Building of the Day: 1010 Bushwick Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Private house
Address: 1010 Bushwick Avenue
Cross Streets: Grove and Linden Streets
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: 1915
Architectural Style: Dutch Revival
Architect: Walter B. Wills
Other buildings by architect: Many tenement buildings and rowhouses in neighborhood, 1180-1184 Bushwick, 1144-46 Bushwick, next door free standing house at 1014 Bushwick.
Landmarked: No, but part of a proposed Bushwick Avenue HD

The story: Bushwick is long overdue for an historic district. The most sensible place to arrange one would be to landmark a goodly stretch of Bushwick Avenue, along with some adjacent side streets. Here we find an eclectic collection of buildings, ranging from huge, ornate mansions to humble tenements, and everything in between. There are also churches, clubhouses, institutions, and other community buildings that help to make a neighborhood home, not just a collection of buildings.

The history of Bushwick is written large on its main street. When one walks or drives down the avenue, it is obvious that great wealth played a part of this neighborhood’s development. Many more mansions once lined Bushwick, making it as impressive as Clinton Avenue, or St. Marks Avenue, or Prospect Park West, in terms of showing off one’s material successes. It’s interesting to see how styles change, how brick and brownstone mid-19th century houses are supplanted by later, large and ornate Queen Anne houses, followed by more sedate, but large single family homes, such as this one, many of which would give way to apartment houses.

This house, and a similar one next door, are the work of Walter B. Wills, a local architect with quite a number of buildings to his credit, mostly in Brooklyn and Queens. His buildings show up in the 1890’s up through the 1920’s. He designed several groups of tenements on Bushwick Avenue, as well as row houses, single family houses, stables and other buildings in the neighborhood. It was built at a time when Bushwick was becoming better known for its middle and working-class attributes, rather than its beer baron and industrial giants past. By 1915, when the house was built, Bushwick Avenue was rapidly changing with the times, as immigrant populations moved from over-crowded conditions in lower Manhattan to much more spacious Brooklyn. This house represents the last of the single family houses to be built on the avenue.

But this is a fine brick house, befitting a more restrained attitude about money. Designed in one of the many popular “revivals”, this one a Dutch revival. The original interior probably was pure Colonial Revival. The original owners had money – a garage was the new status symbol of the day, and owners of the house over the years include doctors, one head of Pathology at a local hospital, and other successful people. It’s still a single family house, even today, and is an important addition to the pantheon of Bushwick Avenue architecture. It deserves to be protected. GMAP

Once again, for my Bushwick architectural references, I have to thank the Columbia U. students in Professor Ward Dennis’ preservation class of 2011, who constructed the framework upon which a possible historic district could be built. They did a masterful job, which can be seen here.