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November 19, 2009
Walkabout: Montrose Morris - Full Circle
This is the fourth in a series about Montrose Morris, one of Brooklyn finest architects working at the turn of the 20th century. Previous articles can be found here.
Like most architects of the day, Montrose Morris embraced the new Classicism, as popularized by the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Gone were the dark brownstone and brick, and the free wheeling exuberance of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles. The light colored building materials, serious sturdiness and sheer impressiveness of Beaux Arts and neo-Classic architecture were a reflection of the age of robber barons and big money, and that’s what Morris’ clients in the late 1890’s and early 20th century wanted. In Park Slope, Morris took this new Classicism to heart, but tweaked it, and imbued some of these new commissions with the old Morris touch. The first of these new buildings, in 1894, was corner townhouse at 123 Eighth Ave, at Carroll St. The Classical details are especially fine on the front entrance and on the Carroll St. side of the building. On Prospect Park West, Classical details are combined with a Morris loggia at 17 PPW, while all of his PPW limestones have similar detailing in the stonework, Classical relief columns, arched entries and windows and pedimented dormers. As per usual, with Morris, many are in complementing pairs; 16, 17 PPW (1899), my favorites - 18, 19 PPW (1898), and a single, 22 PPW (1899). All of these houses have large windows facing the park, and all are examples of a restrained elegance in design.
In 1900, Montrose got a huge commission – the largest private house in Brooklyn, to date. Clarence W. Seamans was the head of Union Typewriter, at the beginning of the 20th century, the largest business machine company in the world. He was also a financier, sitting on the boards of Brooklyn’s Schermerhorn Bank and People’s Trust Bank. During the 1890’s he began buying up land in the fashionable St. Mark’s District, on St. Mark’s Avenue and directly behind this plot, on Bergen St. He held a competition to choose an architect for his new home, and chose the designs of Montrose Morris over the others.
November 17, 2009
Walkabout: Part 3, MM - Park Slope and Big Business
This is the third installment of Montrose Morris' story, the first subject in an ongoing series featuring the best of Brooklyn's late 19th century architects. The first two chapters are available here.
Montrose Morris was riding high at the turn of the century, commissions were rolling in, and business was good. He continued as a developer, cashing in on the new desire for respectable middle class apartment buildings, building and renting them out in the desirable neighborhoods of Clinton Hill, Bedford and Park Slope. He experimented in style; two of his buildings, the Clermont in Bedford Stuyvesant, and 515 Clinton Ave have a distinctly French chateau flair. Socially, he was a man in high standing in Brooklyn society, and his name appears often in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as a member of many prominent clubs and associations. We read of him attending a lecture by Frederick Douglass at the Union League Club, where he was a founding member and long time treasurer. He was a member of the 23rd Regiment Veterans Association, the Mistletoe Lodge, the Montauk Club, the Invincible Club, the Amphion Musical Society, the Royal Arcanum, and the Lefferts Council. The Eagle often commented on the many social events at the Morris home on Hancock Street, including a concert with his fellow members of the Contemporary Club, where it was mentioned that Mrs. Morris possessed a fine singing voice.
The Morris’ social connections, along with the quality of the body of work he was amassing soon attracted the wealthy men looking to build in Park Slope. In 1892, he finished what many consider to be his finest private house. Henry Carlton Hulbert was a paper manufacturer, financier, and prominent board member of the New York Life Insurance Company, as well as the Pullman Car Company. He commissioned Morris to design a double house for himself and his daughter Susie, and her new husband. The house would be made of the finest of materials, and sit majestically on the Gold Coast of Park Slope, Ninth Avenue (now Prospect Park West), at the corner of First Street.
Continue reading "Walkabout: Part 3, MM - Park Slope and Big Business"
November 12, 2009
Walkabout: MW Morris- the Commissions Cometh
This is the second installment of the life and career of Montrose Morris, the first subject in an ongoing series of biographies of the best of Brownstone Brooklyn's late 19th c. architects. This first post can be viewed here; all earlier Walkabout columns can be viewed here.
One of the many people who toured Montrose Morris’ model home on Hancock Street was developer Louis B. Seitz. In 1889, he commissioned Morris to build a new kind of building for the area, an upper class apartment building. Morris designed the Alhambra, arguably the best of his many apartment buildings. A terra cotta trimmed brick building taking up the entire block front of Nostrand Avenue, between Macon and Halsey, the Alhambra is classic Romanesque Revival Morris. Here, he echoes his group of houses on Hancock and goes even better, with loggias stretching across the upper stories, elaborate dormered towers, and terra cotta trim joining the disparate parts of the building. Inside, huge apartments offered the best of single family home living, with gracious appointments, and lavish detail. In spite of strikes by bricklayers, and other delays, the building was a huge success. Seitz was pleased to offer Morris two more upper class apartment building commissions in Bedford, all three buildings now protected as NYC landmarks, the Renaissance Apartments, also on Nostrand, and the “Dakota of Brooklyn”, the Imperial Apartments in nearby Grant’s Square, on Bedford and Pacific. (1893). He also designed the smaller Bedfordshire Apartments next door to the Imperial, in 1892.
His success in these ventures was paying off. Commissions were coming in right and left in the late 1880’s, through the 1990’s. More apartment buildings were designed, including the Roanoke (originally the San Carlo Hotel) in Fort Greene, the Arlington, on Montague St. in Brooklyn Heights, the Montrose, on State and Hoyt (demolished), and the Lenox and Montauk on St. Mark’s and Flatbush. Another major commission was the expansion of the St. George Hotel, also in Brooklyn Heights. Morris’s grand tower, festooned with flags, opened in 1890, and still stands today.
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November 10, 2009
Walkabout: The Architects - Montrose Morris, Part 1
This biography is the first in an ongoing series featuring the best of Brownstone Brooklyn's architects.
The late 19th century was a time of big money, big growth, and big ambitions in a big city. Enter a family man, society swell, bon vivant, good singer, canny businessman, and damn good architect. Stanford White? No – Montrose W. Morris, of Bedford, Brooklyn, one of the finest architects to paint the canvas of our Brooklyn landscape.
Montrose Morris was born in Hempstead, Long Island on March 20, 1861. His family moved to Brooklyn, and he was educated in Brooklyn public schools, and at the Peekskill Academy. It was a common practice of the time for would-be architects to apprentice themselves to successful practitioners, and learn the craft. Morris studied under Manhattan architect Charles W. Clinton, who with his partner, Hamilton Russell, were responsible for some of NY’s most iconic buildings, including the 7th Regiment Armory, on Park Ave, the Apthorp and Graham Court Apartments, and the Moorish style Masonic Temple, now famous as the New York City (Dance) Center. In 1883, after seven years with the Clinton firm, Morris opened up his own office on Exchange Place, which he maintained until his death in 1917. Lower Manhattan was home to the headquarters and warehouses of the growing numbers of successful industrialists, wealthy merchants, and financial and legal wizards whose business he was courting. The Brooklyn Bridge had just been completed, and many of the clients he sought were making the move to the quiet suburbs of Clinton Hill, Bedford and St. Mark’s. To woo these clients, in a brilliant strategic move, Morris bought about half the block of Hancock Street, between Marcy and Thompkins Avenues in Bedford, and on a 20 foot lot, designed and built a home that became both his residence and his showroom. The houses he designed on Hancock Street are among his best, and the area contains the largest concentration of his work still standing.
Continue reading "Walkabout: The Architects - Montrose Morris, Part 1"
November 5, 2009
Walkabout: Italianates, the Ornamental Imperative
A mid 19th century magazine, extolling the virtues of the Italianate brownstone, declared that, “the doorway is the most indispensable feature of the structure, and therefore calls loudly for adornment, and should generally be distinguished by more impressive decoration than any other feature”. Architects of the time must have been listening, and many went overboard, piling layers of ornament on the doorways of our buildings. Perhaps even more than the other decorative elements, the doorways of the Italianate brownstone define the style. In the most expensive homes, the doorway is a porch at the top of the stairs, formed by large columns with ornate capitals, holding heavy door hoods that are either rounded, or classic triangular pediments, with heavy carved keystones above the doors. These are flanked by enormous acanthus leaf brackets which face the street. Smaller acanthus brackets can often be found facing each other in the doorway, and for good measure, more acanthus brackets often frame the windows, and/or support the large window box shelves below the parlor floor windows. There are fine examples in Brooklyn Heights, as well as on Washington Park, in Fort Greene.
Most of the Italianates in Brooklyn do not have the columns, a feature for only the most expensive homes, but all have the acanthus brackets. Some of these brackets are beautiful in their expression of plant forms, and are in amazing condition. Some architects must have wanted to show off something different, and we can find fantastical combinations of leaves, flowers and decorative shapes. Some of these can be a bit disturbing at first glance, and to the modern eye, look like mutant plants run wild, or extruded foam, especially when the lines have been blurred by water damage, and badly painted over or “repaired”. The more creepily vegetal remind us that tastes certainly change over time, and that the desire to please a demanding public can often result in the overdone.
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November 3, 2009
Walkabout : The Italianate Style, part 1
For many people, the quintessential Brooklyn row house is the Italianate brownstone. The name conjures up the streetscape of rows of identical houses stretching down a block, with their tall stoops, majestic entryways, long windows encased in heavy window lintels, and deep sills. There is a perfect symmetry to their uniformity, a pleasing rhythm and solidity to these blocks, especially when paired with ancient trees, flower boxes overflowing with trailing vines and flowers, and heavy black cast iron railings and fences. This, for many, is classic Brownstone Brooklyn.
The Italianate style flourished from 1840 until around 1870. This coincides with the rapid growth of most of what we call Brownstone Brooklyn, and fine examples of these houses are found most frequently in the older neighborhoods fanning out from Fulton Landing and Brooklyn Heights. They appear, in lesser numbers, in later neighborhoods such as Crown Heights North, where they represent some of the earliest row houses in that neighborhood. There are very few, if any, in Crown Heights South or Prospect Lefferts Gardens, as development in those neighborhoods took place after the style had fallen out of favor. The inspiration for the Italianate brownstone was the 15th century Italian city palazzo, a style with classical detail, elegance and gravitas deemed eminently suitable for conveying prosperity and social position in a limited space. At the same time, the New England sandstone known as brownstone was gaining in popularity as an elegant and rich building material, and by the late 1840’s through the 1850’s, almost all of the new residential architecture, as well as churches and commercial buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn were faced in this stone, praised for its “unostentatious magnificence”. The enduring popularity of this material is evidenced by that fact that we still call all row houses, whether brick, brownstone, limestone, or a combination thereof, “brownstones”.
October 27, 2009
Walkabout with Montrose: In the Throat of Terror
The word “gargoyle” is from the French word “gargouille”, which means “throat”. A real gargoyle is a waterspout, projecting from a gutter, which throws water out away from the wall and foundations of a building. Technically speaking, any other carved figure not a waterspout is a “grotesque”. Like many of the architectural features we take for granted today, these have their origins in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Ancient Egyptian architecture features the first grotesques, in the form of figures of gods with human bodies and animal heads, and gargoyle water spouts were found in the ruins of Pompeii. Of course, our most familiar association with gargoyles is with medieval architecture, and the most famous, and some of the best gargoyles are on the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris.
The fantastic and often terrifying creatures that lurk on our buildings here in Brooklyn are the many times great-grandchildren of those creatures of the middle Ages. Why would anyone put such terrifying creatures on a building, especially a church? Scholars have theorized that because so many medieval people were illiterate, the great cathedrals were a sermon in stone, instructions to a populace that didn’t need much proof beyond every day living, that they were living in the last days: with hard, short lives, endless war, plague and disease, and evil everywhere.
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October 20, 2009
Walkabout with Montrose: The Road to Prospect Heights
The hills of central Brooklyn have long been battle grounds of one kind or another. At the start of the Revolutionary War, in 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn was fought along Brooklyn’s terminal moraine, the glacial hills that included the famous Battle Pass, now in Prospect Park, where the American forces were almost overwhelmed. Part of that battleground was also Mount Prospect, the second highest point in Brooklyn, near the present day intersection of Flatbush and Eastern Parkway, a hilly wooded area used as a lookout post by George Washington that would later give rise to the neighborhood of Prospect Heights. The entire area had been settled by Dutch farmers, including several branches of Bergen’s, since the 1630’s, and was mostly tenant farms and fields worked by slave labor. Located between the towns of Bedford and Brooklyn, the area was bisected by the Ferry Road to Flatbush, an expansion of an old Indian trail, which eventually became the Flatbush Road, east of present day Flatbush Ave. (Many of the original roads and streets in PH were moved in the 1850’s, resulting in some of the diagonal and off-grid placement of buildings that intrigue Prospect Heights residents today.) The Flatbush Road was a major thoroughfare, the main road between the town of Flatbush and the town of Brooklyn, and the ferries to Manhattan. In 1809, the Brooklyn, Jamaica, and Flatbush Turnpike Company incorporated, and toll booths were erected along their routes, including Flatbush. Part of the old Flatbush Road went through parts of what is now Prospect Park, land made uninhabitable by fevers and malarial diseases caused by stagnant ponds located in the thick undergrowth. When Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834, the Prospect Heights area was the least populated of Brooklyn’s nine wards.
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October 13, 2009
Walkabout with Montrose: Historic Bedford, Brooklyn
In December of 1668, permission was given to one Thomas Lambertse to build the first public building in the new town of Bedford. Naturally, it was a tavern, “to accommodate strangers, travelers and other persons traveling this way with diet and lodging and horse meals”. Thirty years later, Lambertse sold a parcel of Bedford land to a farmer from Flatbush Township named Leffert Pieterse. The Lefferts family would continue to acquire land in central Brooklyn, eventually making themselves the largest landowners, largest slaveholders, and one of the wealthiest families in Brooklyn for many years to come. The village of Bedford, also called Bedford Corners, was at the center of their fiefdom, and for over one hundred years, several Lefferts family mansions and homesteads were centered in the area of Bedford Ave, Fulton Street and Arlington Place.
Bedford remained a quiet farming community until 1776, and the bloodiest battle of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Long Island, aka the Battle of Brooklyn. 10,000 British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries, led by General William Howe, marched through Bedford, guided by unwilling Bedford residents William Howard and his son, and headed south to surprise General Washington’s 7,000 troops. A fierce and bloody battle ensued in the wooded hills now part of Green-Wood Cemetery and Prospect Park. The ill prepared American forces sustained heavy losses, but thanks to a Maryland regiment providing cover, and a very foggy night, Washington and his surviving troops were able to escape across the Gowanus Creek, and eventually to Manhattan and out of NY to safety. The British occupied Brooklyn, and then Manhattan, for the rest of the war. The Lefferts homesteads, as well as the homes of other well off Bedford landowners, such as the Suydams, Vanderbilts, Blooms and Van Endens, were occupied as officer’s housing for the duration. The large Jacobus Lefferts house was officer’s headquarters, while the foot soldiers and Hessian mercenaries lived in excavated barracks, stretching from present day Franklin and Classon, down to Franklin and Bergen, as well as Sterling, St. Marks, Prospect Place and Park Place, now part of Crown Heights North. As development progressed in the late 19th century, artifacts and skeletal remains were found in the remains of these redoubts.
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October 6, 2009
Walkabout with Montrose: Romanesque Revival Architecture
Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson is known as the father of the Romanesque Revival style of architecture, so much so that the term Richardson Romanesque is synonymous with the more correct term, Romanesque Revival. It is a rugged, muscular architecture, perfect for the power and might of the high Victorian age of the robber barons, captains of industry, and grand money makers – a highly confident architecture for a confident time in history. The architecture is characterized primarily by the use of brick and stone, with round Roman arches, embellished with squat columns, lines of windows, recessed entrances, towers with capped roofs, heavy massing, and often with the use of rusticated, that is rough hewn stone blocks. Richardson’s first Romanesque building, the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane was built in 1870, and his masterpiece was Boston’s Trinity Church, built in 1872-77. The style proved immensely popular throughout the country, and soon civic buildings, churches, and huge mansions followed, designed and improved upon by a number of architects, most famously Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. In New York, specifically in Brooklyn, row houses soon followed the public buildings and the mansions, as the style easily lent itself to the constraints of a smaller façade, while still allowing for great variety in ornament and an abundance of detail. Important ornamental features of this style are carved Byzantine Leaf ornament, ornate stained glass windows and elaborate ornamental ironwork, all designed to soften the baronial nature of this architecture. At its grandest, this is an architectural style tailor made for the wealthy, at its simplest, an elegant and sedate style perfect for a rowhouse streetscape.
Many of Brooklyn’s finest architects were masters of the Romanesque Revival style, especially at its zenith in the mid 1880’s through early 1890’s. According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Brooklyn has one of the largest concentrations of Romanesque Revival buildings in the United States. Names that are commonplace in our historic districts: Montrose Morris, CPH Gilbert, James Naughton, PJ Lauritzen, the Parfitt Brothers, William Tubby, Mercein Thomas, JC Cady, Magnus Dahlander and George P. Chappell, as well as many more, all designed masterpieces of Romanesque Revival architecture throughout Brownstone Brooklyn. Together they form a formidable and impressive body of work that helps define the uniqueness of our Brownstone neighborhoods. Here is but a small sampling of the Romanesque Revival style in Brooklyn.Take a look.
Author's Comments
faithful - totally out of context: last year you said you wanted to have your house on the house tour. If you still do, please email me with contact info. montrosemorris at yahoo dot com.
Thanks
MM
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 6, 2008 5:16 PM in response to Sod
I'm interested, and live pretty near you. Please email me:
montrosemorris at yahoo dot com.
Thanks!
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 6, 2008 12:37 AM in response to Free mahogany wood cabinet
5:15 - Thank you.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 6:47 PM in response to House of the Day: 456 Bainbridge Street
2:08 - "different black people" here. I find FCR's use of ACORN, Rev. Daughtrey, BUILD, and black celebs like Jay Z and b'ball players to be very disengenous.
IF the project had been done on the up and up, without eminent domain, and with the affordable component as a priority, not a maybe, THEN I'd be less cynical.
IF the demo of properties already owned by FCR actually were using BUILD members (minority construction workers and trainees), and people were being trained now for the work they will be performing supposedly "soon", THEN that would be the fulfillment of a pledge.
IF the affordable housing was a centerpiece, or co-equal component of the housing in the complex, not an add-on for a mythical Phase 2, that depends on the profit margin of Phase 1, and is therefore not a sure thing, THEN I'd have some respect for them.
But when "affordable" means up to an income of $120K, how many of those who are lined up for a nice apartment, you know those people bussed in for past rallies and basketball players' autographs, how many of them will actually get one? How many of them will get a job at AY?
My black friends and colleagues can see through this, and don't like it. You can believe what you choose, but don't deny the real possiblility that while there are many good things to be said about developing the site, much more can be said about the methods FCR has used to get what they want.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 4:29 PM in response to Rally Round the Mega-Project
Dictionary Time
"Fringe neighborhood" means not enough white people. Or at least not enough of the kind of white people some white people would like to see.
People like Dave don't count, as his comfort and acceptance in Bed Stuy make him suspect.
See white guy at 2:05, whose insulting,(and poor)use of Ebonics at 2:29 shows the kind of attitude no neighborhood needs, in regards to mocking the homes of people who have been raising families in homes long paid for, for generations, minding their own business, a without a care of whether or not some white gentrifier approves or not.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 4:03 PM in response to House of the Day: 456 Bainbridge Street
If someone was interested in this house, which on the face of it, looks great, the smart thing to do would be to call the precinct and ask about crime stats on this block, or the areas near the nearest subway. To go by the usual fear mongering on this site (Bed Stuy = horrendous crime, etc) makes no sense.
As stated by many people on many occasions, Bed Stuy is HUGE. Check the foreclosure map for activity in the immediate area, not just Bed Stuy as a whole. Base your choices on the actual reality of this block, this house. Drive by there, get out and walk around, talk to people, ask around at the corner bodegas, businesses or churches. If the house is worthy, structurally, etc, then this price is as good as it gets in Brownstone Brooklyn, price wise. It looks like a great house.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 2:02 PM in response to House of the Day: 456 Bainbridge Street
I really hate the flag waving and strains of "America the beautiful" in the background when conservatives disagree with anyone not conservative. The choice here is not be grateful, or get out and live in Iran, Cuba, etc. That's ridiculous, demeaning, and not an argument. There are changes needed in this country, and advocating those changes does not make someless less of a citizen, and wrapping yourself in the flag does not make you a better citizen.
Health insurance is a huge expense for those whose jobs don't offer it, for the self employed or people who work several part time jobs where they are ineligible - just some of the scenarios at play here for the uninsured. There are millions of uninsured people in this country. To grandly state that people just won't pay for it because they want everything free is ignorant.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 1:19 PM in response to Report: Investment Sales Mostly Hanging In There
Tear it down? I hope not. The building has a great history. When I moved here in the early 80's there was still sporadic activity there, although nothing like in the 70's. Judge Phillips was quite the local character. What happened to him towards the end of his life shouldn't happen to anyone.
The theatre is really nice building - solidly built, great mass on the block. I'd turn the ground floor into a first class restaurant and separate coffee bar. The second floor I would lease to some kind of creative companies for offices, and have a non-profit office/gallery space for someone whose interests include local history and lore, local artists and/or organizations interested in preserving historical Bed Stuy.
Any financial partners out there? I have great ideas, I'm just broke.
What - that was great info.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 3, 2008 12:52 PM in response to Slave Theater in Court, Preservation Effort Weak
Yesterday's rally was a great starting point for the long haul fight. Our local politicians all really stepped up and took a stand. All of them made great speeches, but Marty was at his most passionate and eloquent, and hopefully with all of the Bklyn big guns on our side, we will prevail.
Two things stood out with me: It was an amazing multi-racial, multi-age group. We had young white guys with mohawks and older black church ladies in hats, and everyone in between. This wasn't us vs them, gentrifiers vs oldtimers. The group made me feel good about the future of our neighborhood, as a place where we all can live and thrive.
There was also tremendous support for keeping the existing shelter there, and insisting that the homeless men who live there are helped by real programs to actually aid them into jobs, homes and society. We heard from a man who lives in the shelter who has been applying for an apartment offered by DHS, but doesn't qualify because he hasn't been homeless long enough. He's been applying for over a year. Almost all of the speakers stressed that the existing shelter is necessary, but needs to be better run, needs to be safe and clean, and needs to be a doorway to something better, not just a dumping ground for the unwanted.
All other points are well covered by Gabby's report. It was a good start.
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 2, 2008 10:05 AM in response to Crown Heights Rally: Don't Dump On Us!
I totally agree with what bxgrl and 10:54 said. What is more green than adaptive reuse, and kudos for the recent attention to other neighborhoods, even Brighton Beach!
Posted by: Montrose Morris at June 11, 2008 11:56 AM in response to New Affordable, Supportive Housing in Bushwick