Walkabout: The Real Estate Game
Most people are aware that most of the row house blocks we now treasure throughout Brownstone Brooklyn were built as speculative housing. Then, as now, only the very wealthy were able to commission a home to be built specifically and specially for them. Most people let one of the hundreds of builders working in the…
Most people are aware that most of the row house blocks we now treasure throughout Brownstone Brooklyn were built as speculative housing. Then, as now, only the very wealthy were able to commission a home to be built specifically and specially for them.
Most people let one of the hundreds of builders working in the borough build the homes, and then they bought. The building boom of the late 19th and early 20th century gave us row upon row of houses in all of the rapidly growing neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
This is also true of homes in the more suburban neighborhoods, as well, the only difference being the style of home. Because of all the competition, builders and developers competed to produce the best house for the dollar, and because of that, over 100 years later, we now enjoy a pretty high degree of excellence, in terms of overall design, materials used, and original features. The more upscale the development, the better the interior and exterior craftsmanship, and the more innovations and amenities.
A list of names shows that the Irish dominated the building in our borough at the turn of the 20th century. Some men developed a relatively few parcels of land, some created neighborhoods. William Reynolds, featured last week, was one of the largest.
There were also some women whose names are credited as developers. This prompts further investigation, as some were fronting for husbands, while some were powerful in their own right.
Some developers built homes in many different neighborhoods, without preference, while others seemed to gravitate to one specific neighborhood, usually the one they called home. Some of these men were also architects, and they designed and built their own projects, while others hired architects to design.
Often, that architect’s name is lost to history, but sometimes an architect with a proven name or track record was touted in the advertising or announcement accompanying the project. I’ve featured many of them here, men like Axel Hedman, Parfitt Brothers, George Chappell, Magnus Dahlander and many, many others who made a good living designing for the builders of Brooklyn.
There were also architects who developed the properties they themselves designed. Montrose Morris did this repeatedly, as did Amzi and Henry Hill. The Hills also designed for other builders, as well.
What I find fascinating is to look at the advertising in issues of the Brooklyn Eagle, and see the housing when it was brand new, and up for sale. The building boom in Park Slope, Bedford, St. Marks, Prospect Heights, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens, produced a wealth of real estate ads, all touting the virtues of the new houses.
As development grew in the suburban neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Flatbush, and Bensonhurst, the ads for these properties followed suit, as well. Unlike the real estate ads of today, bursting with color pictures, the ads of yesterday had to rely more on description. But the features being described haven’t changed much in their desirability: bathrooms, kitchens, woodwork, central heating, built-in, and floors. Today’s photo collection is a sampling of ads from the Eagle
A partial list of the bigger developers, by neighborhood.
Bedford (Bedford Stuyvesant and Stuyvesant Heights) William H. Burhans, John Fraser, William H. Reynolds, Charles W. Betts, Walter Clayton, Eli Bishop, John F. Ryan, Charles Tritschler
Bedford/St. Mark’s District (Crown Heights North) William H. Burhans, John Fraser, John J. Magilligan, John A. Bliss, DH Fowler, Charles G. Reynolds, William R. Pierce
Prospect Heights: William Flanagan, Jeremiah Gilligan, William H. Reynolds, Thomas Butler,
Park Slope John J. Magilligan, William Flanagan, Jeremiah Gilligan, John Gordon, Thomas Fagan, William Gubbins, J. Doherty, John Monas.
Prospect Lefferts Gardens William A. A. Brown, Fenimore Building Co, Frederick P. Norris, Eli H. Bishop.
[Images via the Brooklyn Eagle]
I hope mopar will soon host a field trip for this group so we can see this interesting type of house first hand.
It sounds like I’ve unwittingly adapted the layout in the way I’ve configured our (originally one family) house, with our bedroom in the extension on the parlor floor, a tiny WC in the rear parlor closet, and only an ornate steel grill in the hall and locked parlor doors separating us from the tenant upstairs.
Lots of houses in Victorian Flatbush have electrical wires running through the old gas lines.
That’s true. We had two working lines plus others that had been severed. The electricians cut off the pipes hanging down from the medallions and inadvertently destroyed the gas line to the stove on the 3rd floor.
The other gas line still works, even though we disconnected the branch that went to the outside yard lamp.
A piece of a gas wall sconce was still in a wall off the kitchen, and I planned to keep it, but it disappeared after the electrical upgrade.
mopar,
I don’t think you could leave a few gas lines working without keeping ALL of them–they’re interconnected.
I can see the spot in my cellar where the old gas lines were cut off near the meter. I could easily re-connect it and, I’m sure, blow up my house and a good part of the block. If I ever get around to restoring any of my gas fireplaces I’ll have to have new gas lines run.
Thanks!
Electricity was the Viking Stove of 1897, which is when all of these ads came out. In fact, they are all from a real estate special section of the Eagle published on October 12,1897.The print ads with no etchings or photos are just as interesting. Since most of these builders, and their agents, wanted to attract buyers, the newest innovations, such as electricity were highly touted.
You can also find a lot of ads for the two family houses, and for the growing number of apartment buildings, many of which were flats buildings, with only 8 units. Even the middle class buildings had telephones and electricity.
http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Skins/BEagle/Client.asp?Skin=BEagle&AW=1273776089671&AppName=2&GZ=T
select date search and enter October 12, 1897, and download the entire paper to view.
Bob, I thought our place was originally *only* gas, but now I wonder. Probably was though — I bet electricity was for rich people.
The electricians said our panel was the earliest ever built. When could that be? We have some ridiculously primitive light fixtures, just bulbs on chains, but they could date from the 1920s.
The gas lines were still working before we did the electrical upgrade. Now I kinda wish we’d kept a few.
I have a friend in Indianapolis whose neighbor’s house is entirely and only lit by gas. That’s what they use. I told her we’d get the first plane out and go see it.
mopar,
Earlier houses in areas like PLG, in the wilds of Flatbush, were built without electricity. When I first moved to the neighborhood in 1974 an elderly lady, whose parents had bought their house new c. 1900 remembered that the houses were electrified when she was a little girl (c. 1905).
I found some disconnected early wiring in my house. It was scary! I’d have expected uninsulated knob and tube wiring, but I found something that looked like cloth-insulated bell wire.
Montrose, are all these advertisements from the 1890s? I’m very interested to see some specify nickel finish plumbing.
I’ve been trying to figure out what ours was originally. At first, I thought the fixtures were brass, and ordered brass lights for the bathroom. Then I realized that the old faucets were nickel plated but the finish had worn off. So I exchanged the lights for nickel ones and ordered nickel faucets. Then I got an old plumbing catalog from the 1920s and they had the same faucets, so then I thought maybe our faucets were replacements from the deco age, and who knows what the original might have been.
Also surprised both gas and electric light were offered. I thought this was done only in rural areas where electric wasn’t reliable. Maybe the builders wanted to appeal to every taste. I thought electricity was rare at this time. I seldom see an electric light that looks older than the teens.
Oh, and the burglar alarms!