Building of the Day: 94 Rugby Road, a Spanish Colonial Treasure
Brooklyn, one building at a time. Name: Morris L. Holman house Address: 94 Rugby Road Cross Streets: Church Avenue and Albemarle Road Neighborhood: Prospect Park South Year Built: 1907 Architectural Style: Spanish Mission Revival Architect: John J. Petit Other works by architect: Many of the great houses of Prospect Park South. On Rugby Road: 88,…
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Morris L. Holman house
Address: 94 Rugby Road
Cross Streets: Church Avenue and Albemarle Road
Neighborhood: Prospect Park South
Year Built: 1907
Architectural Style: Spanish Mission Revival
Architect: John J. Petit
Other works by architect: Many of the great houses of Prospect Park South. On Rugby Road: 88, 100, 154, 205, 219 and 220; also 1306, 1510 and 1519 Albemarle Road, and 131 Buckingham Road, the “Japanese House.”
Landmarked: Yes, part of Prospect Park South Historic District (1981)
The story: For architect John J. Petit, Prospect Park South was a dream come true. What architect wouldn’t want to work for clients who wanted the best of everything and encouraged their architects to go all out, design-wise?
Petit was the perfect man for the job. He was highly imaginative and very good at using the design themes of other times and cultures in his projects. He didn’t create copies, but used his source material as inspirations for entirely new work.
This skill would come in handy not only for Prospect Park South, but also for Dreamland, the Coney Island amusement park that Petit designed for mega-developer William Reynolds. Like the homes of Prospect Park South, it too was a collection of themes from all over the world, with Moroccan minarets, Venetian palazzi and Japanese tea houses.
Petit designed 44 houses in Prospect Park South. Most of them fall into three style categories: Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival. The remaining styles are all over the place, giving the neighborhood a delightful surprise factor. He designed Swiss chalets, a Japanese house, French castles and Spanish Mission houses, to name but a few.
It’s easy to get excited about his designs, and they are quite inventive and great, but what really is remarkable is that underneath them all is the basic series of cubes that make up the classic configuration of the turn-of-the-20th-century suburban Victorian house.
In most of these houses, four square rooms surround a center hallway and stair, both upstairs and downstairs. Added wings, dormers and bays may give variety, but that’s just icing on the cake.
Here we have an example of a Spanish Mission Revival house. They were very popular on the West Coast when Petit was working here in 1907, so he brought a style that was certainly not indigenous to the East Coast to Brooklyn. This house was well before its time.
The tall stepped and curved gables are a classic of the design. Many of the Southwest’s houses in this style were inspired by the Alamo in Texas.
Petit captured perfectly the shapes, the stucco covered exterior, and the deep eaves under the protruding roof. He even placed wrought iron balconies under the twin windows in the front.
Channeling the Southwest again, he created a cloistered porch that, while facing the public street, is totally private. There is no public access from the street. The porch is therefore almost monasterial, accessible only by the homeowners and their guests.
Petit designed the home for Morris L. Holman, who was in the chemical business. His name appears on several chemical patents, and his business was concerned with caustic and dangerous substances. One of his patents involved a receptacle for lye solutions.
The house was completed in 1907, but Holman, who was a widower with four grown children, didn’t live here very long. He died in 1911, here at home. His funeral also took place here. His two youngest children sold the house two years later, in 1913.
Since then the house has passed through several owners. When the neighborhood was landmarked in 1981, the Landmarks Preservation Commission considered it “one of the finest houses in Prospect Park South.”
Top photograph by Suzanne Spellen.
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