Building of the Day: 599-601 Willoughby Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Hebron Baptist Church, formerly the Fez Club, formerly the Regina Mansion, formerly a private house
Address: 599-601 Willoughby Avenue
Cross Streets: Tompkins and Throop Avenue
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1880s
Architectural Style: Second Empire, with 20th century remuddling
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: This part of Bedford Stuyvesant was part of the 19th century’s Eastern District, which also included much of Bushwick and a corner of Williamsburg. Willoughby Avenue has long been an important street, stretching all the way to Downtown Brooklyn, and this part was home to large homes belonging to prominent people, and in the late 1800s, was home to mostly German Americans. This house was built sometime before 1884 for the family of Colonel Henry Roehr.

Young Henry had come here as a child with his parents after the failed Revolution of 1848 in Germany. He learned the printing trades as a youth, and enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was the leader of one of the “Turner Rifle” brigades; volunteers who were organized through one of the many Turn Verein social organizations throughout German-American communities in the North. Roehr was wounded in battle, and after returning home, decided to take over a German language daily paper. He changed the name to the Brooklyn Freie Presse, and made it the community’s largest and best paper, credited for accurate and informative information about Brooklyn, giving German speakers a contact with Greater Brooklyn they never had before.

Roehr also returned to military life as a Colonel in the National Guard, and was successful enough to have this house built for him. For over 20 years, this house sat alone, with no development on either side. The house was once a handsome Second Empire brick house, with a central tower, a mansard roof, and heavy stone lintels and doorways. It probably also had a porch.

The Roehr’s didn’t stay here all that long, and by 1890, the house belonged to someone else, with three other owners between then and 1914. At that point, it was transformed into an events venue called Regina Mansion. It would remain the Regina Mansion until at least 1973.

The first notice I could find on the Mansion appeared in 1914. The house was now host for meetings, social affairs such as wedding receptions, awards dinners, dinner/dances and small conventions. All kinds of local groups rented it out: Catholics, Jews, unions, private individuals, and clubs of all kinds. By the 1920s, two-thirds of the rentals in the Mansion were for all kinds of events by all kinds of Jewish, or predominantly Jewish, groups and organizations, everything from wedding receptions, to meetings of the Jewish Orphans association to a tailor’s union meeting.

In the book, “The Jews of Brooklyn,” Peter Sokolow writes that Jews had started to settle in Northern Bedford Stuyvesant in 1910. They soon needed catering halls that could cater to kosher rules, as well as provide a social outlet for music, and social and civic events. The Regina Mansion was one of the two most famous of these catering halls serving the Williamsburg area. Sokolow writes that after the success of these halls, Mansions, Manors, Terraces, Palaces and Chateaux soon followed, all with the same basic formula and layout; a carpeted or marble lobby floor, chrystal chandeliers, and mirrored ballrooms with wooden floors. The food was the same too: matzoh ball or chicken noodle soup, fruit cup to clear the palate, then roast chicken or sometimes roast beef or brisket, with strudel or fruit compote for dessert.

The Regina Mansion ran through the 1950s, with many events taking place here. By this time it was being run by the Nussdorf family, which had formed an LLC in 1949. The announcements of events here run out by then, signaling the end of an era. Middle class Jews were on their way to the suburbs of Long Island by then, and had been since the return of soldiers after World War II. This neighborhood was becoming predominantly black and Hispanic. The Regina Mansion’s days were over.

I don’t know exactly when the awful huge addition was added to the front, the brickwork looks like similar work from the 1920s. It must have almost doubled the size of the hall. The next owners were the Fez Club, who had the building in 1973, the date computerized records start, until 1984, when they sold it to the Hebron Baptist Church. A tax photo taken in 1983 shows a lot of detail from the original building still there, including the dormers and original windows in the tower and mansard roof, as well as the building’s cornice and original second floor windows and frames.

We can blame the church for the obliteration of the mansard roof and its details. They were replaced by two large modern windows and the roof was stuccoed over. The cornice was also removed. Today, the building is just there, with no few hints of its past remaining. This area is gentrifying, and I wouldn’t be surprised to drive by in a couple of years and see a large condo building in its stead. GMAP