Select Paper and Tablet.” But the sign covered the building’s true identity.
My on-line building source, the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide only goes up to 1922, and while this building could have been built before that time, I was not able to find it. I was always intrigued by the fine white glazed terra-cotta tiles on the façade, as well as the almost delicate classical pilasters, and the beguiling cherub sea creatures flanking a shield with a honeycomb and a stylized “P”. I didn’t think this had anything to do with Select Paper, but what was it?
I guess I should have been a car person, because I probably would have immediately recognized that the shield was, in fact, a grille, and the “P” was for “Packard”. Duh. Packard Motor Car Company built cars from an amazing 1899 through 1958. They produced lines of very popular and distinctive luxury cars, with some of the industry’s biggest innovations, including the modern steering wheel. A car company like that would have a showroom like this.
A search yielded me an on-line group of Packard aficionados, one of which had an old postcard of this building when it was a showroom. The quality of the image is pretty bad, but it shows the building as it was originally, with large windows on both the first and second floors on the Atlantic Avenue façade, and a fully equipped service station and garage on the back of the building, which faces Pacific Street. The Packard showroom first shows up on a city directory in 1925.
Packard bought Studebaker after World War II, but the smaller luxury car makers couldn’t compete with the Big Three, and one by one they went out of business. Packard found itself making a car that wasn’t up to its old standards, and soon relinquished its status as America’s luxury brand to Cadillac. By 1958, they were no longer producing assembly line cars. The Packard was gone, and the need for this opulent showroom was gone as well.
I don’t know when it became the Select Paper and Tablet Company, but when Storage Deluxe bought the building recently, they began to excavate the interior, and trim the exterior, probably in advance of covering the building in their hideous plastic sheathing. Only one good thing happened from that – the original Packard signage is once more revealed in its glory, on Atlantic Avenue. Go by there and see it, quickly. It will soon be covered, but hopefully not destroyed. Hopefully. GMAP
Lots of photos on the jump…
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05/24/2012 3:30 PM
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Walkabout: Trashing Atlantic Avenue, part 2
(Atlantic Avenue, near Nostrand. 1920. Photo: Brooklyn Public Library)
In March of 1912, the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide, the bible of late 19th and early 20th century building in New York City, published a long article about the future of Atlantic Avenue, that great east-west corridor that joins the East River to Queens. In our first chapter, we saw that development of Atlantic Avenue depended greatly on the operations and machinations of the Long Island Railroad. For more on this, please read chapter one. Due to the railroads path, on or above the avenue, it seemed, even in 1912, that the avenue would never be more than garages and factories. Going on from there, the article stated that “It is a significant and a lamentable fact that a majority of the sales of real estate on Atlantic Avenue have been in foreclosure.” (more…)
05/24/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 116 Rogers Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Carmel Christian School, originally the Swedish Hospital
Address: 116 Rogers Avenue
Cross Streets: Sterling and St. Johns Places
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North/Crow Hill
Year Built: 1906
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Axel Hedman, with help from Magnus Dahlander
Other Buildings by Architect: houses, flats buildings, apartment buildings all over Brooklyn, especially PLG, Crown Heights North and South, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant and Stuyvesant Heights.
Landmarked: No
The story: Turn of the 20th century Brooklyn was home to a large Swedish community. A study done in 1891 showed over 20,000 in South Brooklyn alone. As the community grew and people became more independent and successful, the Swedes began moving out into the rest of Brooklyn. Many settled in the Prospect Heights/Crown Heights area. Many successful Swedes channeled their energies into the community, including two of the best known Swedish-born architects of this time period, Axel Hedman and Magnus Dahlander.
Magnus only spent eight years here, between 1888 and 1896, before returning to Sweden, but in that short time, he changed the face of Brooklyn, designing some of the finest row houses and other types of buildings here. He also designed churches, and did fund raising for Swedish causes. His compatriot, and one time partner in the firm of Dahlander & Hedman, was Axel Hedman. He came here in 1880, and stayed for the rest of his life, becoming an American citizen. He too, was active in Swedish causes here in Brooklyn, and the Swedish Hospital became one of their largest projects. (more…)
05/23/2012 3:30 PM
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Building of the Day: 360 Schermerhorn Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: The Baptist Temple, originally First Baptist Church of Brooklyn
Address: 360 Schermerhorn Street
Cross Streets: Corner of Third Avenue
Neighborhood: Boerum Hill/Downtown Bklyn
Year Built: 1893-1894, reconstructed after fire: 1917-1918
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: Weary & Kramer, reconstruction: Dodge & Morrison (1917-18)
Other Buildings by Architect: Weary & Kramer- Crawford Memorial United Methodist Church, Bronx, Buildings on Oberlin College Campus, Ohio. Dodge & Morrison – Large addition to the Bedford Presbyterian Church, Nostrand Ave, Crown Heights North.
Landmarked: No, but on National Register
The story: This congregation has the distinction of being the oldest Baptist church in Brooklyn, founded as the First Baptist Church of Brooklyn in 1823. It’s the second oldest Baptist congregation in all of Long Island. Their first church building was on Pearl Street, between Nassau and Concord Streets, in what is now DUMBO, and more specifically, an on-ramp to one of the bridges. They didn’t stay there long, moving to another site on Nassau Street, which was destroyed by fire in 1848. They rebuilt, only to lose this church to another fire in 1873. By this time, their DUMBO location was becoming an industrial area, so they joined with a splinter group that had broken off to become the Pierrepont Street Baptist Church, in the Heights. There, both congregations worshipped in a building designed by the great Minard Lefever. They soon outgrew this building too, and in 1892, the church sold their site on the corner of Pierrepont and Clinton Streets to the Brooklyn Savings Bank, and went looking for a new site. They found it here at the corner of Third Avenue and Schermerhorn Street. (more…)
05/22/2012 3:30 PM
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Walkabout: Trashing Atlantic Avenue, part 1
(Railroad crossing at Atlantic and Bedford Avenues, 1905. Photo: New York Public Library)
Atlantic Avenue is one of Brooklyn’s great thoroughfares, today stretching from the East River waterfront to Jamaica, Queens. It is Brooklyn’s only east-west truck route, and serves a vital purpose in getting goods and people from Long Island to the East River and beyond. Like much of Brooklyn, its origins lie with Dutch settlement, and in fact it began as a private road, ending at Ralph Patchen’s farm on the East River, in the early 1700s.
As Brooklyn grew, that road became District Street, the southernmost boundary of the Village of Brooklyn, which was incorporated in 1816. That’s certainly hard to imagine now, and it didn’t take long for that to be obsolete. By 1855, as the street grid developed, District Street became Atlantic Street, running parallel to Pacific Street next door. In the 1870’s the street, already a busy thoroughfare, became an Avenue, running all the way to Nassau County. (more…)
05/22/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 244-254 Gates Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Row houses
Address: 244-254 Gates Avenue
Cross Streets: Franklin and Classon Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1885
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Parfitt Brothers
Other Buildings by Architect: Montague, Berkeley, Grosvenor Apts-Bklyn Hts; St. Augustine Catholic and Grace Methodist Churches-Park Slope; Truslow House-Crown Hts North; many other row houses and buildings throughout Bklyn.
Landmarked: No, but this block should be.
The story: John Gibb was a very rich and successful merchant, engaged in the lace importing business. By 1887, his company; Mills & Gibb owned a huge warehouse on Broadway, in what is now SoHo, and was one of the city’s largest lace and fine goods importers and distributors. He had a huge mansion built for himself and his large family on Gates Avenue, near Classon Avenue, on the border of Bedford and Clinton Hill. Early on in his rise to wealth, he had the foresight to put his money in real estate, and bought up most of the undeveloped land surrounding his home, owning land on Gates, Classon, and Franklin, among other places. As Bedford and Clinton Hill both began to grow as upscale communities, he began developing his property, filling it with high end speculative housing. (more…)
05/21/2012 3:30 PM
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Building of the Day: 645-647 St. Marks Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Row houses
Address: 645-647 St Marks Avenue
Cross Streets: Rogers and Nostrand Avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: early 1890s
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: George P. Chappell
Other Buildings by Architect: In CHN – St. Bartholomew’s Episc. Church, Pacific St; Houses on Pacific, Dean, St. Marks, New York, Bergen, Prospect, and throughout CHN. Also in Park Slope, Bed Stuy, Stuyvesant Hts,
Landmarked: No, but would be in Phase 4 of CHN HD
The story: In 1888, Hester Louise Chappell was listed as the new owner of record on this piece of St. Marks Avenue. She was the wife of prominent Brooklyn architect George P. Chappell, a prolific designer of buildings who would make his mark most significantly in this same neighborhood. St. Marks Avenue was the center of the St. Marks District, an upscale neighborhood on par with the best of Clinton Hill, Stuyvesant Heights, and Park Slope, during the last decades of the 19th century, and what better place for Mrs. Chappell to own, than the center of a posh neighborhood that her husband had a large hand in developing? But the lots on this block were not for business. George Chappell was building his wife a new home. (more…)
05/18/2012 3:00 PM
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Past and Present: Polo Fields in Prospect Park
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.
The first polo game played in Prospect Park took place on June 11, 1879. It was between the Westchester Polo Club and a club from Queens. Up until that day, the sport of polo had a totally different meaning to Brooklyn’s sports lovers. “Polo” meant ice polo, a game we now call hockey. It had been played in Brooklyn for several years, inaugurated by the Crescent Athletic Club, and other well-to-do sports clubs. They played in the Clermont Rink in Fort Greene, playing clubs from local colleges like Yale and Columbia, as well as other sports clubs.
As Brooklyn was getting richer, so too were her sports. Polo, the game with horses, had been played in Persia for centuries. A version of it traveled to the east, and was in play for hundreds of years in India, before it was encountered by bored aristocratic British officers stationed in that country, in the middle of the 19th century. Two British soldiers started a polo club to introduce the sport to their countrymen, and the game took off and has been popular ever since. It’s basically football on horses. (more…)
05/18/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 521-529 Third Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Row houses
Address: 521-539 Third Street
Cross Streets: Seventh and Eighth Avenues
Neighborhood: Park Slope
Year Built: late 1880s-early 1890s
Architectural Style: Queen Anne, with Neo-Grec elements
Architect: Unknown, but perhaps E. H. Mobrey
Landmarked: Yes, part of Park Slope HD (1973)
The story: There are many fantastic houses in Park Slope, and this group remains one of my favorites. For an architecture geek like me, the most frustrating part is that we’re not sure whose work this is. Neither the LPC, nor the diligent folks from the Save the Slope research committee were able to shed definitive light on the architects of these homes. They are unlike any others in the neighborhood, or the rest of Brooklyn. It’s the griffins. I just love the griffins.
The surrounding Queen Anne houses were built between 1889-1891, so it’s not unreasonable to think these date from the same time. The group next door, numbers 511-519, was built by architect/developer E. H. Mobrey, and is a mixture of Neo-Grec and Queen Anne elements. There are similarities between those houses and these, and Mobrey is on record as selling number 523 in this group, in 1895, so they may be his design, or he could have just developed them all. (more…)
05/17/2012 3:30 PM
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Walkabout: America’s Best Bad Actor, Corse Payton, 2
(Corse Payton, Etta Reed Payton and servant, backstage at their theater, 1903. Photo: Museum of the City of New York)
In our last post, we met Corse Payton, self-billed as “America’s Best Bad Actor.” He enjoyed an extremely popular stage career at the end of the 19th century, working well into the Depression years. Like many New York City success stories, Payton’s began in the Midwest, as a county sheriff’s wayward son, in a town called Centerville, Iowa. For more of his early exploits, please see Part One of our story.
After many years of successfully touring Midwestern states and cities, Corse Payton, along with his wife and leading lady, Etta Reed, turned their sights to New York, specifically Brooklyn. The Great White Way of Manhattan’s theater district was legendary, but so too was Brooklyn’s huge collection of theaters, spread throughout the city. Downtown Brooklyn was one large theater hub. Another was Williamsburg, and it was here that their company put down roots. From here they could take all of New York by storm. (more…)
05/17/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 2307 Beverley Road
(All photos by Christopher D. Brazee, for Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2012)
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Sears, Roebuck & Company Department Store
Address: 2307 Beverley Road
Cross Streets: Corner Bedford Avenue
Neighborhood: Flatbush
Year Built: 1932
Architectural Style: Late Art Deco
Architect: Nimmons, Carr & Wright, with Alton Craft
Other Buildings by Architect: NC & W – across country, various Sears stores and private homes for Sears execs.
Landmarked: Yes, Individual landmark, designated last week! (2012)
The story: It’s hard to believe, but this store has been here for over 80 years. Sears started out in the 1890’s as a mail order catalog, selling a huge variety of goods to customers in rural areas who had little or no access to stores and shops. Their first retail store was built in 1925. Based in Chicago, Sears & Roebuck expanded all across the country, and because of Manhattan’s garment center, was a presence in NYC long before their bricks and mortar stores were in place. When they sought to expand their retail presence in the New York City area, Flatbush was seen as an ideal location. (more…)
05/16/2012 3:30 PM
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Building of the Day: 24 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal)
Address: 24 Fourth Avenue
Cross Streets: Corner Pacific Street
Neighborhood: Boerum Hill
Year Built: 1866
Architectural Style: Gothic Revival
Architect: Patrick C. Keely
Other Buildings by Architect: in Brooklyn – St. John the Baptist School and Church, Bed Stuy. St. Boniface, Downtown Bklyn. St. Charles Borromeo, Brooklyn Heights, and more.
Landmarked: No, but should be somehow, either individually or part of a HD.
The story: The history of any place is greatly written by the houses of worship that have been built there. This is especially true in Brooklyn, where the story of immigration can be tracked by the churches, synagogues and mosques along the way. By the 1850’s, Brooklyn was growing rapidly outward from the Fulton Ferry and the riverfront, and the city had reached the Times Plaza area, a part of town that would become a nexus of transportation and commerce in the years to come. By 1853, however, it was the edge of the neighborhood of Boerum Hill. (more…)
05/15/2012 3:30 PM
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Walkabout: America’s Best Bad Actor, Corse Payton
Does anyone remember the Saturday Night Live sketches by Jon Lovitz featuring his “Master Thespian”? Mr. Thespian was an outrageous ham, over enunciating everything, indicating broadly, affecting a bad upper-crust accent, and in general, being everything that anyone could possibly want in a bad actor, all wrapped up in a dapper smoking jacket. Corse Payton was the living embodiment of the Master Thespian. Between 1900 and 1915, he operated his own theater in Brooklyn, called Corse Payton’s Lee Avenue Theater, in Williamsburg. He made a career out of bad acting, and probably cut a fine figure in a smoking jacket as well. He would be the first to tell you so, too. But backstage, the ultimate ACT-tor was a brilliant business mind and a keen observer of popular culture. This is his story. Like many contemporary Brooklyn stories, it begins, most auspiciously, on a farm in Iowa. (more…)
05/15/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 201 Chauncey Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Private house
Address: 201 Chauncey Street
Cross Streets: Malcolm X and Patchen Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: Unknown
Architectural Style: Vernacular Victorian
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No
The story: Huddled here, the last of its kind on this block, this house won’t be with us much longer. It’s going to get swallowed up by modernity, mediocrity and progress. It has value, not because it one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, and not because it is some great architectural wonder, but because it sits on a nice big lot – 50×108.5 feet of New York City real estate. (more…)
05/14/2012 3:30 PM
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Building of the Day: 385 Henry Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: mixed-use commercial/residential building
Address: 385 Henry Street
Cross Streets: Corner Warren Street
Neighborhood: Cobble Hill
Year Built: 1871
Architectural Style: Italianate
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: Yes, part of Cobble Hill HD (1969)
The story: This building is such a neighborhood anomaly. For far too many people today, a building’s worth is measured in terms of potential FAR, so the mere sight of this fabulously wide and low, two-story building must fill them with aggravation every time they pass it. “If only it wasn’t landmarked! Think of the condo we could build here!” Well, too bad. This little 19th century gem is going to stay just as it is. (more…)
05/11/2012 3:00 PM
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Past and Present: 89 Gerry Street
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.
From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York comes this wonderful photograph of small business in Brooklyn, from 1924. The photograph is of the White Silver Wet Wash Laundry Company, of 89 Gerry Street, in Williamsburg. The business was housed in a former stable, which is at the time, still a handsome building. According to old city maps, the stable was there from at least 1887, a wonderful Romanesque Revival brick structure, sandwiched between two wood framed mixed-use tenement buildings. From the look of the bags of laundry, and the burly men in the photograph, it seems likely that the White Silver Wet Wash did bulk commercial laundry, perhaps restaurant work, hotel, or hospital. This does not look like the place a lady would send her dainties. (more…)
05/11/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 392 Clinton Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Apartment building
Address: 392 Clinton Avenue
Cross Streets: Corner Greene Avenue
Neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Year Built: 1896
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: John L. Young
Other Buildings by Architect: a multitude of houses in Bed Stuy, Crown Heights North, Park Slope, Cobble Hill.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Clinton Hill HD (1981)
The story: This handsome apartment building is one of the first multiple unit dwellings on Clinton Avenue. It was built for James Burke, a local developer, who had John L. Young design a building worthy of Clinton Avenue, home to some of the wealthiest people in Brooklyn, at the time. It seems so hard to imagine now, in an age where a fine apartment is equal in status to a fine home, but back at the turn of the 20th century, it was an uphill battle to convince people of that. So what did developers do? They made sure their apartment buildings were as beautiful and luxurious as the houses around them. In choosing John L. Young to design it, James Burke chose well. (more…)
05/10/2012 3:30 PM
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Walkabout: The Lords of Owl’s Head, part 3
(Photo: Matt, for imjustwalkin.com)
When the Brooklyn industrialist Eliphalet W. Bliss died in 1903, he stipulated in his will that his estate, called Owl’s Head, should become a city park, open for the enjoyment of all. Owl’s Head, aka the Bliss Estate, was a large property nestled on the promontory overlooking the Narrows, in the neighborhood of Bay Ridge. Before Bliss, the estate had belonged to a former mayor of Brooklyn, a man named Henry C. Murphy, who was indeed one of the great movers and shakers of mid-19th century Brooklyn. In the first chapter of our story, we learned that Murphy had been the legislator who wrote the bill authorizing the Brooklyn Bridge. That bill was signed here in his home at Owl’s Head. Our second chapter told the tale of E.W. Bliss, whose huge munitions and metal stamping plants in Bush Terminal could be seen from his front porch, a highly successful man who built an observation tower on the property so he could see for miles around, watching the sea traffic in the great bay below. Nearby streets still reference the estate’s past owners, Bliss Terrace for E.W., and Senator Street, for Henry Murphy. (more…)
05/10/2012 10:30 AM
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Building of the Day: 86-94 Garfield Place
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: row houses
Address: 86-94 Garfield Place
Cross Streets: 5th and 6th Avenue
Neighborhood: Park Slope
Year Built: 1892
Architectural Style: Queen Anne transitioning into Renaissance Revival
Architect: Philemon Tillion
Other Buildings by Architect: Tillion & Son, Tillion & Tillion – Industrial Home for the Blind, Greenpoint Masonic Temple, both Greenpoint, Trinity Baptist Church, Crown Heights North
Landmarked: No, but should be.
The story: Brooklyn’s housing stock was mostly built on spec. This is pretty much common knowledge. Some of the builders and architects were simply adequate, some pretty good, and some had moments of true design greatness. Some firms and individuals worked a lot, and their names appear over and over in historic designation reports and here, in my BOTDs. And some show up once in a while, here and there, over the course of years, making you wonder what they were up to that we don’t know about. The Tillion’s were one of those firms. (more…)
05/09/2012 3:30 PM
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Building of the Day: 1267 Pacific Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Flats building
Address: 1267 Pacific Street
Cross Streets: Nostrand and Bedford Avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: Late 1880’s-early 1890’s
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: Attributed to Montrose Morris
Other Buildings by Architect: on same block – Bedfordshire and Imperial Apartments, on Dean and Bedford- Chatelaine Hotel
Landmarked: No, but hopefully part of Phase 4 of CHN HD. No plans present by LPC at this time.
The story: The great Brooklyn architect Montrose Morris was quite busy over here on Pacific Street. After the success of his Alhambra Apartments, on Nostrand and Macon Street, completed in 1889, developer Louis Seitz commissioned him to design several more luxury apartment houses. The result of that commission was first, the Bedfordshire, (1891) then one of his masterpieces, the Imperial Apartments. (1892) But not all architectural commissions are big, showy extravaganzas. Sometimes one has to do a couple of practical, everyday buildings in order to pay the mortgage. This flats building is one of those projects, but with Morris, he took the everyday, and made it special. (more…)
05/08/2012 3:30 PM
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panyl
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM