Walkabout: Essex Roberts – God’s Architect and Builder

Brooklyn’s housing stock is comprised of thousands of buildings, some designed by Brooklyn’s finest architects; some of whom trained in Paris, London and Germany, as well as in the universities and the most prestigious architects’ offices here in the United States. Even more buildings were designed by those not touched by greatness, but nonetheless, talented and competent, men who more or less anonymously went about building our great city block by block.

This second group comprised all kinds of men, and as far as we know, they were all men, who came from many lands, many backgrounds, and had many different kind of skills. Most came up in the building trades, many had fathers and grandfathers who were architects, carpenters, masons and builders, and they learned at their side, apprenticing with their elders until they could go out on their own. As they became successful, many of these men became developers as well, buying plots of land in growing Brooklyn neighborhoods, and building houses which they then sold to eager buyers.

Building can be a high calling, but many people feel that there is an even higher calling, that of the ministry, and while many in the building trade had strong religious convictions, I have learned of only one man whose building skills encompassed both heaven and earth. That would be different enough, but the fact that he was also African American puts him in a category all his own in Brooklyn’s architectural pantheon. This is the story of Essex Roberts, perhaps Brooklyn’s first named black architect and builder.

Most of Brooklyn’s 19th century architects’ lives are a mystery to us. For the most part, their work is their only legacy, as the records of their personal lives are often gone, at least from the public record. We can piece together an approximation of when they lived and worked from census and building records, city directories and if we are fortunate, newspapers and trade magazines. On very rare occasions we can get even get a photograph. We have no pictures of Essex Roberts, but we have enough information to get a sense of the man and the time in which he lived.

Historically speaking, it seems very likely that there were other black men who made their living in the building trades in the 19th century. Carpentry and other building skills were not forbidden skills for blacks, and in fact, were prized skills in those coming up out of Southern slavery. A large number of house builders had no specific architectural education, but a lifetime of work in the industry had given them experience enough to construct row houses from the plans of others, from plans published in books, and from their own knowledge of what worked and what was needed. As long as those plans were signed off by the Department of Buildings, they were good to go. There may not have been a lot of them, and some of them may have been fair skinned enough to pass for white, but there must have been more builders of color than we know about today.

Essex Roberts comes to our story first as a developer and builder. Census records tell us that he came north from Virginia, and was born in 1835. The records list him as a mulatto, the child of a black mother and white father, and he was probably born free, or freed early in life. He trained as a carpenter in Virginia, and also became an ordained Baptist minister. He lived there through 1870, when he came north to live in New Haven, Connecticut.

I would love to find out what his life was like, as he was a black man living in a slave state, through the Civil War and Reconstruction. He was an educated man who could read and write, and he was a skilled artisan who could make a living wherever he might go, but he stayed in Virginia throughout the most tumultuous time that state would ever know; a time when a man of his station might have been questioned at any time. What kept him in the South? Family, business, faith, or all three?

While in New Haven, he became affiliated with the New England Baptist Society, and he spent many years travelling around as an itinerant preacher, even after he moved to Brooklyn in the early 1880s. He appears in city directories as a carpenter/builder, and his name appears in the Real Estate Record and Builders Guide as a carpenter for the first time in 1883. In 1884, he and his wife Maria are named in a real estate transfer for a house on MacDonough Street, near Reid Avenue, in Stuyvesant Heights.

Roberts starts his Brooklyn career with three row houses, which are pictured above, which he designed and built on land he owned, in 1883. The houses at 569-573 Halsey Street, are located in eastern Stuyvesant Heights, a neighborhood that was just beginning to be developed at that time. The earliest row houses in the area were not the grand upper class townhouses of the late 1890s, early 20th century, but the more middle class single family houses built in the very late 1870s and early 1880s. These houses fit right into that timeframe.

The houses are surrounded by the buildings of Amzi Hill, Isaac Reynolds, and Marshall Morrill, all important and prolific architects who designed in this neighborhood, as well as a few other smaller, now unknown builders like Roberts. This was fair territory for any man with the right skills and some money to make it happen. Roberts designed three houses that are unusual for their upper story dormer windows, houses that really make their mark on this block. They sold soon after they were completed.

Essex Roberts is now in the development business. In the years between 1883 and 1891, his name appears every once in a while for various transactions and projects where he is listed either as the builder and owner, or carpenter for row house projects in the Stuyvesant Heights and Park Slope areas. It’s nothing huge, a house or two at a time, but a presence, nonetheless.

His success in business did not come without a price. He no doubt felt the stings of bigotry and prejudice, as well as the non-belief of those who did not see a black man in his position. In 1889, Roberts appeared at the Gates Avenue Police station seeking an order of protection against a man named John Leonard, who was a contractor on one of Roberts’ projects. He told the police that he was a builder during the week and an ordained Baptist minister on the weekends. John Leonard was working on his building site, and became belligerent and refused to carry out an order that Roberts gave. He then called Roberts a name, cursed at him and shook his fist in his face. Roberts wanted the threat on record and an order of protection.

The police basically laughed at him. They asked him how many books were in the Bible, and when Roberts couldn’t give them the exact number off the top of his head, they told him to come back next week. The police, and the Brooklyn Eagle which reported the story, found the incident amusing. I’m sure Mr. Roberts did not.

Perhaps that is why the next time we hear about Roberts, he has gone back to the ministry. One of his tasks as an itinerant preacher was to arbitrate disputes, and in 1894, he found himself in the middle of a messy one at Shiloh Baptist Church in Jamaica, Queens. For the black community, this incident was probably one of those things that they would have rather been kept out of the papers, as it was airing dirty linen in public at a time when African Americans just wanted to be accepted as regular citizens, with equal opportunities and rights. Incidents like this just continued the myth that blacks “just weren’t ready.”

Shiloh Baptist Church’s minister was named E.W. Tapely. For two years the Trustees and some of the members of the church had been trying to get rid of him, for reasons that were never stated. In November of 1894, Essex Roberts was called in to mediate because two week before, some of the Trustees tried to physically remove Rev. Tapely from the pulpit, a fight broke out, and the police and courts had to get involved, which resulted in the call to Rev. Roberts.

Rev. Tapely had changed the locks of the church, keeping the trustees and non-supporters out, and he wasn’t budging. Essex Roberts’ job was to make peace, find out who was in the wrong, and fix the situation. Building buildings was probably a lot easier. Meetings were held on neutral ground, and in the end, Roberts found the Rev. Tapely in the wrong. Well, that did not go over well, and the church was now divided in two factions, each with a minister. Roberts had been instructed to take over as pastor of the church by the Baptist governing body, so he stayed. So did Tapely.

On Sunday, November 11th, Rev. Tapely got to the pulpit first, delivering to his part of the congregation his sermon and services. He was allowed to finish. That afternoon, Rev. Roberts held a service for his part of the congregation, and was halfway through the service when Tapely and his cohorts stormed the altar. Both sides held their ground, and then someone turned off the lights. When the lights finally came back on, the Tapleyites had been routed and the battle won. Now that’s Church!

On a more serious note, the church ended up divided for good, and split, the Tapely faction establishing their own church. Reverend Roberts stayed on at least through 1896, when he and other black churches in Jamaica led a protest and boycott of the town of Jamaica’s school system, which was insisting on keeping its system of segregated schools. The black community in Jamaica refused to send their children to the colored school, citing recent rulings that would open up the educational system to all. They eventually won, and when Queens became part of greater New York City, they were bound by a much larger Board of Education which phased out segregated public schools.

According to newspaper accounts, Essex Roberts left New York City and moved upstate to the Syracuse area. His name shows up in upstate records until around 1929, which would mean he lived a good long life, well into his 90s. He was a minister throughout the rest of his life. Perhaps, like Jesus, he still picked up his tools and did a bit of carpentry now and then, God’s architect to the end of his life. GMAP

(Photo: 569-573 Halsey Street, Stuyvesant Heights. Christopher Bride for Property Shark, 2012)