Building of the Day: 1-25 Fairview Place

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 1-25 Fairview Place
Cross Streets: Church and Martense avenues
Neighborhood: East Flatbush
Year Built: 1900
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Unknown, but Borough Holding Co. was the developer
Landmarked: No

The story: By 1900, urban row house development had finally taken hold in once-agrarian Flatbush. The lots were going fast, and the buildings being built in the first years of the century consisted of a combination of small suburban wood framed houses and one and two family brick or limestone row houses. The days of the small developer who got his hands on two or three lots was disappearing as well. Most of this early 20th century building was being done by larger scale developers, men who bought up entire blocks, not a plot here and there. One of these companies was called the Borough Holding Company.

Borough Holding Company operated in Brooklyn and the Bronx, over the years building one and two family homes, as well as larger six-story apartment buildings. Their names can be found on projects here in East Flatbush, as well as in Kensington and other parts of the borough generally outside of the traditional 19th century brownstone belt, although there were exceptions. One of their later projects, 300 8th Avenue, was in Park Slope, built in 1929.

The President of Borough Holding Company was Louis Cherry. His name appears not only in connection with this company, but with several other large development companies. He was also president of Atlas Industrial, which built movie theaters, specifically one in Carnarsie, and Bingham Holding Company, which built apartment buildings in the Bronx. The man had his fingers on a lot of plots, and was still going strong in 1950, when he was honored for his work.

This group of 13 one-family houses was built in 1900-1901. Fairview Place and its neighbor Raleigh Place were extended from East 31st and 32nd streets in 1899, and laid out in 1900. The streets and sidewalks were finalized, graded, flagged and asphalted in 1913. Even then, it took the city that long. In the meantime, this row and the combination of row and two free standing suburban wood framed houses across the street went up in the interim. This row stretches the length of the block, and is very different in style from the limestones across the street, and around the corner.

These are interesting row houses. The architect makes them flow down the street by alternating bays and flat surfaces. He puts his square bays in pairs, leaving a large flat surface between, creating an illusion of fewer, but larger houses. The eye follows the ins and outs of the facades down the row, making the whole much greater than the parts, a modern throwback to the Italianate and Greek Revival rows of fifty years before. The dark colored stone trim in bands across the row and in the lintels of the doors and windows also leads the eye across in a pleasing way. The golden brick is very nice and expensive looking. Good stuff on a budget.

A quick look at the inhabitants of Fairview Place shows that this was a pretty upscale street. The owners up until the Crash included members of the Social Register, and people who summered outside of the city. They had large weddings and funerals, and were active in Flatbush society and in schools, businesses and churches. There were no ads for apartments or rooms for rent until the Depression. Many of the houses are still single family homes. Most have extensions in the back, but only the corner house has a garage.

East Flatbush has some really nice streets. This is one of them, as is Raleigh. It reminds me a bit of another set of isolated one block streets in Crown Heights North: Hampton and Virginia places. They were built at the same time, by totally different people, but also have that sense of isolation and privacy within the larger neighborhood. And who doesn’t want peace in the city? Good stuff! GMAP

(Photo: Nicholas Strini for PropertyShark)