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Brooklyn, one building at a time.

This is one of the oldest houses in Brooklyn Heights. Its place next door to the historic Plymouth Church also assured that a lot of history passed through these doors over the years.

Name: Wood-frame house
Address: 69 Orange Street
Cross Streets: Hicks and Henry streets
Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights
Year Built: 1828
Architectural Style: Federal, with later Victorian add-ons and alterations
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: Yes, part of Brooklyn Heights Historic District (1965)

Almost Two Centuries of Architectural Changes

This Federal-style clapboard house has seen a lot of physical changes in its 187-year history. Sometime in the post–Civil War years, someone added another story to the house using a mansard roof.

There were also changes to the windows — which were lengthened — as well as the door and the railings. According to Mrs. Iago Gladston, who lived in the house in 1961, there was also a porch she had removed 24 years before when she and her husband moved in.

That porch would also have been a Victorian-era addition, but Mrs. Gladston didn’t like the way it jutted over the front steps. She was interviewed for a Long Island Historical Society article in 1961.

There was also a house next door, to the left. It was a similar clapboard house that can be seen in old photographs of Plymouth Church.

69 Orange St. 1970s, MCNY 1

1970s photo via Museum of the City of New York

Urban Legend of the Origin of the Fruit Streets

The “fruit blocks” — Pineapple, Orange and Cranberry Streets — were laid out in the 1820s by the Hicks brothers, prominent landowners in the Heights. They named the fruit streets, according to most historians, as well as the “tree streets,” Poplar and Willow.

However, popular local legend has it that Lady Middagh, whose family was also quite important, thought that naming streets after prominent residents was pretentious, so she changed the names to fruits.

She was said to have changed the signs in the middle of the night and eventually the names stuck. So did the “pretentious” name of Middagh Street, after her own family. It’s a great story, but probably not true.

At any rate, houses were being built in this area by the late 1820s. Although a street grid had been laid out, there were still many large estates in the Heights belonging to Lady Middagh’s prominent families, many of which overlooked the harbor. Most of the Heights remained fields and orchards.

The numbering system for the streets in the Heights changed in the 1870s, so when this house was built it was 81 Orange Street. It appears in the 1828 City Directory. Early residents were the widow of lawyer Garrett Nostrand and a merchant named Phineas Tuttle.

Plymouth Church, Harper's Weekly, Wiki, 1866

Plymouth Church, 1866. Image from Harper’s Weekly via Wikimedia Commons

The Plymouth Connection

The house’s famous neighbor, Plymouth Church, was built in 1849. Its first preacher, the great orator and abolitionist giant the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, soon made this a busy thoroughfare, as thousands of people flocked to the church to hear him preach.

One of the Rev. Beecher’s strongest supporters was Henry L. Pratt. He was a transplanted New Englander, like most of the original members of Plymouth Church, and was president of the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts. They made saws, drills and other tools, holding several important patents in tool design.

69 Orange St. Millers Falls Co. MA, Wiki Commons 1

Postcard of Millers Falls Company, Massachusetts via Wikipedia Commons

Pratt and his wife Frances moved to Brooklyn so he could head his company’s Manhattan sales office. Both religious people, they joined Plymouth church. Henry Pratt became a highly ranked member of the trustee board of the church and taught Sunday school, while his wife was very active in women’s charitable causes.

The Pratts lived around the corner at 77 Hicks Street when they first came to Brooklyn, but moved to 69 Orange Street in the 1880s.

Scandal at Plymouth Church

Henry’s position at Plymouth became newsworthy when he was appointed chairman of the trustee committee, investigating allegations of an affair between Beecher and the wife of one of his congregants, Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton.

No one wanted to believe the great Beecher was capable of such an offense. The story is told in a series of Walkabout pieces, here, here and here. Henry Pratt ended up voting out several prominent members of his church, all in defense of the Rev. Beecher.

Mr. and Mrs. Pratt did not have any children. He died in 1900 at the age of 74, mourned as a great inventor and businessman. He had been president of the board of deacons at Plymouth for 32 years.

Frances Pratt continued to carry on with her own charitable work through Plymouth Church after her husband’s death. She died five years later, in 1905. Her family name was Staughton, and relatives took over the house after her death. Henry and Frances Pratt are both interred in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Millers Falls Tool Company still makes quality hand tools. It is now located in New Jersey.

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Wonderful house; fascinating history. I suspect that the extraordinary cornice with its boldly detailed brackets was added with the mansard and that, most importantly, the mansard probably replaced a peak or gambrel roof with dormers, thus giving the upper floor more headroom.

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