Building of the Day: 1147 Eastern Parkway

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Former private home, now Mt. Moriah Christian Academy
Address: 1147 Eastern Parkway
Cross Streets: Utica and Rochester Avenue
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: Mid-1920s
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: By the time the 1920s rolled around, much of Crown Heights North was a growing and increasingly affluent Jewish neighborhood. Eastern European Jews were joining the wealthy German Jewish families already there. They were moving into the private homes and the many new six story apartment buildings that were being built along Eastern Parkway and surrounding streets. A look at the state census of 1925 on Eastern Parkway near this house shows that almost all of the people living on the Parkway within a two block radius from this address were Jewish, with Yiddish as a first language, many born in Russia or Poland, or the first generation of American-born, with parents born in Russia or Poland.

These were not the Chabad-Lubavitch who are in Crown Heights South now, but their earlier cousins, who came to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, fleeing the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. Upon arriving in the area, and moving up financially, they built synagogues, schools and community centers, and concentrated on preserving their Jewish heritage while also succeeding and assimilating into American cultural life.

At the time, many fine mansions and elegant homes were still being built on Eastern Parkway, and also on nearby streets like President and Union Streets. This home was built in the mid-1920s for someone who had done well. I was unable to find out whom, exactly when, or who the architect was. The neo-Georgian, Colonial Revival- style house fits in quite well with the styles of the day.

The Colonial Revival house, in all of its incarnations, was the most popular style of residential architecture for most of the 20th century. A house like this, with its impressive Jeffersonian entrance and grand footprint, would be quite appreciated by anyone who had achieved success. And so it was. It was owned by a number of people until it became the home of Dr. Benjamin Stoloff, sometime in the 1940s.

Dr. Stoloff was a prominent Brooklyn pediatrician. He is said to have been the first Jewish pediatrician in Brooklyn. Benjamin Stoloff was born in Russia in 1885 and came to the United States with his parents at three years of age. The family first settled in Philadelphia, where he lived until his teens. He studied medicine at the Long Island College of Medicine, graduating in 1906. He followed those studies by further education in Vienna and Berlin.

Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Stoloff settled in Brooklyn, and over the years, lived in several houses along Eastern Parkway, during which time he became the head of pediatrics at Brooklyn Women’s Hospital and Beth-El Hospital. He was also the head of the pediatric divisions of the Kings County and East New York Medical Associations. In addition, he headed various medical boards, and was active in Jewish and other philanthropic organizations and causes. He was living here at 1149 Eastern Parkway at his death, in 1954, at the age of 69.

Dr. Stoloff’s daughter and her family, the Leventhal’s, lived here after his death. They were the last family to actually live here. In 1954, they sold the house to the Non Pareil Social and Athletic Club, a Jewish philanthropic and communal organization. The club was very active in political life, and its members were courted by all of Brooklyn’s politicians and power brokers. They held onto the club until 1972.

That year, the building was sold to Conrad Chisholm, Shirley Chisholm’s husband. That was the same year she ran for President. She was currently serving as Congressperson from this district, the first black Congresswoman in American history. Conrad Chisholm turned the building into an event space and club house called Club 1149. It became a meeting place for political clubs and speakers, as well as a social gathering space. The Chisolm’s divorced in 1977, and she got this building in the settlement, appearing on the deed in 1979.

Shirley Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, remarried, and moved out of the city. By that time, the building had already passed to Mt. Moriah Church of God in Christ, in 1981. They have owned the building ever since. It now holds the Mt. Moriah Christian Academy. In spite of the signage, additions and changes from when it was a residence, this is still an impressive building, a testament to success and the achievement of the American dream for two different groups of people.

(Photo:Morgan Munsey)

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