186 Clinton Avenue: The Extraordinary Queen Anne Home of William H. Beard and Family

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By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris)

By the end of the 19th century, a Clinton Avenue address was one of Brooklyn’s most sought-after status symbols. The northern end of the street, between Myrtle and DeKalb avenues, was home to not just rich people, but some of the wealthiest in the city. Charles Pratt, Brooklyn’s wealthiest man, and his sons alone had five large mansions here.

When he became a partner in John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Pratt managed to convince many of his oil executive friends to build on the block as well. Their large mansions dwarfed the row house blocks only steps away across the avenue. Today, those mansions are gone, torn down for military housing during World War II.

Different people spend their money on their homes in their own ways. Some want large, extremely ostentatious mansions to prove they’ve arrived, while others live much more humbly, choosing to spend their money away from public gaze, or in other pursuits.

So when the son of the third-richest man in Brooklyn — the second richest being Abiel Low — wanted a new home, he went to the go-to architect of his day, a man who was familiar with the needs of Brooklyn’s super-rich: Montrose W. Morris. The client was William H. Beard, son of visionary developer William Beard Senior, who built Red Hook’s Erie Basin.

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The Architect: Montrose W. Morris

At the time, Morris was feeling the joy that comes from finally achieving great success in one’s chosen profession. By 1891, when this house was being planned, he had been in business for himself for eight years, during which time he was rising to the top of Brooklyn’s new architectural hierarchy. In 21st century terms, he was a “starchitect” of the first order and, in wealthy circles, a household name.

Whereas many quite successful working architects in Brooklyn were content to build row houses, Morris wanted to build mansions. He opened his practice by building himself a show house, designed with all of the bells and whistles that his clients could also have.

He held a lavish open house to show it all off, starting a partnership with developer Louis Seitz which would result in their first collaboration, the magnificent Alhambra Apartments in Bed Stuy. More would soon follow, both high-quality row houses and luxury apartment buildings.

With these gorgeous examples to go on, Morris was receiving commissions to design large single family houses. The first, and one of his best, was just up the street. It was for coffee baron John Arbuckle, at 315 Clinton Avenue. It was completed in 1888.

William H. Beard surely traveled in the same circles, and probably saw this house, as well as the large palazzo Morris designed for John C. Kelly at 247 Hancock Street in Bedford, and other houses Morris designed in Brooklyn Heights, Bedford and Park Slope.

When William Beard approached Montrose Morris at his offices on Exchange Place in Lower Manhattan, he knew that Morris could build him exactly what he wanted – fine, but not showy twin houses for a growing family.

We know Montrose Morris. But who was William H. Beard? In order to understand him, you need to know who his father was.

We also have to clear up a common misconception about the William H. Beard connected to this house.

There were two prominent Brooklyn-based men named William H. Beard active at the time of our story. One was a very popular and prolific artist, a painter, named William Holbrook Beard. He lived for a while in Brooklyn, but was more associated with the famous Studio Building located on 10th Street in Greenwich Village. He was popular in his day as a painter of animals, specifically dancing and cavorting bears.

He cut quite the artistic figure, with wild hair and bohemian dress, and hung out with some of the most important artists of the day, including William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer and Frederick Church.

But…he never lived here. There is no record of his involvement on Clinton Avenue, and he was more a contemporary of the senior William Beard than the son, William H. Beard. He died in 1900, in Manhattan. There is more than ample documentation in the newspapers and census records to support that our William H. Beard was the eldest son of builder William Beard.

William Beard and Red Hook: A Short History

William Beard Senior was born in Ireland in 1806. When he was 19, he booked passage to America, and landed in Massachusetts. That same year, in 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton stood at the mouth of New York Harbor and poured a barrel of Lake Erie water into the bay. This marked the completion of the Erie Canal. The canal changed American history, enabling goods and people to travel to and from New York City to the Great Lakes.

Wheat from the Midwest, furs from Canada, foodstuffs from upstate New York, timber from New England – all could now be floated down to the great ports of Manhattan and Brooklyn. This opened up America, and although young William Beard may not have been aware of it at the time, the canal would change his life.

Beard was not there yet. Like many other able-bodied young immigrants, he ended up in the construction business. He moved to New York City and started building stone walls and foundations. He graduated to roads, and graded many of the early streets of midtown Manhattan. That brought him to the attention of the railroad people, who hired him to work on the New Jersey Railroad.

He moved to Brooklyn, and began building that city’s roads. He was responsible for the initial paving of much of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene. He was in charge of building the recently rediscovered Atlantic tunnel that runs under the avenue. Twenty years later, Beard was a very wealthy man.

In 1843, he parlayed that success into a large purchase of land on the Red Hook waterfront. By the end of the 1850s, he and his partners had amassed over a million square feet of waterfront.

The Civil War was looming over the country, and the Erie Canal, now 25 years old, was one of the busiest waterways in the country. William Beard and his partners created the Erie Basin, which was finished in 1864. The manmade landfill juts into Gowanus Bay and protects 135 acres of docking space. It soon became one of the most important ports for grain in the world.

Beard and his partner Jeremiah Robinson then built vast storehouses along the basin and on the docks. They stored cotton, jute, tobacco, leather and coffee, and other products. The large warehouses remain today as the Red Hook Stores, which now include the popular Fairway Supermarket.

William H. Beard: A Chip Off the Old Block

William Beard Senior was married several times, and had seven children. The family lived at 140 Amity Street in Cobble Hill. William H., born in 1839, was his eldest son.

When he was 18, William joined his father in his construction business. They were partners in building the Erie Basin when the Civil War broke out, and William enlisted.

Because of a military school background, he became an officer in the Union Army and was in charge of getting supplies to the front. After the war, he joined his father in building the first Beard Stores, but decided to go out on his own in 1869.

Often referred to in the press as Colonel William H. Beard, he founded a dredging company, Beard & Kimpland Dredging, later called the W. H. Beard Dredging Company. He was awarded the job of dredging the Potomac River under the Grant administration. President Grant was a mentor of Beard, and also a good friend. While they still lived in South Brooklyn, Beard and his wife hosted a dinner for his former general and commander In chief from their home on appropriately named President Street.

W. H. had been an early supporter of the new Republican Party. He remained involved in local politics for the rest of his life. He was a staunch supporter of national and state leaders, and ran for state office, but lost. He was a longtime leader of the 10th Ward. He helped choose delegates for the state and national conventions, and was a kingmaker behind the scenes. He was well liked, and called “Billy” by his workers, political cronies and friends.

After his death, Beard would be remembered in Brooklyn more for his political career than his many other achievements. He should be remembered for the dredging projects that created a more modern Brooklyn Navy Yard, as well as Wallabout Bay channels, enabling much larger ships to navigate the waters.

In 1863 he married Lavinia Summerfield. The couple had two surviving sons and a daughter. An 11-year-old son, Frederick, died of diphtheria in 1881, while the family lived at 287 President Street. Lavinia’s sister was married to architect Frank W. Freeman, interestingly enough.

The elder Beard died at the ripe old age of 85 in 1886. He left his family an estate of more than $10 million, making W. H. automatically one of Brooklyn’s richest men, even without his own personal fortune. By this time, the family had moved from President Street, and had purchased a house on “The Hill,” as Clinton Hill and Fort Greene were known.

That property was 184 Clinton Avenue, one of the older wood-framed villas that had once dotted the avenue before the much more substantial stone and brick mansions started to go up in the 1880s.

Clinton Hill had long been a preferred location for suburban villas for the wealthy merchants whose fortunes were made on the docks of the Wallabout piers and markets below. The family lived there only briefly in 1887 before making plans to build a new home on the site. They moved to 299 Clermont Avenue in the interim.

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Building a Family Legacy: The Double Houses at 184-186 Clinton Avenue

Beard commissioned Montrose Morris to design a grand double house. 184 Clinton would belong to William and Lavinia, and the house next door at 186 would go to the eldest son, also named William.

Morris was an old hand at building houses like this. He had several of them in the works, including the massive double mansion being built for the Hulbert family on Prospect Park West, and another double house going up on St. Marks Avenue in the equally posh St. Marks District, now Crown Heights North.

855-857 St. Marks Avenue is actually similar to 184-186 Clinton Avenue. Morris was never one to waste good ideas. Both houses are designed so as to give the impression of a much larger single home, also a Morris trademark. He gives both designs his trademark corner tower, and both have identical top floor window treatments, and the same bell roof.

But knowing no two clients — especially clients who probably ran in many of the same social circles — would want identical homes, Morris mixed up the elements in both pairs of houses. Many are quite similar, but they don’t appear in the same arrangement. The corner tower is on the right on St. Marks, while it’s on the left on Clinton.

The peaked-roof section of the house appears on the right side on Clinton, and in the middle on St. Marks. The covered loggia is realized as a porch for the Beard houses, and an upper-story loggia on St. Marks.

The final difference is in materials — all-white limestone for St. Marks, which matches the architect’s materials for the Hulbert house in Park Slope, but a combination of limestone and soft red brick for the St. Marks houses.

But William H. Beard Never Got to Live in His New Home

As the fine new homes were being built for the Beards, William — who had long suffered from gastrointestinal ailments — became seriously ill.

After two years of slow deterioration, he took to his bed in the fall of 1892. Three months later, in January of 1893, he lay close to death. The newspapers ran several stories, all of which stood as deathwatches for Beard. The day before he died, the Brooklyn Eagle essentially wrote his obituary, noting that it was only a matter of days or hours before his passing.

Beard died at 299 Clermont Avenue on January 31, 1893. Everyone had hoped he’d see long life, like his father. He died at 54. He never got a chance to live in his new home on Clinton Avenue.

He left everything to his wife Lavinia, who was the executrix of the estate. The children were each given $200,000, in addition to the larger fortune left to them by their grandfather. The Beards are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.

Lavinia and her younger son and daughter Edith moved into 186 Clinton soon afterward. Her eldest son William took possession of the sister house next door, reversing their original plans. On April 16, 1896, Edith Beard married Dr. Samuel Hopkins at her home. It was one of the Hill’s most celebrated and anticipated weddings.

Brooklyn Life, the Eagle’s separate society magazine, reported on some of the details of the wedding. Both houses were thrown open for the occasion. The ceremony took place in 186, in the main parlor, which was decorated with flowers. All of the fireplace mantels in both houses were covered in various kinds of flowers, and the draperies on the walls were covered with flowers and garlands of ivy.

The wedding supper was held next door in William’s house. Brooklyn Life reported that “the piazzas of the two houses were connected, and sufficiently were enclosed to obstruct the view from the street, the result being a refreshingly airy and summer-like resort.” The wedding was catered by the famous Delmonico’s Restaurant.

In 1905, Henry Beard, the younger son, died at the age of 30. He and his wife had a home at 180 Clinton Avenue. Harry, as he was known, was an invalid. The papers noted he was never a member of the social set, due to his illness. He was, however, the secretary of the W. H. Beard Dredging Company. He married a local girl named Emma Christine Jorgenson, who lived nearby on Willoughby Street.

Lavinia lived in the home for several years afterward. The address was often mentioned in the paper when she or her daughter entertained, which they did quite often, usually for charity events. Edith and her doctor took over the house, and Lavinia moved next door with her son.

By 1913, Lavinia had moved to Lakewood, N.J., and divided her time between there and the family’s longtime summer home in Glen Cove on Long Island. She died in Lakewood on May 15, 1913, at the age of 74.

Her son William put the Clinton Avenue house on the market in 1919, but was still entertaining there a few months later. William’s family moved to Manhattan in 1920, and the house went to a new, unrelated owner.

Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Porter Hopkins and Family: The Third Generation

Dr. and Mrs. Edith Beard Hopkins and their children settled in at 186 Clinton. Their daughter Hazel had her debutante season in 1916, which was celebrated by a dinner and reception here at the house, followed by an evening at the Casino Club.

Hazel married Emory Leyden Ford, of the Detroit Fords, here at the house in May of 1919. The wedding was very private, with only the two families in attendance. The bride and groom went to live in Grosse Pointe Shore, Mich.

Hazel’s sister Beatrice was the first Brooklyn debutante to be announced that fall. In 1922, she married Daniel Murray Edwards, Jr. Their wedding was also here at the house. The bridal party appeared in a full-page spread in Brooklyn Life. Unfortunately, the photograph is too dark to reproduce.

The last mention of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Porter Hopkins in the newspapers, in relation to the house, is in the summer of 1927. They had another child, a son named Samuel. He became an aviator, but died in a plane crash in California in 1931. Dr. Hopkins died in 1927. Edith Beard Hopkins died in 1936.

The double house of the Beard family had by this time completely left family ownership. All in all, the Beard family lived at 186 Clinton Avenue for 35 years.

The home’s grand design and storied past continues to provide a glimpse into the Brooklyn of yesteryear.

[Listing: 186 Clinton Avenue | Broker: Douglas Elliman (Kathleen Perkins)] GMAP

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