Bushwick

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Two family house
Address: 69 Cornelia Street
Cross Streets: Bushwick and Evergreen Avenues
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: after 1890, before 1907
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: The architectural legacy of Bushwick is just now being mapped. For too long, the consensus was that this area had its day in the sun, back in the second half of the 19th century, but there was nothing left here, after the economic devastation caused by riots, abandonment and poverty. That’s so not true. There is so much here to save and protect, as well as re-use and revitalize. Take this building, for instance. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Private House
Address: 1020 Bushwick Avenue, corner of Linden Street
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: 1888
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Frank Keith Irving, aka F.K. Irving, Frank K. Irving
Other buildings by architect: QA row next door: 37-53 Linden St.
Landmarked: No, but hopefully rectified soon.

The story: It is not uncommon to begin a row of houses with a distinctive anchor house on a corner, but few rows are as architecturally and visually interesting as this Bushwick group. The corner house is a story taller than its fellows stretching down Linden Street, due to the mansard roofline, but it shares many of the same details: warm red bricks and a wealth of terra-cotta, pressed metal, wrought iron and stained glass ornament.

This is one impressive urban Queen Anne, and a classic of the genre. Let’s start at the top. The slate covered Mansard roof with dormers and wrought iron cresting are a common feature in Second Empire architecture, popular 15 or 20 years earlier, but often a staple of the QA portfolio. And why not? A Mansard roof adds another story without looking obvious, and the dormers give Irving a chance for ornamentation and embellishment, all nicely done. Check out the expressive face on the front dormer. The wrought iron filigree cresting is pretty, and relates to the other wrought iron in this building and the entire row. Even the twin chimney stacks are attractive with artfully pattered brick, positioned to perfectly frame the dormer, before traveling artfully down the front of the house. I wonder what the fireplaces look like.
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Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row Houses
Address: 37-53 Linden Street, between Broadway and Bushwick Avenues
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: 1888
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Frank Keith Irving (aka F.K.Irving, F. Keith Irving)
Other buildings by architect: 1332 Bergen St, CHN, 130-132 Prospect Pl, Prospect Hts
Landmarked: No, but should be, as soon as possible.

The story: These are exceptional houses. Everything about them says excellent residential architecture for an urban setting. The scale is small and low, matching the other houses on the block, also built around the same time, and contextual with the neighborhood. The side streets of Bushwick are of much smaller scale than Bushwick Avenue itself, which is a combination of large mansions and taller row houses and tenements. The brick is warm and evokes a sense of comfort and home. The houses are wide enough for comfort, with generously spaced windows. The dog leg stairway adds mass to the façade, and allows for the use of some great artistic and whimsical ironwork, which is remarkably intact throughout the group. And then we have the rest of the ornament.

The American Victorian aesthetic was greatly influenced by the English Arts and Crafts Movement, begun in the 1860′s by William Morris and his friends and associates. Central to their philosophy are a love of beauty and pattern, and an appreciation of craftsmanship and artistic talent, a philosophy that would be come to be called the Aesthetic Movement, where beauty for beauty’s sake was treasured. This movement would cross the ocean and be manifested in many, many ways, and in architecture, that love of surface ornament and craftsmanship would be realized in the many kinds of ornament used in Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne architectural styles. Here we have a wealth of terra-cotta, fine ironwork, stained glass, and pressed metal cornices, all of great beauty, and unusual in their wealth of application in middle class homes.
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