Building of the Day: 620 Greene Avenue
Brooklyn, one building at a time. Name: Private house Address: 620 Greene Avenue Cross Streets: Tompkins and Throop Avenues Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant Year Built: Around 1872 Architectural Style: Second Empire Architect: Unknown Landmarked: No The story: The neighborhood we call Bedford Stuyvesant is huge, so large that a lot of generalities just don’t apply. When I…

Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Private house
Address: 620 Greene Avenue
Cross Streets: Tompkins and Throop Avenues
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: Around 1872
Architectural Style: Second Empire
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No
The story: The neighborhood we call Bedford Stuyvesant is huge, so large that a lot of generalities just don’t apply. When I give my walking tours in the soon to be landmarked Bedford district around Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street, I can say with confidence that that particular part of Bed Stuy does not have very many free-standing mansions left from the days when the area was an affluent suburban area, before the row house explosion. There are a few, but many? No more. While only ten blocks north of Fulton Street, it’s a different story all together. Greene Avenue, Gates Avenue, Quincy Street, Willoughby Street and other streets in the more northern parts of Bedford are dotted with free-standing houses, some back to back, others here and there, tucked into rows of brownstones and flats buildings.
Many of these houses have suffered architectural indignities over the years, covered in strange materials, details and architectural features long gone, and subdivided within an inch of their lives. They’ve been turned into churches, clubs, and schools, but they are still there, and sometimes, if you dig hard enough, you can find out all kinds of information about the people who shaped the neighborhood’s history while they lived in what were once very fine homes. Take 620 Greene Avenue, for example.
Lemuel Burrows bought this property in 1871, and probably had the house built soon afterwards. The seller of the property was James Dean Fish, a wealthy merchant who invested in real estate, in addition to his other highly successful career as president of the very powerful Marine National Bank of Wall Street. Much of Bedford was still a comfortable suburb for commuters who could take the trolley to the ferry and commute to Manhattan in under an hour. Burrows was a lawyer with high political aspirations. Even before living at this address, he ran for local office as a Republican, and was elected to the position of alderman for his ward. That would be the equivalent of being a City Councilman.
He served for several years, and in 1872, was appointed tax collector for Brooklyn. He was in charge of property tax assessments and collecting property taxes. He held that position for several years, but according to the Eagle, the position went to his head, and he started angering everyone by bossing people around, being a petty tyrant who liked to yell at people, and playing fast and loose with the City’s money. An editorial in 1873 said, “His boyish anger and petty violence in the matter of the rooms and records of the Street Commissioner’s office were silly in the last degree. Now his setting himself above the law is not less silly, is more serious. He is getting to be a good deal of a nuisance…”
Burrows soon found himself out of a job, dumped by the Republicans, in part because he worked well with the Tammany Hall Democrats, and also endorsed by those same Democrats. He went back to private practice. In 1879, he filed for bankruptcy, and put the house up as collateral against his debts. His luck was even further ruined when in 1880; he and his wife were sued by the family of one of his clients, for whom he was executor of her estate. They felt he had cheated them out of money. He lost the case, and lost the house for good.
The house passed on to a lot of different owners, at least four, perhaps five, between 1880 and 1913. It’s had many more since. No longer a remote suburban home, the large handsome brick house is now next door to the 79th Precinct. It’s a three family house, still sitting on a spacious 51 by 100 foot lot. GMAP

I live blocks away from this house and I have always admired it.
Such a beautiful home. I am glad the history of the house came to light!
Thanks for posting