In
June, the New York City Department of Transportation demolished the twin
brick columns at the corner of Foster Avenue and Westminster Road
which had stood since 1925. The
demolition was conducted in error and elicited anguished howls of
protest by Argyle Heightsians, shocked that their government could
act so quickly and efficiently to accomplish its mission.
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| Pillar-Cide! (Photo Courtesy of DitmasParkCorner.com) |
What could
be next? The bull-dozing of the land-marked Avenue H subway station
to build another drug store? Fearful that Argyle Heights and its
rich cultural history of Halloween Parades/Displays, Progressive
Dinners, and Dekoven Brunches might secede from the Union, the City
mobilized all its resources and erected replacement columns in early
September.
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| Pillar Resurrection on Westminster Road |
The
first pillars in these parts were built in 1905 by the Prospect Park
South Association, which embedded a fancy “PPS” masonry filigree
on the columns (a backwards “P” followed by an “S” and a
regular “P”), with decorative flower-filled urns atop a pedestal
bearing the street name. A nice useful touch that, back when street
signs were not affixed to poles at every corner. These columns
marked the quadrant that extended from Church Avenue to Beverly Road
and from Coney Island Avenue to the Brighton line.
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| Prospect Park South Pillar, Rugby & Church (Note ye olde hitching post to the right of the pillar.) |
Of course, we
here in hardscrabble Argyle Heights have always prided ourselves on
being the workingman's alternative to the uptown PPS mansion owners,
a stance harder to maintain as our own property values soar into
seven figures, but still, our stanchions never had initials or street
names. Those letters would have been WSM for West South Midwood, and
would have served as a daily reminder of our existential dilemma –
naming our neighborhood in relation to its geographical location at
the western end of the huge South Midwood land sale by the Lott
family in 1900. Why not name it for what it is, an up-sloping ten acres of
Victoriana, redolent with feral cats, raccoons and opossum: Argyle
Heights. Or Rugby Ridge. Or Wuthering Westminster.
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| Miracle on Argyle Road? US Postal Service Delivered This Letter From Vermont to My Home. Ergo, Argyle Heights Exists. |
Anyway,
PPS had to obtain permission from the Borough to plant its pillars
and used this benediction to later successfully battle an attempt to
re-name portions of 15th
Street and Coney Island Avenue as Prospect Park South. Why?
Because the name Prospect Park South had already been taken, Borough
dudes – look at our posts! The Prospect Park South Association
suggested Prospect Park Terrace would make a nice name for that
stretch of road from Bartel
Pritchard Square to the roundabout along the Parade Grounds. But the Borough fathers, in a decision that only
added to the confusion, settled on Prospect Park Southwest.
Of
course, when traveling north to Park Slope, this street should really
be called Prospect Park Northwest.
These naming decisions help to explain why many Brooklynites remain
perpetually confused about our geography, what with South Midwood
being North of Midwood and South Brooklyn located in the Northwest
region of our fair county.
Moving
on, in 1909 our immediate neighbors to the east of the Brighton line
in Midwood Park and Fiske Terrace decided to erect their own
ornamental pillars. Each neighborhood had its own property owners
association but realizing the bureaucratic nightmare that loomed,
appointed a joint committee to oversee the building of 11 structures,
all sporting urns with flowers. The locations for these markers
would be along Foster Avenue (at E. 17th,
E. 18th
& E. 19th
Streets),
and on Ocean Avenue at Foster, Avenue H and Glenwood Road, then
called Avenue G, a name which still survives on the existing pillars
there. Of interest, the impetus for these columns was the erection
of apartment houses and store-fronts along the north side of Foster
Avenue in 1908-1909. As The
Brooklyn Eagle
reported, citizens wanted “a line of demarkation...along Foster
Avenue as a sort of notice to everybody that 'thus far and no
farther' could apartments be built.” Contrary to some unfounded
assertions on the Internet, however, neither these nor any
other Flatbush stanchions were ever gated. They were merely
ornamental.
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| July 28, 1909: Brooklyn Eagle Covers The Pillars |
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The
community committee, however, first needed to secure permits from:
the Flatbush Board of Local Improvement (APPROVED!), the Board of
Estimate & Apportionment (APPROVED!), and finally the Municipal
Arts Commission (REJECTED!). Huh? It seems the Arts folks decided to get
all sorts of innovative and decreed they would only approve pillars
that featured electric lighting on top instead of urns. The
Commission reasoned that the pillars, once erected, became City
property, and why not make these ornate columns the vehicle for
street lighting rather than what it considered to be ugly city light
poles.
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| Pillar at Foster & East 17th Street |
The committee, exhausted by a year of letters, forms and
meetings, and now seeing light at the end of the tunnel, at that
point probably would have agreed to anything short of placing dancing
bears in cages on top of the stanchions. And so what was originally
estimated to be a $1,200 project that ballooned to $1,700 now
required property owners to pony up $2,000. Whereupon, the pillars
were erected, with space for electrical connections therein. All that
remained was for the Superintendent of Light & Power to install
the lights and...REJECTED! The Superintendent instructed the Deputy
Commissioner of Water Supply, Gas & Electricity to pull the plug
because the “three tungsten lamps per post” required would be far
more expensive to supply than the existing arc street lighting.
Anguished cries erupted from frustrated Fiskians while only crickets
could be heard emanating from the Municipal Arts innovators. The
Eagle
reported on the rejection: “The residents of Midwood Park and Fiske
Terrace are so shocked...that they don't know what to do next.”
Rather than rise up and revolt, they removed the electrical
connections, and the urns they had originally proposed were
substituted for lamps. Remarkably, nine of these stanchions are
still standing tall – a single pillar on the southwest corner of
Foster & Ocean Avenues, which once marked the boundary of a polo field,
and one of the two pillars at Avenue H are gone. And only one post
is missing an urn – on the northwest corner of Glenwood & Ocean.
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| Stanchion at "Avenue G" & Ocean Ave |
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| Sister stanchion across street is now urn-less |
These
stanchions, once they appeared throughout Flatbush, seemed to become
magnets for runaway motor vehicles. In March of 1920, the Midwood
Park Property Owners Association had to increase its membership dues
in order to repair a decorative column on Foster Avenue that had been
damaged as the result of a collision between a mail truck and a
touring car. In January 1931, one of the Prospect Park South pillars
at Westminster Road and Church Avenue was completely toppled when
another mail truck collided with a sedan.
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| 1931 Brooklyn Eagle Story: Another One Bites The Dust |
And many old time Argyle
Heightsians will recall the toppling of a stanchion at Rugby Road and
Foster Avenue as the result of another vehicular accident. When that
column was repaired, a time capsule was inserted into the base of the
stanchion by the West Midwood Community Association. 25 years later,
its contents would probably now seem very quaint since that was a
much simpler time when houses didn't suddenly burn down at four in
the morning. Given that yet another pillar, at Argyle and Foster,
was damaged by government contractors in late October, it seems
likely we'll be able to examine that Rugby Road time capsule real
soon.
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| Pillar At Rugby And Church Is Heading South |
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| 1909 Postcard Calling Us "Fiske Terrace" Because "West South Midwood" Was Bor-ing. This Northwest Corner of Westminster Road & Avenue H Did Not Become Pillarized Until 1925. |
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| Northeast Corner of Westminster Road & Avenue H in 2015: How Placement of Street Signs Ignore History |
BONUS PILLAR COVERAGE!!!!
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| Pillars That Once Stood on Tennis Court | | | | | | |
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| The Knickerbocker Field Club At The End of Tennis Court Circa 1905 |
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| The Entrance Today to The Knickerbocker Field Club at the End of Tennis Court |
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| At The End of the Parking Lot: New Field House On Left (Original Burned Down in 1992) |
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| The Entrance To "The Knick" Is At Top Center (Through Parking Lot); The Tennis Courts Adjoin Brighton Tracks South of Church Avenue Stop |
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| Pillars on the Eastern Side of Avenue K at Ocean Avenue, Marking the Border of East Midwood |
Three stanchions of East Midwood have survived a century of change but alas, not so all their decorative urns. In 1929 the Brooklyn Eagle reported that "The East Midwood Civic Association..is requesting the Controller's Office and the Boro President to collaborate in having the the brick ornamental pillar at Ocean Avenue and Avenue K repaired." Le plus ce change...
COMING SOON: Yet More
Historic Tidbits Including "Oak Crest", Food Co-Ops, and a Movie Theater
on Rugby Road? Noooooooo!
