Past and Present

A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

The Young Men’s Christian Association, now called the Y.M.C.A, began in London in 1844, as a refuge for young men new to the city. London could be an overwhelming, lonely and godless place to a country lad or a young sailor, and the founders of the organization wanted to establish a place where they could come for Bible study, prayer and friendship. The idea proved so successful that the first American YMCA was established in Boston in 1851 by a retired sea captain and missionary named Thomas Sullivan. Soon there were branches in American cities across the country.

The first YMCA in Brooklyn was established in 1853. It was a purely evangelical association, conducting street preaching, handing out Bibles and tracts, and conducting Bible studies and lectures. They met in churches and meeting halls in Downtown Brooklyn. When the Civil War broke out, the Brooklyn YMCA was one of the many Y’s to send volunteers to the front, to distribute Bibles and minister to the troops. Walt Whitman was one of these volunteers.

After the war, the organization began to concentrate on more than spiritual needs. The first YMCA building was built in 1866, on Fulton Street near Gallatin Place, just down the street from where Macy’s is today. That building had a lecture hall and recreation rooms. They outgrew the space by 1885, and a larger Y was built further down Fulton Street, between Livingston and Bond. By this time the Y had begun to emphasize the physical fitness programs that are its hallmark today, based on the athletic programs of the German Turn Verein clubs. Many organized sports and games came out of the YMCA organization, including volleyball, and the new game of basketball was immediately embraced by Y teams across the country. (more…)

A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

The Lefferts family was one of Brooklyn’s largest and wealthiest Dutch families, a family with several branches that put their roots down in different parts of old Brooklyn. The branch that settled in the Bedford community, near the intersection of the Cripplebush Road and Jamaica Road, helped turn the crossroads village of Bedford Corners into one of the most important towns in Brooklyn. Bedford Corners was strategically located near along the intersection of the main north-south road that ran from Williamsburgh through to Gravesend; the Cripplebush Road, today replaced by Bedford Avenue, and the Jamaica Road, which was also called the King’s Highway, roughly where Fulton Street runs today, which connected Jamaica and Long Island to the piers, harbor and ferries along Brooklyn’s Heights.

The patriarch of the Bedford Lefferts clan was Jacobus Lefferts, who came to this area in 1686. He, and later, his two sons, Leffert, known as “Squire,” and Barent, built houses more or less in the center of town. Squire Leffert became the town clerk, provincial judge, and member of the Provincial Congress, and was in this position when the Revolutionary War broke out, in 1776. When the British marched to defeat Washington’s troops at the Battle of Brooklyn, they marched up from Flatbush, through Bedford, and beyond. The occupation of Brooklyn took place afterward, with British and Hessian troops bivouacked all along what is now Franklin Avenue. General Howe and his officers commandeered the finer houses in Bedford, and the general himself took over the Leffert Lefferts house. That was the forerunner of this house. (more…)

A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

The first public school in Brooklyn was founded in 1681, and was located in a church building near the corner of Bridge and Fulton Streets, according to the Brooklyn Eagle. The second public school was also in a church, located near North Second Street and Bushwick Lane. At the time, both were considered rural schools, as was Public School 3, located near the corner of Fulton Street and Jefferson, in the village of Bedford. That early schoolhouse building, built in 1731, was divided into two rooms; one for the school, the other for the resident schoolmaster. The paper notes that after a few years, the building had an addition added, so the schoolmaster, Mr. Vandervoort, could open a small grocery store, and supplement his meager school salary.

This school was replaced in 1832 by a larger two story building on Bedford Avenue near Jefferson, but by the late 1870s, the Eagle reports that the school had one of the largest enrollments of children in the city, with over 1,700 students attending. Four additions were added to the building over the course of its use. Bedford was one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city, as families with children were buying the new speculative houses as fast as they could be built. The school was bursting at the seams, with overcrowded classrooms, and no place for the kids to put their coats and belongings in the winter. The city talked about building a new school, but talk was about all they did by 1881.

Then, in November of 1881, the headlines screamed that the two children of the live-in janitor were sick with diphtheria, but were not removed away from the other children, exposing them to the disease. The headline read, in part, “Education in one room, and a boy dying of diphtheria in another!” Another child had contracted scarlet fever, adding to the panic, and the school was shut down for a couple of days to be fumigated. It turned out that both cases were mild, and no one was dying. (more…)

A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.

The busy intersection of two of Brooklyn’s major thoroughfares is unlikely to remain the same over the years. As the needs of the community grow and change, buildings rise, are altered, are often torn down, and new ones replace them. The cycle is often repeated. If this intersection is in a community that also goes through great economic changes, the results can be even more dramatic. From wealth, a slow economic decline into deferred maintenance, to abandonment, tear-downs, then a slow increase back up the ladder. This usually takes decades, and photography can show us these changes in a dramatic way.

This is Bedford Avenue looking north from Brevoort Place near Atlantic Avenue towards Fulton Street and far-off Manhattan. The postcard, which dates from around 1910, shows a streetscape that is barely recognizable today. This is one of the oldest intersections in the old town of Bedford Corners–the crossing that gave the town its name. It dates back to the late 1600s when a tavern and a few other buildings marked the crossing of the Jamaica Plank Road, now Fulton Street, and the Cripple Bush Road, which ran along what is now Bedford Avenue.

Bedford grew into a thriving village within the town of Breukelen; an important way station for goods and people traveling between Flatbush, Long Island and the Brooklyn waterfront. Many of Dutch Brooklyn’s oldest families, like the Remsens, Lefferts, Brevoorts, Vanderbilts and others either lived in the area or owned land. The Lefferts and Brevoort families had large estates within blocks of here. As the 19th century progressed, they sold off most of their lands, and Bedford began to grow as a thriving, upscale part of town, with improvement in transportation spurring massive developments in speculative housing, the founding of churches, businesses and schools. (more…)