Building of the Day: 30-52 Sharon Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Single family attached homes
Address: 30-52 Sharon Street
Cross Streets: Olive and Morgan avenues
Neighborhood: East Williamsburg
Year Built: 1940-41
Architect: Arthur E. Allen
Other Buildings by Architect: Similar projects for Insured Homes in Ridgewood, Astoria, St. Albans, Laurel Hill, and other parts of Queens
Landmarked: No

The story: Sharon Street is a one block enclave facing Cooper Park in East Williamsburg. Cooper Park, Sharon Street, and the surrounding area were all part of the estate once owned by Peter Cooper, of Cooper Union fame. A fascinating man with only a year of formal schooling, he became one of New York’s most successful industrialists, inventors and philanthropists. He helped lay the first transatlantic telegraph cable, designed and built the first functioning steam engine in the U.S., and patented powdered gelatin.

Cooper had a glue factory here, where he manufactured very high quality glue. Its close proximity to Newtown Creek allowed for easy transportation of products and materials. He sold the factory in 1865 to family members, and the land eventually became part of the Brice-Cooper estate. In 1895, the Cooper family descendants sold a portion of the land to the city of Brooklyn for use as a park. That park, directly across the street from these houses, was landscaped and outfitted with a playground in 1896. By 1905, the shelter and comfort station was completed. More work was done with WPA funds during the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, the land across the street from the park, along Sharon Street remained undeveloped. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, it was sold to a Michael Meher in 1921, who sold it to the developer of these houses in the late 1930s.

The developers were Sidney Kessler and B.M. Hess of the Insured Homes Corporation. This company was extremely busy in the late ’30s and early ’40s building small suburban developments in Queens and nearby parts of Brooklyn for middle class home buyers finally coming out of the Depression. Their houses were small, cheap and came in several different styles.

Most of them were designed by Arthur E. Allen, an architect based in Jamaica, Queens. He designed small free standing cottages, as well as attached “townhomes,” such as these houses. They sat back on their lots, and were efficient, cheap to build, and were landscaped with sodded lawns, sidewalks, and a back alley for parking. There were supposed to be 43 houses in this development, but it doesn’t look as if they were all built, or perhaps they were replaced by the newer houses in the late 1980s.There is an empty lot in the ’80s tax photo showing the end house, at No. 52.

The remaining Insured Homes houses are in two groups. Both groups were designed as single family homes. The first is a row of Tudor style attached houses, two stories and a basement, with half-timbered details, front porches, and slate looking roofs. The second group, 30-52, today’s BOTD’s, were much more utilitarian and modern, and are five pairs of mirrored one story and a basement houses, with steel framed windows, and very modest detailing. But they were as wide and deep as an average brownstone, at 20 by 45 feet.

These 10 houses served their owners well. Lately, however, some homeowners have been getting McMansionitis, and have been adding to their one story homes. They can’t go back and they can’t go wider, so they’ve been going up as far as their FAR and zoning will allow. I would imagine there have been some upset neighbors on this block, to say the least.

(Photo:Christopher Bride for PropertyShark)

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