September 22, 2009

Walkabout with Montrose: All Things Luxurious

Brooklyn, as a prosperous independent city, was growing in leaps and bounds in the mid 19th century. Manhattan started to develop its first luxury apartments, co-ops and residential hotels in the late 1870’s, but it would take a few more years for such ideas to adhere in Brooklyn. We had more undeveloped land, so there was plenty of land for the rich to build their mansions, even as row house development was creating new upper middle class neighborhoods. But eventually, the popularity of these neighborhoods, then, as now, meant that there were more people than there were private homes, and upper middle class apartment housing came to Brooklyn. In affluent Clinton Hill, the first apartment building, the Vendome, was built in 1887, designed by Halstead and Fowler. This Romanesque Revival castle on the corner of Gates and Grand originally held 17 families. The Clinton, built in 1897, on Clinton Ave, near De Kalb, is an even finer apartment building; its “E” configuration originally contained only 30 apartments, two per floor, per wing. Nearby, Langston and Dahlander’s Loire Valley Chateau-like building at 489 Clinton, near Fulton St. (1892), is considered by many to be the finest multiple dwelling in the Clinton Hill Historic District.

Over in the prosperous communities of Bedford and St. Marks, an enterprising developer, Louis F. Seitz, commissioned a talented, local architect named Montrose Morris to design three apartment buildings suitable for the upper classes. The first, the Alhambra, on Nostrand Ave, across the street from the new Girls High School, was built in 1889. It is a block long red brick and terra cotta Romanesque Revival masterpiece, with open loggias and balconies breaking up the strong lines of the Nostrand Ave façade, the entire building ornamented with terra cotta bands and friezes.

Originally, the building had thirty apartments, six on each of the five floors, all with eight or nine rooms. The Brooklyn Eagle on 4/10/1889, reports that each apartment had a reception room, library, dining room, kitchen, bathroom and three or four bedrooms. Each apartment was arranged with wide sliding doors, to enable all of the public rooms to be opened up into one large room for receptions. The building provided a storeroom for each apartment, laundry and drying rooms were available, the building was lit by electricity, and a janitor, engineer and hall boys were on staff. Louis Seitz himself had an apartment here.

With the great success of the Alhambra, Morris went on to design the Imperial Apartments in nearby Grant Square. Said to have been inspired by McKim, Mead and White’s Hotel Imperial, this French Renaissance Revival Castle, built in 1892, was described by the Brooklyn Eagle as “an architectural dream in cream and white.” It boasts monumental Palladian arches, two story fluted columns and is ornamented by alternating row of brick and terra cotta trim, under a mansard roof. Inside, the twenty-five apartments of seven or more rooms were set up similarly to those in the Alhambra, with pocket doors opening up the spaces into one large room, all furnished in the finest oak, mahogany, and other woods, with all of the best of modern conveniences. The Eagle went on to say that the Imperial was one of the finest apartment buildings in Brooklyn, and was equal to Manhattan’s Dakota. At the turn of the century, the census showed among the occupants, an importer, as well as several lawyers and stockbrokers. The third Seitz/Morris collaboration, the 1892 Renaissance, also on Nostrand Ave, is a smaller, scaled down version of the Imperial, with a more Loire Valley chateau look, and was equally appointed as the other two.

Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and other neighborhoods also had upper middle class luxury apartments during this time, of course. Montrose Morris was also active in both neighborhoods, with the Arlington on Montague, and an Italian Renaissance building of grey brick and terra cotta on the corner of 8th Ave and Carroll St, built in 1894. The stigma against apartment living more or less disappeared by the time the elegant “pre-wars’ were built in the first third of the 20th century. The large mansions began to disappear on the streets of Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Heights and St Marks, replaced by large apartment buildings, many offering the best of luxury living without the upkeep of a house. Prospect Park West, Eighth Avenue, Pierrepont, Remson, Eastern Parkway, Clinton and Washington all became known for their elegant co-ops and apartment buildings, and many of the remaining great mansions became headquarters for private clubs and organizations, schools, churches, or were divided into apartments, or worse, became houses of ill repute. In our last look at the development of multiple unit dwellings, we’ll take a look at how the apartment has changed American culture, along with photos of some significant Brooklyn apartment buildings. See more photos on Flickr.

Posted by Montrose Morris at 10:30 AM | Comments (20)
Categories: Arch Diary

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