The View From Argyle Heights

Why Do Some Of Our Stanchions Have Holes?

The Case of the Mysterious Holes

In 1905, with the blessing of the NYC Board of Aldermen, 24 ornamental brick pillars were erected to mark the boundaries of the new Prospect Park South development. Each had their street name engraved at the top, just below stone flower pots, with a monogrammed “PPS” on every side.

1905: PPS Pillars Approved

2016: PPS Pillar on Argyle Road

Over the next 20 years, Midwood Park, Fiske Terrace and West South Midwood would follow suit, although none featured monograms and our forefathers opted for the trim line without engraved street names.

2018: Ocean & Glenwood

2018: Foster Ave & E 17th St

Ours once featured flower pots (per 1983 photos) but after rampant crazy drivers took out stanchion after stanchion, the replacements were topped with white stone globes. Still, we out-pillar Ditmas Park and Beverly Square which have no pillars at all. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

1983: SE Corner Westminster Rd & Foster Ave

1983: NW Corner Argyle Rd & Ave H

1983: SW Corner, Foster Ave & Rugby Rd

But I am frequently asked, being the repository of exceedingly useless local minutia, why those pillars that have miraculously survived from the 1920s sport a hollowed-out platform in the center.

2019: Foster & Argyle

Photos, taken decades apart, of two stanchions on Avenue H – one at the northwest corner of Westminster Road and the other at the northwest corner of Rugby Road – provide the answer I believe. A close inspection of 1940 NYC tax photos found electric lamps sitting atop each!

1940 NW Corner Westminster & Ave H
Looking North Up Westminster

1940 NW Corner Westminster & Ave H
Looking South Past Ave H to E 12th St

1940: NW Corner Rugby & Ave H
Electric Light Atop (Far Right)

2018: NW Corner Rugby & Ave H
Note Hole, Bottom Right

It seems the innards of our pillars had cables that powered globe lights at the top. But as modern photos attest (from 1963 & 2018), the electric globes were now gone, and hollow voids appears where the “mechanicals” providing the juice for the globe presumably once sat, leaving an empty hole in our stanchions’ hearts to accumulate trash lo, these many years.

1909: July 28. Pillars
Coming to Midwood Park

When the pillars in Midwood Park & Fiske Terrace were erected in 1910 the City originally agreed to supply the electricity for lighting tungsten lamps that would sit atop their stanchions and provide light to the streets in lieu of the City’s street lamps which the Municipal Arts Commission had deemed ugly.

But upon further review, City engineers rejected the proposed artsy tungsten lamps as much weaker than the City’s arc lighting. A pillar at the northwest corner of Glenwood & Ocean Avenue has a hole much like ours and some others appear to have had a hole bricked over.

2018: Glenwood & Ocean.
Note Hole in Middle

Hmmm. Perhaps our stanchions, erected in 1925, featured lighting that passed muster but had to be disabled or removed as a result of World War Two blackouts?

Finally, after one of our stanchions was wrecked by an accident-inducing speedster in 1992, the WMCA arranged for a new pillar to be installed. A former resident, Barry Katz, contributed an industrial strength steel box and urged that it be used as a time capsule. Accordingly President Joe Mislowack filled it up with a mint set of coins contributed by Lennie Grau, along with the address list of dues-paying West Midwoodians (Hint! Hint!), and a video of the neighborhood. The box remains buried under the stanchion at the southwest corner of Rugby Road & Foster Avenue. Notes Joe, “I hope when a future generation finds it, they know how to play a VHS tape.”

1931: PPS Pillar at
Westminster Rd & Church Ave
Toppled by Sedan & Mail Truck. Oops.

2018: Foster & Argyle

2019: The Distinctive
West Midwood Hole

The Stories Your House Could Tell: 1315 Glenwood Road

A for Albemarle, G for Glenwood

In 1901 at the request of the Germania realty company, the Board of Aldermen voted to rename “Avenue G” Glenwood Road. And just as another realtor, Dean Alvord, had managed to transform “Avenue A” into Albemarle Road two years earlier, Glenwood Road would soon become the centerpiece of a new development then being carved out of the Lott Woods, from Flatbush Avenue to Coney Island Avenue.

1901: December 15. Brooklyn Eagle.
Anglophilia Grips Developers

After Germania had cut down the trees and laid out the streets, it created a central garden mall on Glenwood, patterned after Alvord’s Albemarle Road, forming a southern bookend to Victorian Flatbush. Then it installed gas/electric/sewer lines to each empty lot, created sidewalks and paved the roads. By the Fall of 1905, quite a few new houses had already been erected on Glenwood Road, many by master builder John Corbin and his architect, Benjamin Dreisler. In fact, Dreisler himself had just moved into one of their new creations at the northeastern end of this garden strip, bordering the surface-level trolley railway – now occupied by the Finkel family.

1906: Grade Crossing Elimination at Newkirk Avenue.
Note "South Midwood Station" Sign, Upper Right.

On October 5,1905 Corbin and Dreisler submitted to the Buildings Department plans for one of their more distinctive houses at what would become 1315 Glenwood Road: “A two story and attic frame dwelling, 26 x 36.4, one family, shingle roof, steam heat, cost $6,500.” The large home would contain two staircases, one for servants, but as we shall see, nary a maid would ever live here.

As Spring approached, the house was sold, on March 10, 1906, to Lena Schilling, a 63 year old widow born in Germany. Lena's recently deceased husband, Joseph, led an interesting life. A reform Democrat in a midtown Republican district, he was narrowly elected a NYC Alderman in 1894 as a fusion candidate for the Republican Party, which aimed to overthrow the corrupt Tammany Hall control of the City.

1896: May 22. New York World.

But Schilling essentially sold his vote, allowing Tammany to gerrymander Manhattan’s Assembly districts. As a reward, in 1898 he was appointed the Superintendent of City Hospital on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island), which cared for the indigent and inmates in the nearby City Penitentiary. But some lives are hard to pigeon hole: Schilling weeded out corruption, changing the Hospital from a slaughterhouse to a respected institution.

1901: March 19. New York World.
Schilling WasAlways Good Copy.

1900 Census: Schilling Family On Blackwells Island.
Served as Warden, City Hospital

On February 23, 1904, Schilling took the ferry from the Island to vote in a special congressional election. He was fond of beer as many a news story featuring the “fat and ruddy” politician in beer-soaked environs will attest. Naturally, he dropped by a German saloon on 1st Avenue and while hoisting a stein, keeled over with a massive heart attack. He was only 52. Tammany bosses packed his funeral and the cortege to Lutheran Cemetery in Brooklyn was a long one.

With her husband gone, Lena needed to move her large family from their quarters on the Island, and the search eventually led her to what had become the “South Midwood” stop on the Brighton line in the new suburb of West South Midwood. A son (Louis, born 1884) and daughter (Susan, born 1887) provided income as a pipe mechanic and office stenographer respectively, allowing the mortgaged Schillings to hang on until the First World War, when hard times forced them to relocate to an apartment above a new row of storefront buildings on Avenue H at East 16th Street.

1910 Census: 1315 Avenue G Listed Lines 7 to 10

1920 Census: Schillings Have Moved to 1614 Avenue H

The large Hubert Gardiner family, who had been renting a house in Bedford Stuyvesant, now took possession of 1315 Glenwood Road. Soon after they moved in, a son, Leslie, was drafted (a month before the Armistice), leaving his six siblings behind. According to the 1920 Census, Hubert Gardiner was a 62 year old Irish-immigrant bookbinder employing his eldest son in a very successful shop at 80 Lafayette Street in Manhattan. The Gardiners were well-to-do and owned a summer home in Huletts Landing, Lake George. Hubert died there suddenly in July 1929 after suffering a heart attack while playing golf. He’s buried in the family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery.

1920 Census: 1315 Avenue G - The Gardiner Family

His widowed spouse Ellen held onto the house, with sons Hubert (taking over the binding business) & Edwin (a Dentist) becoming the breadwinners. In 1939, Dr. Edwin Gardiner (1903-1976) married Mary Lynch of East 31st St and even at this late date, the press notice provided the Dentist’s address as “1315 Avenue G.”

1930 Census. 1315 Glenwood Road.
Still Avenue G (Easier To Write).

1939: July 9. Brooklyn Eagle
The Dentist Takes a Bride.

1940 Census: Gardiners Still Residing at 1315 Ave G

In June 1945, with the war in Europe at an end, house prices started to rise. Then President Truman spurred a buying stampede by announcing support for raising federal mortgage down-payment requirements from 20% to 35%. As a result the Gardiners were able to quickly sell their residence of 28 years to Rose Dreiling for $12,000.

1940. City Tax Photo

Official records for 1315 Glenwood Road listed only Rose Dreiling, a 59 year old German immigrant, as the new owner. Alas, her spouse Louis had been financially-challenged since filing for bankruptcy protection in 1939 with debts of $2,930 (52 grand today).

1930 Incorporation of Louis Dreilling's Securities Business

1939: June 26. Bankruptcy Filing for
Louis Dreilling.

Louis Dreiling had emigrated to New York from Hungary as a 21 year old in 1902, speaking only Magyar. He became a theater manager and enjoyed great success in the Roaring 20s speculating in the stock market, buying a home in Williamsburg valued at $19,000.

He then opened a securities-trading business at the dawn of the Depression. Oops. Work as a plumber followed, then unemployment, with the family relocating to a rented house in Midwood, where they were supported by a daughter’s teaching salary and Eastern European lodgers.

1946: June 30. NY Times Wedding Notice

Louis died four years after the move to Glenwood Road, but he lived long enough to see his son David begin an extraordinary medical career. Dr. David Dreiling served his entire career at Mt. Sinai Hospital and in 1990 retired to Florida where he passed away a year later. The many tributes which followed cited his “significant and long-lasting contributions to the field of surgery, to pancreatic research and to our clinical understanding of disease and its processes.” Most of the Dreiling family is buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens.

1991: Sep 27. NY Times Obituary

In July of 1954 Rose Dreiling sold the home to Herman & Clare Gerber of 1175 East 13th Street for $14,000 after the Gerbers’ teenage son spotted a For Sale sign on the impressive-looking house. Herman, the son of Russian immigrants, graduated St. John's Law School in Brooklyn in 1933 and was admitted to the bar five months later. Prior to that he was an auditor at a hospital. His wife Clare then worked as a stenographer for an attorney, which might have led Herman to his second profession as the Depression worsened. When Clare passed away in April 1975, Herman put the house up for sale and moved out to East Islip. Eight years later he joined his wife in Suffolk County’s New Montefiore Cemetery.

1976: Traditional Mislowack Christmas Wreath Debuts

When Joe & Lisa Mislowack bought their home from Herman Gerber, it had been on the market for a year. From the mid1960s, through the 1970s, Flatbush had been red-lined by lending institutions, so obtaining any mortgage, let alone an affordable one, was difficult. The Mislowacks had to fight hard to get one. They also had to insist on seeing 1315 Glenwood Road because of the broker biases common at the time: white buyers were led away from mixed neighborhoods like Flatbush, which was termed “a risk to go all black.” However, it was the diversity of Flatbush, its solid housing stock and the beauty of the neighborhoods which attracted the Mislowacks here from their apartment on Avenue U in Gravesend. After seeing dozens of homes in surrounding areas – according to Lisa’s list, it was 65! – they decided to bid on the only house they ever looked at in West Midwood. Herman Gerber wanted $80,000 but after a year of no nibbles, he settled for the $60,000 the Mislowacks offered.

1976: Joe Doing Varnishing Work 1st Floor.
Note Wine on Mantel

In August of 1994 the NY Daily News featured a story on the tender-loving care the Mislowacks had lavished on their “Painted Lady” home.

1994: Aug 28. NY Daily News Feature

During a recent visit with Joe, he talked about some of the work he and Lisa undertook (freeing pocket doors nailed shut, restoring long-neglected wainscoting, etc.) and offered delightful details (what to do with old annunciator buttons for servants that were never used, placing a 30-foot ladder on a table atop the porch roof to reach the apex of the house during the first of their painting jobs). I felt like I was listening to a great undiscovered episode of This Old House. In more than 40 years of jogging and wandering around Victorian Flatbush, Joe has only found two houses that were cut from the same Corbin mold, although exterior changes would make them hard to find unless you were a Mislowack.

1994. Joe Painting.

In addition to succeeding Herman Gerber on Glenwood Road, Joe also replaced him on what was then called “The Board of Governors” of the West Midwood Community Association, at the request of President Mike Weiss. In 1988, Joe began a 14 year run as President of the Association, a period he remembers as being marked by complaints about dog poop, speeding vehicles, slow vehicles (student drivers) and toppled stanchions.

“Looking back,” says Joe, “Lisa and I were really nervous about buying the house. We were newlyweds, there was an energy crisis that made us worry about heating this huge place – we weren’t exactly rolling in dough. But every inch of this home is filled with such great memories …Bianca and Alexa growing up…me and Lisa planning our next paint job…I don’t regret a single day living here.”

2018: Christmas Wreath Tradition Continues

Argyle Heights (aka West Midwood): Then & Now Type Situation

1940: Foster Ave (Rugby - Marlborough Roads)

1940: Foster Ave (Argyle - Rugby Roads)

1940: Avenue H (Brighton Line - E 15th St)

1940: Avenue H (Corner of E 14th St)

1940: Avenue H (NE Corner of E 12th St)

1940: Avenue H (SW Corner of E 15th St)

1940: Hotel Oak (SW Corner, Ave H & E 12th St)

1940: Avenue H (North Side, At Brighton Cut)

1940: Coney Island Ave South from Ave H (Kent Theater in Distance)

1940: Newkirk Ave, SE Corner at Rugby Road

1940: Newkirk Ave, SW Corner at Marlborough Rd

1940: Newkirk Ave, North Side, Rugby-Marlborough Rd

1940: Newkirk Ave, SW Corner of E. 16th St

1940: Glenwood Rd at Coney Island Ave

1940: Foster Ave at Coney Island Ave

Le Plus Ce Change: 1940 vs 1983 vs 2018

In October the City made available ONLINE its collection of 1940s "tax photos" -- photographs taken in support of its real property tax assessments. Unlike the previously posted 1980s photos, these are all black & white. They are also of much better quality.

So, as we bid a fond adieu to 2018, I thought we'd take a look at the buildings and places in our neck of the woods that have changed the most over the past 79 years.

Our first stop is the southeast corner of Glenwood & Westminster Roads. Back in 1904, when Lott's Woods were leveled by the Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company, a civil engineer named Fred G. Dennington was hired to draw up a map of the area. Accordingly on December 30th of that year he submitted what would be filed as Map 1457 and thereafter referenced in many subsequent deeds as "Map of Part 3 of South Midwood."

In 1905 John Corbin erected a beautiful colonial revival home that occupied three lots on Dennington's map (numbers 918, 919 and 920) which measured in total 100 feet along Westminster and 60 feet along Glenwood Road. In the 1940 photo below, there is a garage that was added circa 1920 on the southern end of the property.

During the 1960s, a period of floundering property values, suburban flight and red-lining of much of Flatbush by lending institutions, the home was unoccupied following the death of Isador Krasnor.

His niece, Pearl Preiss, who owned 1304 Glenwood Road, sold the house in an estate sale in January 1969 to realty speculators from Valley Stream who demolished the home and laid the foundation for three new homes, then sold the properties in 1972 to new owners who completed the construction: a rectangular brick box containing three two-family brick homes, three stories high. The lots were irregular as depicted in the tax map and were given three street addresses: 1202 Glenwood, 705 & 707 Westminster Road.

1972 Sep 10: Ad in the NY Daily News for the Three Original Plots
per the 1904 Map Following the Demolition of the Corbin House in 1970

Tax Lots Since 1970 (from North to South):
1202 Glenwood Rd,
705 Westminster Rd, 707 Westminster Road

The photos below impress me as a prima facie argument for landmarking West Midwood, along with Ditmas Park West and the rest of Victorian Flatbush.

1940: 1202 Glenwood Road

1980: 1202 Glenwood Road

2018: 1202 Glenwood Road

Moving on, let's consider another magnificent corner building that was demolished and replaced by two modern brick structures at the northeast corner of Rugby Road and Avenue H: 1403 and 1407 Avenue H. In this instance, when owners failed to pay property taxes over an extended period of time, the City took possession in May 1966 of the magnificent Corbin-built home. In the ensuing auction in November 1966, developers won the bid at a cost of $18,600 and demolished the 61 year-old house. They broke the property up into two lots of equal size and built two detached brick houses.

1940: 1403 Avenue H

1966: One Lot Split Into Two

1967 Nov 4 NY Daily News

1980s

2018

Aside from these demolitions, West Midwood’s original homes have remained intact. Fires have damaged some homes but they were all rebuilt with the same footprint, retaining the Queen Anne/ Colonial Revival style.

There was one additional demolition, however, that did not involve a residence: it was the Glenwood Road footbridge over the Brighton line.

The bridge was erected in late 1908, more than a year after the Brighton trench was excavated as part of the grand project mandated by the NY State Grade Crossing Commission: to eliminate the many barriers to the free-flow of traffic, whether it be trains, trollies, motor vehicles, horses or pedestrians. The construction company that finished the project was delayed by another one of their Brooklyn projects: building the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

1908 Aug 25: Brooklyn Eagle
Note The Typo. Tsk tsk tsk.

1911: Glenwood Rd East
from Rugby Rd Showing
the Grand Brick Staircase

PS 35, Glenwood & E 23rd St

The bridge connected West Midwood to Midwood Park and allowed school children quicker access to PS 35 at East 23rd Street seven blocks due east and later, Midwood High School on Bedford Avenue.

1940: Note brick staircase (far left)

at foot of Glenwood Rd in West Midwood

1940: Shot from Footbridge
(Note Bannister Lower Left)
on Midwod Park Side
Looking at Finkel Home

1980s: Stairway Gone

But alas the lawlessness that erupted in the early ‘70s included miscreants throwing objects from the bridge onto passing trains and youths congregating on and about the bridge to no doubt debate the great ideas of their time. As a result, the footbridges at Albemarle Road and Glenwood Road would be dismantled. But the wheels of government grind slowly and the dismantlement would occur in stages. First, the brick staircases were leveled, and wire fences erected to prevent access to the spans. Then, in the mid-1980s, the span structures themselves were removed. Finally, circa 1990, the concrete underpinnings at street level were drilled away.

1980s: Glenwood Road Footbridge

2018: Glenwood Road Minus Bridge

Some things have changed very little over the past seven decades. For instance, the Key Food on Foster Avenue was formerly Contor Food Center in the 1980s and before that, a Bohack from the 1940s to the 1960s.

1940: 1409 Foster Avenue

1980s: 1409 Foster Avenue

2000s: 1409 Foster Avenue (Key Food)

By the same token Chase Bank was formerly Manufacturers Hanover Bank in the 1980s and before that, the Brooklyn Trust Company.

1940: 1509 Foster Avenue

1980s: 1509 Foster Avenue (the New Bank Expanded Its Footprint, Demolishing the Adjoining Building)

2018: 1509 Foster Avenue

The Sunset Bagels & Café opened just two years ago next door to the Chase Bank. In 1940 it was Leahy's Café.

1940: Leahy's Café

2018: Sunset Bagels & Café

Surprising Factoids!

There was once a 100 seat cinema at Newkirk Avenue & East 16^th Street that showed Hollywood movies as late as 1940. This movie house had an interesting history. Its entrance when it opened in 1910 was originally where the C-Town Supermarket is today, at 597 East 16^th Street. In 1928 a marquee

1914 Post Card. Note Wall on Left

1914 Post Card

was erected, visible in the shot below looking north on East 16^th Street toward Newkirk, and the name was changed from T.N.F. (after its founders, Benjamin Tittle and Henry F. Newberry) to simply The Newkirk. It was one of the first motion picture theaters on the East Coast equipped for the showing of talking pictures.

1930

Sometime in the 1930s, the entrance and marquee on East 16^th Street were abandoned. Now patrons entered from 1604 Newkirk Avenue. The Newkirk briefly became a “legitimate theater” in 1935-1936, serving as the Newkirk Art Theatre for a repertory group, the Mansfield Stock Company, before returning to films.

1928 Nov 24 Eagle Ad

1936 Jan 2 NY Daily News

1935 Dec 17 NY Daily News

1935 Dec 1 Brooklyn Eagle

1940: Newkirk South Side, Just East of E. 16^th St.

Note: “Intimate” Meant Small, Not Sexy!

1980s (Tenants Council & Avril's Replace Theater)

2011 ("French Cleaners" Survives!)

2018 (New Facades but French Cleaners Lives On)

The most noteworthy news clip for this theater concerned a near disaster in November 1937 when two Brooklyn Tech chemistry students attended a showing one weeknight but forgot to leave their chemicals at home, resulting in an explosion of a test tube amidst a full house watching “Captain Calamity.”

1937 Dec 29 Brooklyn Eagle

1937 March 25: Movie Listings, Brooklyn Eagle

The corner wall at Newkirk and E. 16th Street, two doors down from the "intimate playhouse" survived into our decade, prettified by a mural. A more artsy mural survives still.

1940: Note Cinema Far Left & the Wall

That Survived into This Decade

2011: Same Wall That Once Abutted The "T N F" on

E 16^th St Abuts C-Town Above

2013: Fancy Schmancy Mural

But this “intimate playhouse” eventually fell victim to competition provided by two less “intimate” theaters on Coney Island Avenue: the Kent, south of Avenue H, still going strong, and the Leader, north of Newkirk, now the site of Atlas Steak House. Both were owned by the same entrepreneur who developed ingenious gimmicks to maintain attendance during the dawning of the age of television. But that’s a tale for another day.

Marlborough Court in the 1940s