Crown Heights

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 668-704 Park Place
Cross Streets: Bedford and Franklin Avenues
Neighborhood: Crow Hill (Crown Heights North)
Year Built: 1902
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Axel Hedman
Other Work by Architect: Similar row houses across Brooklyn, especially Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Crown Heights North and South, Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Bedford Stuyvesant, Stuyvesant Heights
Landmarked: No, but part of a potential Crow Hill HD

The story: In 1902, E.H. Bishop & Sons commissioned Axel Hedman to design a row of 19 two-family row houses here in the western part of Crown Heights North, now called Crow Hill. For those who follow these things, this was not extraordinary news. Eli Bishop had been using Axel Hedman for a lot of his projects, so much so that Hedman’s signature Renaissance Revival one and two family limestone fronted houses were part of the Bishop “brand.” E.H. Bishop & Sons were one of Brooklyn’s largest and most successful developer-builders, with projects all throughout brownstone Brooklyn.

An ad in a 1910 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle, touting his Hedman houses in Lefferts Manor, says it all: “If houses were stamped with Hall Marks, or labeled as other commodities are, the imprint BISHOP on a house would be the purchaser’s guarantee of the honesty of its construction, the cleverness of its design, and the excellence of its every detail.” These Park Place houses were built for about $10,000 each. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Semi-detached row houses
Address: 341-347 New York Avenue
Cross Streets: President and Carroll streets
Neighborhood: Crown Heights South
Year Built: 1912
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival
Architect: Montrose W. Morris
Other Work by Architect: Alhambra, Renaissance, Imperial, Bedfordshire, Roanoke and Arlington apartments, as well as many houses and mansions in Bed Stuy, Crown Heights North, Park Slope and Clinton Hill
Landmarked: No

The story: Crown Heights, south of Eastern Parkway, was being developed rapidly as the first decades of the 20th century progressed. The removal of the Brooklyn Penitentiary, once on the outskirts of urban Brooklyn, was like the dam being broken in the area. The proximity to Ebbetts Field, the Brooklyn Institute for Arts and Science, Automobile Row, a short trolley ride to Prospect Park, as well as the expanse of available land between Eastern Parkway and Empire Boulevard, led to developers building, and people moving in as fast as the buildings went up.

What’s interesting, from an urban planning standpoint, is how these blocks were developed. The age of the single family brownstone was almost gone. Many of the limestone blocks in this neighborhood were designed to be for two families, with tenants on the top floor, as were many of the brick buildings. And there are a great many apartment buildings. Only the couple of blocks of mansions on President Street were really meant to bring in the single family homeowner. The modern middle class family did not have live-in servants, if they had any at all, and many did not want the expense or bother of an entire house.

But that didn’t mean that architects were stunted in their imagination. By 1912, Montrose Morris, one of the most famous and experienced of Brooklyn’s architects of the turn of the century, was starting to slow down. His best residential buildings had been designed thirty years before, and most of his work at this point in his career was taken up by larger projects, such as hotels and large apartment buildings. Ever a chaser of the rich and famous, he was also designing large estates out on the Gold Coast of Long Island, in Connecticut, and even Georgia. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Steinhardt Conservatory, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
Address: 1000 Washington Avenue (mailing address)
Cross Streets: Eastern Parkway and Empire Boulevard
Neighborhood: Crown Heights South
Year Built: Original conservatory built 1917; rebuilt and expanded 1988
Architectural Style: Contemporary
Architect: Original: McKim, Mead & White. New Steinhardt Conservatory: Davis Brody & Associates
Other Work by Architect: McKim, Mead & White: Brooklyn Museum, among many other buildings. Davis Brody: Buildings all over the world, including Waterside Plaza, Portico Gallery at the Frick, New York City, and the Benning and Shaw libraries for the D.C. Public Library.
Landmarked: No

The story: The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is one of the treasures of Brooklyn. The history of the gardens is a great one, and it is perhaps fitting that the story begins with an ash heap upon which great beauty has sprung. The land that comprises the gardens was part of the purchase the city made for Prospect Park, in 1864. The park was originally designed to cross over the other side of Flatbush Avenue, so as to include the Mount Prospect Reservoir, one of the highest points in Brooklyn. After the Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvin Vaux took over the project, and redesigned the park so that it ends at Flatbush.

That left the city with a large chunk of land, most of which they sold off for development. But they held on to the portion between Mount Prospect and Grand Army Plaza. Since it wasn’t being used, it literally became a marshy, wet ash heap and dumping ground for many years. There was not real development going on around here yet, and the area was home to small wood framed houses and shanties, which were adjoining the farmlands of Flatbush, just south of here.

By the 1890s, work had begun on the new Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece we now call the Brooklyn Museum. The entire area was now called Institute Park, and included the site of the 39 acre Garden, which was officially designated in 1897, and was designed by Frederick Olmsted Junior and James Charles Olmsted, the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. The Garden was placed under the auspices of the Institute in 1910, and opened to the public in 1911. (more…)