Walkabout: Montrose Morris, Part 4 - Full Circle
This is the fourth installment of the life and career of late-19th-century architect Montrose Morris. Read the first post here, and then Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5. Like most architects of the day, Montrose Morris embraced the new Classicism, as popularized by the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Gone were the dark brownstone and…
This is the fourth installment of the life and career of late-19th-century architect Montrose Morris. Read the first post here, and then Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5.
Like most architects of the day, Montrose Morris embraced the new Classicism, as popularized by the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Gone were the dark brownstone and brick, and the free wheeling exuberance of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles.
The light colored building materials, serious sturdiness and sheer impressiveness of Beaux Arts and neo-Classic architecture were a reflection of the age of robber barons and big money, and that’s what Morris’ clients in the late 1890’s and early 20th century wanted.
In Park Slope, Morris took this new Classicism to heart, but tweaked it, and imbued some of these new commissions with the old Morris touch. The first of these new buildings, in 1894, was corner townhouse at 123 Eighth Ave, at Carroll St.
The Classical details are especially fine on the front entrance and on the Carroll St. side of the building. On Prospect Park West, Classical details are combined with a Morris loggia at 17 PPW, while all of his PPW limestones have similar detailing in the stonework, Classical relief columns, arched entries and windows and pedimented dormers.
As per usual, with Morris, many are in complementing pairs; 16, 17 PPW (1899), my favorites – 18, 19 PPW (1898), and a single, 22 PPW (1899). All of these houses have large windows facing the park, and all are examples of a restrained elegance in design.
In 1900, Montrose got a huge commission the largest private house in Brooklyn, to date. Clarence W. Seamans was the head of Union Typewriter, at the beginning of the 20th century, the largest business machine company in the world.
He was also a financier, sitting on the boards of Brooklyn’s Schermerhorn Bank and People’s Trust Bank. During the 1890’s he began buying up land in the fashionable St. Mark’s District, on St. Mark’s Avenue and directly behind this plot, on Bergen St. He held a competition to choose an architect for his new home, and chose the designs of Montrose Morris over the others.
Morris designed an enormous three story building with an attic, servant’s wing, porte cochere, and Bergen St. stable, all in the style of the Italian Renaissance, according to both the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Times.
When the house was finished in 1903, it cost over a million dollars, and was praised as the finest house in the city. Each room had a different theme, an Oriental room, an English dining room, etc, and all were done in the finest rare woods, marble and stone available, with solid silver hardware and fittings.
Seamans and Morris spent two years combing the world for furniture, fabrics, artwork, and decorative items. The NY Times, on March 29, 1903, described every public room in the house, noting even that all of the closets had electricity, and were designed to have the lights go on when the doors were opened.
While the exterior design is more Neo-Renaissance than any other MM houses, he managed to include at least one loggia in the front, and we find that Morris has not abandoned the designs that first brought him fame and started his career, back at his house on Hancock St. Here’s what the Times had to say:
A large reception room is situated in the center of the building, two stories in height. Opening off the reception room are a drawing room, a music room, an Oriental room, dining room, library and billiard room.
This is the same basic design Morris used in his own home, in the corner house on Hancock and Marcy, and for all we know, elsewhere as well.
But here, money is no object, so as the Daily Eagle reports:
There will be a grand staircase 10 feet wide leading right and left up to the gallery above. Another staircase will connect to the second story with the porte cochere by which guests can ascend to lay aside wraps before descending down the main staircase to the reception hall……On the third floor there will be a ballroom and art gallery, 35 feet by 60, with a high dome ceiling extending to the roof.
Oh, there were also two bowling alleys in the basement, sheathed in enameled brick, a decided novelty, the notes the Eagle. And there was to be an enameled brick tunnel connecting the house to the stable, which opened on to Bergen St, which was for the servants use, and for tradesmen’s deliveries.
The Seaman’s Mansion on St. Mark’s Avenue was to be Morris’ most expensive and finest work, especially the interiors. The estate was surrounded by the large, expensive homes of many of Brooklyn’s wealthiest elite, including the Strauss family of Abraham and Strauss. Clarence Seamans must have enjoyed his opulent home, but only for another twelve years, he died in 1915, at the age of 61.
By the end of the 1920’s, early 1930’s, St. Mark’s Avenue’s was losing its cachet for the rich, and although the area remained an upper class enclave, one by one, the mansions and their large grounds were replaced by large apartment buildings, as a house that once housed under 20 people, including servants, was replaced by buildings housing hundreds.
Brooklyn was growing, especially because of the recent arrival of the IRT subway line. The Seaman’s mansion was torn down in 1928, and was replaced by the Excelsior Apartments, a fine building in its own right, but it would have been great to have been able to see this exceptional home as a house museum.
This grand building, costing over 1 million dollars at a time when the average home cost about $26K, filled with the finest woodwork and features, stood for a mere twenty-five years. Pictures for this article are on Flickr.
Next time: Final wrap up: the last buildings, and Montrose Morris’ legacy.
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
Interesting stuff, MM!
I love hearing about the old days from NOP; there is always some extra insight, like the recollection of the kids from the foster home–a time when kids roamed the streets to play, and learned about the world (and folks unlike themselves) on their own…
Thank you for great information, MM. I am curious, was the Morris home on Hancock next to the house on the corner of Hancock and Marcy? The vacant lot today? I have a feeling that lot held a house that was the mirror duplicate of the corner house.
Thanks
this is a very interesting article, if im not mistaken I believe Montrose Morris also was the architect of the Roanoke which was converted in to condominiums about 5 years ago, its located at 69 S.Oxford st in Fort Greene.
Great stuff, MM.
NOP, thanks for the comments. I am going to do a St. Mark’s Ave piece showing many of the old houses from this period. I may do it sooner rather than later, since people have gotten a hint from the Seaman’s mansion.
There was no documentation that MM did any of the other houses. I consulted with Professor Andrew Dolkart at Columbia, who knows more about MM than anyone else, and he did not have any other of these St. Mark’s mansions on his list. When I do that piece, please tell me if any of the houses are the ones you are referring to. From your description, I don’t think I do. The libraries have some great pictures, but not enough! Someday, maybe I can get access to the entire tax photo collection for the late ’30’s. They would definitely be there.
Sadly, when a neighborhood declines in income, the apartment buildings are the first to go down, and the last to go back up. I know a couple of people in the Excelsior. They are both seniors, and have lived there since you were a boy, and they haven’t touched their apartments in all these years, so they are like a time capsule. They both have classic 8’s, with plenty of room, nice floors, French doors, etc. And as you saw, the lobbies were once spectacular. Still, I wish the Seamans’ house had survived.
Montrose:
Thanks for this discussion of your namesake, and for the reference to St. Marks Avenue, which I remember from my boyhood in Crown Heights during the 1950s and early 1960s.
On my recent walk through the neighborhood with you, Amzi Hill and BxGrl, I was shocked to see conditions on St. Marks, which back in the day was still one of the handsomest and most prestigious in Crown Heights. True, most of the great houses has been demolished, but several remained and they created a very elegant setting for the big apartment houses where many of my friends lived.
Today, virtually all of the houses are gone (except above Brooklyn Avenue) and the apartment houses are sometimes in very bad condition. Worse, the landscape of the street has disappeared, the trees and shrubs that combined with well-polished canopies to create an appealing residential atmosphere. And to add insult to injury, perpendicular parking now stretches from Nostrand Avenue to Brooklyn Avenue, turning what had been Crown Height’s broadest and “best” street into a parking lot.
One of the ugliest buildings in Brooklyn, an elders housing complex, has replaced two of the remaining limestone beauties on the block. When I was a boy, these were in poor condition but with their setbacks, lawns and trees made a wonderful landscaped transition to Brower Park, which before the misguided location of the new Childrens Museum, graced views up and down St. Marks Avenue. One of houses, very similar to the Seamans house, was an orphanage or foster home for boys, who were always available for pick up games in the house’s drive. They were a tough little group, rowdier than the middle-class kids in the apartment buildings, but helped to create a socially-mixed network of associations and friendships for neighborhood kids. Were the two houses opposite the Seamans house also by Montrose Morris?
As Crown Heights is restored under the eye of the Landmarks Commission, I hope attention will be paid St. Marks. With New York Avenue, it formed the neighborhood’s cardinal axies: the crossing of two of the best streets in Brooklyn, if not New York.
Nostalgic on Park Avenue
Houses were once replaced by apartment buildings? That’s impossible!
@ Brenda: Agree, it’s amazing what people deem to be trash. Thank goodness for landmarking, too bad it doesn’t apply to interiors. I was walking by Jennifer Connolly’s old home this week and the front door was open. Looks like they were doing extensive work inside, curious to see (if we ever can), what changes were made. That interior looked gorgeous from the pics when it was on the market. If a breakfront ends up on the sidewalk, will call you on this new-fangled phone everyone’s talking about.