The Early Chronicles of West South Midwood
(Part One)
The View From Argyle Heights By
Homeowner Harry (Another in a series of observations about life in
West Midwood as it is lived today…or maybe not)
The neighborhood discussed some topics via West-Midwood-Online@googlegroups.com that heated up an otherwise cool Summer. The life expectancy of our London Plane Sycamore trees, vehicular traffic/parking, garbage, and noise were among the hot-button items that got our finger tips busy.
 |
| West Midwood Today. Green Oval at Right is Brooklyn College Athletic Field |
So I thought it might be useful to look
back on our ancestors and see how they dealt with the quality-of-life
issues of their day. To do so, I consulted a number of public
sources, chief among them the archives of The Brooklyn Historical
Society, The New York Times, The NYC Landmarks Preservation
Commission, obscure manuscripts, even more obscure Internet sites,
and especially the long-defunct Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.
Three books by Brian Merlis and Lee Rosenzweig which collected old
photographs were very helpful (“Flatlands: Beyond the Field”;
“Flatbush: Battlefield to Ebbets Field”; and “Midwood: Farms,
Film, Falafel”, the latter additionally co-authored by Oscar
Israelowitz). What I discovered was a history rich with intrigue,
deceit, treachery, arrests, and well, that was just the first few
years of the neighborhood's existence. So, it looks like this will be
a multi-part saga type situation with the moral being, if I may be
permitted to wax continental, plus ça change, plus c'est la même
chose.
West Midwood's Confusing
Nomenclature
 |
| Lott Farm House on East 36th Street |
 |
| 1926 News Clip: Farm Was Doomed But Not the House |
In order to trace the issues of concern to our neighborhood during the first 50 years of its existence, I first had to find out what we called ourselves back then. This was not an easy task. In fact, I wasted way too much time chronicling the concerns of a “West Midwood” homeowners association before I realized it was serving Parkville! When I finally located our community in the historical record, it was using names I had never heard before, so we need to spend some time establishing how these names arose.
OK, here we go. First, by way of background, but skipping over the Pleistocene and Miocene Epochs, the Lenape Indians first trod these woods before “selling”, in the mid-17th century, a large chunk of Brooklyn to Dutch settlers. Among these lowlanders was a Huguenot family named Lott. There were multiple branches of the family. The most visible trace of their presence, are street signs: 1) Lott Street in central Flatbush which runs south from Albemarke to Cortelyou Roads just east of and paralellel to Bedford Ave; and 2) Lott Avenue in New Lots which runs east from E 98th St to the LIRR freight tracks at Junius Street. [By the way, New Lots has nothing to do with the Lott family. It was named to indicate the new land lots that were available east of the town of Flatbush in the 17th Century.]
OK, here we go. First, by way of background, but skipping over the Pleistocene and Miocene Epochs, the Lenape Indians first trod these woods before “selling”, in the mid-17th century, a large chunk of Brooklyn to Dutch settlers. Among these lowlanders was a Huguenot family named Lott. There were multiple branches of the family. The most visible trace of their presence, are street signs: 1) Lott Street in central Flatbush which runs south from Albemarke to Cortelyou Roads just east of and paralellel to Bedford Ave; and 2) Lott Avenue in New Lots which runs east from E 98th St to the LIRR freight tracks at Junius Street. [By the way, New Lots has nothing to do with the Lott family. It was named to indicate the new land lots that were available east of the town of Flatbush in the 17th Century.]
Finally, there's the old Hendrick I. Lott farmhouse which still stands near Marine Park at East 36th Street near Avenue S.
In 1898 the Lotts sold to the Germania Real Estate and Improvement Company most of the area bounded by Coney Island Avenue to the west, Flatbush Avenue to the east, Foster Avenue to the north and a surface railroad line to the south just beyond Avenue H (now the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) freight train cut). The exception to this huge parcel was Fiske Terrace, where realtor George Fiske had already snapped up almost 200 lots.
Germania dubbed its 100 acre preserve “South Midwood” as they “improved” the land with macadam roads, sewers and gas lines, first in the area east of Ocean Avenue, then moving west, eventually reaching our neck of the woods in 1903. Germania did not sell many finished buildings, instead they would sell the improved lots, just as Fiske would do, to renowned builders such as T. B. Ackerson and John R. Corbin.
All of these realtors advertised the area in weekly Brooklyn Eagle ads from 1902 to 1908, including this typical March 1906 entry: “South Midwood - Most Beautiful Location - Argyle Road - The Highest And Healthiest Ground in Flatbush...Two Blocks To ONLY Express Station in all of Flatbush on completion of Subway, now building”. Multiple articles and ads characterized the Germania area as “having the highest elevation between Prospect Park and the ocean”. Argyle Heights, indeed.
Anyway, in October 1905 sales of four homes on Westminster and Glenwood Roads were reported by the T.B. Ackerson Construction Company as also located in “South Midwood”.
 |
| Westminster Road, Looking South from Glenwood Road Intersection in 1904 |
A June 1900 news article described the Eureka moment which led Germania to create the name for its new huge tract, “the largest in area and financial consideration ever consummated in Kings County”: This new section...became a candidate for a name which would indicate its character and be a prophecy for the future...Time and thought were given to the cracking of this nut. At length, however, patience and perseverance did their perfect work and the euphonious, historic and suggestive designation of South Midwood was adopted...As the locality in question is the extreme southern part of the old Dutch town Midwood, the new name recalls the past and indicates where the suburb is situated."[Emphasis added.]
 |
| "South Midwood Station" Sign, 1906 |
 |
| "South Midwood Hotel" at Newkirk Ave & Brighton Crossing, 1903 See http://www.arrts-arrchives.com/brbch4.html |
[Full Disclosure: I grew up at the intersection of Flatbush and Rogers Avenues, part of the acreage Germania purchased from the Lotts. Rogers was a commercial street with a trolley line that eventually wound its way to Ocean Avenue, terminating at Manhattan Beach. The electrified trolley lasted into my toddling years in the early 1950s, after which it became today's B49 bus. So although there were no grand structures there, that stretch of Rogers Avenue does boast a firehouse, Engine 255, or as they have always been known, the “Jolly Rogers”, which happens to be one of the few places where the Germania name still survives: on the deed for that property which Germania conveyed to the City in 1907 in return for $800. The Jolly Rogers once put out a fire in our kitchen on Thanksgiving Day when I was a kid or somebody else would be typing this now. By the way, Germania occupied a sales office for a number of years near the intersection of Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues, on a small lane they claimed as Germania Place. And so the name remained until 1959, when it became Hillel Place.]
 |
| Flatbush-Nostrand Junction - Germania Sales Office - Flags on Left ("Vanderveer Park" Sales) |
The Name Game
 |
| 1919 NYPD "Ethnic Map" Showing "South Greenfield" (now "Midwood") |
The original inhabitants of these beautiful Victorian homes made haste to differentiate themselves one from another. Only the first neighborhood erected, east of Ocean Avenue, retained the name of South Midwood, which it proudly bears to this day. Fiske Terrace, the area south of Glenwood Road from the Brighton line to Ocean Avenue, retained its pre-Germania name, while the area between Foster and Glenwood from Ocean Avenue to the Brighton cut, threw off the original South Midwood name to become Midwood Park.
As for us, West Midwood was known as West South Midwood for the first 50 years of our existence, to distinguish it from the neighborhoods east of the Brighton rail line. Indeed, an Ackerson brochure describing construction on Westminster Road between Avenue H and Glenwood Road in 1903-1904 referred to our area as “westerly South Midwood”.
In a strange but true historical tidbit, the community association for Parkville, the older neighborhood to our immediate west, first appropriated the name “West Midwood” to describe itself as the Roaring Twenties dawned. Thus, the West Midwood Community League flourished from 1921 into the mid-1950s, serving the area south of 18th Avenue past the Washington Cemetery to 60th Street and from Ocean Parkway west past Gravesend Avenue (now called McDonald Avenue). The Avenue I stop on the F train was then called the Parkville station and the League met in the St. Rose of Lima Church on Parkville Avenue. So why did the Parkville community call itself West Midwood? They had every right to call themselves “West Flatbush”, since Parkville originated as a village in the town of Flatbush. But they did not.
My considered opinion is that it was the same reason why Germania didn't call our area “South Flatbush”. Better to live amidst woods than among flat bushes. The word “Midwood” had become the “Heights” of its day. It seems that any neighborhood which threw the word “Midwood” into its name back then considered it an instant property-value upgrade.A 2009 New York Times feature on Midwood noted with some degree of puzzlement that “the neighborhoods known as Midwood Park, West Midwood and South Midwood are all actually north of Midwood proper” and left it at that – possibly prompting thoughts that this was just another example of the inherent absurdity of life. However, the emergence of “Midwood” to describe the area south of the LIRR cut originated from new neighborhoods later developed there which insisted on defining themselves in relation to us: East Midwood, Midwood Manor, Westminster Heights Park. In fact, the areas around Avenue J and Avenue M were called Manhattan Terrace and South Greenfield, respectively, until well after the South Midwood tract had been populated. Let's face it: “South of South Midwood” just didn't have the proper pizzazz. Frankly, if they had just called it Far Midwood this entire paragraph could have been avoided. And at the risk of driving everyone nuts with minutia, a section of Parkville was originally known as Greenfield and its developer then moved on to the Avenue M environs to create South Greenfield which, of course, is now Midwood. Got it?
Like Parkville, home-owners all over Flatbush were quick to form associations to protect their very localized turf. Here, in the real West Midwood, the first such organization was formed some time after 1908 and was called The Westminster-Marlborough Property Owners League. The League would meet quarterly, either at members' homes or in the Wells Presbyterian Church at 700 Argyle Road (now the Church of Latter Day Saints). Its first president was William Goodwin of 775 Westminster Road, but after a scandal in the 1920s involving residents of Westminster Road, as will be described in lurid detail in the next installment of these Chronicles, the name was changed to the West South Midwood Property Owners League and thus it remained well into the 1950s.
As for us, West Midwood was known as West South Midwood for the first 50 years of our existence, to distinguish it from the neighborhoods east of the Brighton rail line. Indeed, an Ackerson brochure describing construction on Westminster Road between Avenue H and Glenwood Road in 1903-1904 referred to our area as “westerly South Midwood”.
In a strange but true historical tidbit, the community association for Parkville, the older neighborhood to our immediate west, first appropriated the name “West Midwood” to describe itself as the Roaring Twenties dawned. Thus, the West Midwood Community League flourished from 1921 into the mid-1950s, serving the area south of 18th Avenue past the Washington Cemetery to 60th Street and from Ocean Parkway west past Gravesend Avenue (now called McDonald Avenue). The Avenue I stop on the F train was then called the Parkville station and the League met in the St. Rose of Lima Church on Parkville Avenue. So why did the Parkville community call itself West Midwood? They had every right to call themselves “West Flatbush”, since Parkville originated as a village in the town of Flatbush. But they did not.
My considered opinion is that it was the same reason why Germania didn't call our area “South Flatbush”. Better to live amidst woods than among flat bushes. The word “Midwood” had become the “Heights” of its day. It seems that any neighborhood which threw the word “Midwood” into its name back then considered it an instant property-value upgrade.A 2009 New York Times feature on Midwood noted with some degree of puzzlement that “the neighborhoods known as Midwood Park, West Midwood and South Midwood are all actually north of Midwood proper” and left it at that – possibly prompting thoughts that this was just another example of the inherent absurdity of life. However, the emergence of “Midwood” to describe the area south of the LIRR cut originated from new neighborhoods later developed there which insisted on defining themselves in relation to us: East Midwood, Midwood Manor, Westminster Heights Park. In fact, the areas around Avenue J and Avenue M were called Manhattan Terrace and South Greenfield, respectively, until well after the South Midwood tract had been populated. Let's face it: “South of South Midwood” just didn't have the proper pizzazz. Frankly, if they had just called it Far Midwood this entire paragraph could have been avoided. And at the risk of driving everyone nuts with minutia, a section of Parkville was originally known as Greenfield and its developer then moved on to the Avenue M environs to create South Greenfield which, of course, is now Midwood. Got it?
Like Parkville, home-owners all over Flatbush were quick to form associations to protect their very localized turf. Here, in the real West Midwood, the first such organization was formed some time after 1908 and was called The Westminster-Marlborough Property Owners League. The League would meet quarterly, either at members' homes or in the Wells Presbyterian Church at 700 Argyle Road (now the Church of Latter Day Saints). Its first president was William Goodwin of 775 Westminster Road, but after a scandal in the 1920s involving residents of Westminster Road, as will be described in lurid detail in the next installment of these Chronicles, the name was changed to the West South Midwood Property Owners League and thus it remained well into the 1950s.
Law Enforcement Goes Wild!
The most notorious cause-celebre for our earliest home-owners also revolved around nomenclature. It arose on November 3, 1908, the first Presidential election day since the creation of the neighborhood. Early that morning, police from the Parkville Station (then located at Foster Avenue & Ocean Parkway) began arresting West South Midwoodites as they voted, charging them with election fraud for claiming to reside at non-existent addresses. Although Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, Dekoven, Waldorf and Wellington had appeared on the City grid south of Foster for more than five years, the police apparently retained an old directory which indicated the former BOR-ING names of East 12th, 13th, 14th Streets , etc. And so it came to pass that a school teacher from 12 Waldorf Court, an Abraham & Strauss buyer from 715 Argyle Road, and a retiree from 667 Argyle Road were all promptly arrested as they attempted to vote at 8:45AM that November morning.
The most notorious cause-celebre for our earliest home-owners also revolved around nomenclature. It arose on November 3, 1908, the first Presidential election day since the creation of the neighborhood. Early that morning, police from the Parkville Station (then located at Foster Avenue & Ocean Parkway) began arresting West South Midwoodites as they voted, charging them with election fraud for claiming to reside at non-existent addresses. Although Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, Dekoven, Waldorf and Wellington had appeared on the City grid south of Foster for more than five years, the police apparently retained an old directory which indicated the former BOR-ING names of East 12th, 13th, 14th Streets , etc. And so it came to pass that a school teacher from 12 Waldorf Court, an Abraham & Strauss buyer from 715 Argyle Road, and a retiree from 667 Argyle Road were all promptly arrested as they attempted to vote at 8:45AM that November morning.
 |
| Flatbush Town Hall & Courthouse In the 1890s (Brooklyn Museum) |
But as fast as the court freed the alleged fraudsters, the police would produce a fresh batch: “Then in rapid succession [another] line of persons formed before the magistrate's desk, [more] victims of police mistakes who had been arrested, their pedigrees taken and then they were either conveyed through the streets in patrol wagons or on cars and hauled up before the magistrate...News of the wholesale arrests spread through the neighborhood until the matter became alarming.”
The intrepid Brooklyn Eagle reporter then spoke with the Republican ward leader who claimed that the Parkville Police Captain, James Kelly, dismissed his proofs that the streets in West South Midwood had two names, bellowing “I only take orders from the Police Commissioner!”. The net result was that “the Republicans lost a number of votes, as many persons, seeing the wholesale arrests, and knowing they were located on streets with two names, went away and refused to vote.” It is perhaps worth mentioning that the New York Times missed this local story but did commend the Election Commissioner for preventing 5,000 phony ballots from being cast in Brooklyn. As if! In any event, it seems plausible to assume that if there was no neighborhood association before this incident, it most certainly existed after it.
 |
| Map of The Old Towns of Brooklyn - Note the Village of "Midwout" in Flatbush |
COMING IN PART TWO:
WESTMINSTER ROAD'S SORDID PAST!
SOME RESIDENTS OF WEST SOUTH MIDWOOD
(More to Come)
| Address | Name | Cited | Note |
| 728 Westminster Road | Harry Crowell Morehouse | 1920-1945 | Member of Westminster – Marlborough Property Owners League, 1922. Served as 2nd VP of West-South Midwood Property Owners League, 1929-1930. Worked for Singer Sewing Machine from 1923 until he retired in September 1953. Married Carmeta Aitkin Hope in October 1920 and after a honeymoon “cruise in southern waters” returned home to Westminster Road. Spring 1939 he and Carmeta took “motor tour” of New England and Montreal. In 1940, he gave a “Gone With the Wind” party in the home for his daughter. Hosted many meetings of The Friendly Tourists Club in home during 1941. Surprise 25th wedding anniversary party in home on 10/28/1945. Canadian by birth. |
| 758 Westminster Road | Adrian Frederick Paradis | 1922-1967 | Served on Board of Governors of West-South Midwood Property Owners League, 1929-1932. Died on 4/30/1967 at age 81 in his home at 758 Westminster. Was president of George J. Wallou, Inc., importers of French pharmaceuticals. Both Adrian and his father (a retail pharmacist with same name) served as president and trustee of Brooklyn College of Pharmacy. The father was a French immigrant who lived in Neponsit, Rockaway, and died there in 1940 at age 82. |
| 758 Westminster Road | Marjorie Bartholomew Paradis | 1922-1970 | Wife of Adrian. Wrote Erasmus HS news for Brooklyn Eagle as a student and went on to become a novelist and playwright over four decades. Her 1932 depression novel “It Happened One Day” was made into 1934 movie with Lionel Barrymore, “This Side of Heaven”. Her 1934 Broadway play, “The New Freedom”, won prize for best first work. Also wrote children's books into the 1960s. Her first novel in 1928 was controversial because it involved “trial marriage” (“A Dinner of Herbs”). |
| 771 Westminster Road | Archibald Arthur | 1907 | Appointed first organist for the Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church on Argyle Road in June 1907. |
| 775 Westminster Road | William Goodwin | 1922 | President of Westminster – Marlborough Property Owners League |
| 781 Westminster Road | David Plough | 1922 | Member, Westminster – Marlborough Property Owners League |
| 782 Westminster Road | David F. Kerr | 1916 | Wedding performed in home by pastor Lindsay of Wells Presbyterian Church (see 700 Argyle Road). |
| 785 Westminster Road | Charles H. Merritt | 1922 | Treasurer of Westminster – Marlborough Property Owners League |
| 790 Westminster Road | Edgar H. Pennypacker | 1922 | Bought house in 1920 as 2 family; attempted conversion to 3 family led to injunction. |
| 792 Westminster Road | Otto R. Friedman | 1922 | Member of Westminster – Marlborough Property Owners League, 1922. |
| 716 Rugby Road | Marcus Hanlon | 1908 | Died 9/10/1908; his wife Elizabeth Young Stewart Hanlon had him declared incompetent before his death and thus his 1906 will was contested among his heirs. |
| 716 Rugby Road | Joseph Clapham | 1908-1909 | Complained that Brighton express trains no longer stopping at Newkirk Avenue in 1908. Hosted piano recital in home 2/21/1909. |
| 716 Rugby Road | William W. Passage | 1907-1944 | President of West South Midwood Property Owners League for 10 years (1934-44). Died 10/17/1944 at age 77. Radical socialist. |
| 716 Rugby Road | Willard O. Ludden | 1913 | Died suddenly in home in January 1913 at age 70. Funeral services held in home. |
| 716 Rugby Road | Martha A. Knight | 1924 | Mother of Addie Story Passage, the wife of William W. Passage, dies in home 3/21/1924. |
| 730 Rugby Road | John C. Mahon | 1923 | President of West South Midwood Property Owners League; resigned - supported conversions |
| 760 Rugby Road | Thomas J. Deegan | 1924 | President of West South Midwood Property Owners League. Died November 1932 at age 59 in his home. Was member of New York Produce Exchange, Kings County Democratic Club and Knights of Columbus and Holy Name Society. |
| 783 Rugby Road | H. Mart Smith | 1929 | President of West South Midwood Property Owners League. |
| 784 Rugby Road | Frederick J. H. Kracke | 1947-1954 | President of West South Midwood Property Owners League. Former Chairman of the City Board of Assessors. Friend to five Republican Presidents. As President of the Union League of Brooklyn in 1948 he posted a tribute to Colonel David Marcus “who laid down his life for an ideal – the establishment of the State of Israel.” At his death on 12/2/1954 at age 86, in an apt at 180 E. 17th St, he left an estate valued at $10,000, considered meager given his background. |
| 667 Argyle Road | Joseph M. Busnop | 1908 | Then age 59, arrested 11/3/1908 on bogus election fraud charge. |
| 682 Argyle Road | Emily Coady | 1918 | Died in Malbone Street disaster on 11/1/1918. “Another case of two girl chums meeting their death in the wreck, came to light with the identification of Miss Ethel CLIFFORD, of 485 Argyle Road, and Ms. Emily COADY, of 682 Argyle Road. The girls were sitting side by side in the second car of the train when the crash came. Both were killed instantly. The two had been chums for years, went to school together and worked in the same office.” (Per contemporaneous news coverage) |
| 700 Argyle Road | Rev. William Bishop Gates | 1910 | First pastor of Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church |
| 700 Argyle Road | Rev. Frederick N. Lindsay | 1916-1918 | Pastor, Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church. |
| 700 Argyle Road | Rev. Stanley R. Evans | 1938-1948 | Pastor, Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church and also spiritual adviser of the Park Department and Naval Shipyard Civilian Employees Chapters. Hosted Royal Arch Masons of Brooklyn in October 1938. |
| 715 Argyle Road | Cornelius J. Behan | 1908-1937 | Original owner; buyer for Abraham & Strauss. Arrested 11/3/1908 on bogus election fraud charge. Moved to 795 East 19th Street in Fiske Terrace where his home was auctioned in 1937 Sheriff's sale for unpaid insurance debts. |
| 715 Argyle Road | Max Lippman | 1925-1933 | Attorney; founder of Silver Rod stores; sued for stock fraud; died 1933 at age 38 in Florida where he had relocated due to illness. |
| 715 Argyle Road | Ralph and Phyllis Kahn | 1929-1934 | Kahns bought home in Feb 1929 but sold it in Sep 1931. Ralph sentenced to jail in Manhattan in July 1934 for theft and Phyllis committed suicide three days later. She was active at PS 217. Left 3 young children who were saved from the gas inhalation which killed her. |
| 715 Argyle Road | James J. Moore | 1940-1960 | Beech-Nut/Life Savers Exec. Briefly NYC Price Stabilization Czar. Active in Catholic Charities and other philanthropic activities. Died in home of heart attack in March 1960. In August 1954 creditor William G. Weigand obtained judgment of foreclosure for 715 Argyle Road but Moore avoided being evicted. Property was sold in October 1970 by Moore's son, James G. Moore, to Greta Rubin, who sold it to Vincent & Jane Napoli in March 1979 who sold house to Joseph Enright & Virginia Waters, the current occupants, in September 1988. |
| 721 Argyle Road | Alfred Henry Sprenger & Nellie Pendleton Sprenger | 1913 | Sprenger died in the home of pneumonia on 2/23/1913 at age 49. Sprenger was in the piano business and a deacon in the Dutch Reformed Church. On 5/2/1913 the Sprenger family sold the house to Willis and F. H. Porter. Porters were then residing at 604 E 17th St. where their daughter Frances was born in 1909. |
| 721 Argyle Road | Willis Dudley Porter | 1913-1918 | Per http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~blkyn/Newspaper/BSU/1918.RR.Accident.html, Porter was initially thought dead in Malbone Street disaster of BRT train at Prospect Park on 11/1/1918. Willis D. Porter moved to Mt. Pleasant, Westchester, with his wife, Florence, daughter Eleanor and son Horace. Willis reported his age as 50 and he worked as treasurer for the Kent Garage Corp. |
| 721 Argyle Road | Paul R. Forbriger & Elsie Forbriger | 1921-1944 | Forbriger was a German immigrant who owned an import business and was a champion dog breeder. From 1921-1931 placed many ads for housekeepers, white cooks and white laundresses. His three daughters were all wed in the first three years of WWII – some to veterinarians. |
| 725 Argyle Road | Ray C. Leinbach | 1951 | Manager of YMCA at 55 Hanson Place. Leinbach family sold 725 Argyle to Victor Krauthamer in 1975. |
| 726 Argyle Road | John & Ruth Egolf | 1907-1916 | John was branch manager with Flatbush Trust Co. and by 1919 was Asst Secty of Irving Trust. In 1907 and 1911 the Egolfs placed ads for a housekeeper and specified a Norgwegian girl was wanted. His wife Ruth summered in Cutchogue, L.I., in 1914. Their 5 year old daughter, Margaret Chamberlin Egolf, died in the home on 4/17/1911 and on 7/16/1930 their 16 year old daughter Jeanne Egolf died of spinal meningitis, contracted 3 days earlier at a summer camp in Delaware. By that time the Egolfs were residing in Ridgewood, NJ. John became manager of the safe deposit department of the NJ Trust Co. in 1942 and died in Ridgewood on 9/6/1956 at age 76. Sometime after mid-1916, Egolf sold the home to George Nordenholt. |
| 726 Argyle Road | George & Katherina Nordenholt | 1917-1930 | Nordenholt, an exporter and amateur archaeologist who collected Mexican artifacts, was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. On 1/13/1930, at age 69, he died of “heart trouble” at 726 Argyle after a short illness. In October 1901, Nordenholt and 7 other men incorporated Almada Refineries Co. in NYS. They proposed to build the largest sugar refinery in Mexico with $3.5 million in investor capital. In March 1911 while US troops moved to protect the border during the Mexican revolution against the corrupt dictator Porfirio Diaz, Nordenholt was noted as visiting Diaz's finance minister, Jose Yves Limantour, at the Plaza Hotel where Limantour also met with the leading financiers of the day including J.P. Morgan (the US had billions invested in Mexico). Nordenholt was described as “an intimate friend” of the Mexican VP, Ramon Corral and was also friendly with Diaz. Nordenholt's obit also noted he helped educate the grandsons of a Mexican general here. |
| 726 Argyle Road | Philip H. Hardie | 1936-1944 | Hardie, a mechanical engineer, bought the house from the Nordenholt family sometime prior to September 1936. He was then an Alf Landon Republican active in the Young Men's Chamber of Commerce and soon thereafter the Brooklyn Civic Council. His wife was very active with the Morning Choral and along with Mrs. Ralph C. Jones of 741 Westminster Rd, ran a bridge club that sometimes met at the Wells Presbyterian Church at 700 Argyle Rd. Mrs. Hardie's first name was never identified in a dozen news articles that referenced her. The Hardies moved to 120 Poplar St in Brooklyn Heights and in 1949 it was noted Philip had become principal mechanical engineer for Evasco Services. |
| 726 Argyle Road | Sgt. John A. Loehmer | 1944 | In March 1944 the 5th Army Air Force announced that “Sgt John A. Loehmer” of 726 Argyle Road, Brooklyn, had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the South Pacific. In December 1944, Philip H. Hardie sold the home to Thomas J. Carroll, with the deal handled by a broker named Gerard R. Kern. |
| 726 Argyle Road | Thomas J. & Margaret C. Carroll | 1944-1969 | Margaret's mother, Mary Quinlan, was an Irish immigrant who died in March 1946, and her father, Edward Quinlan, was an NYPD officer who died in 1932. The Carroll's son, Thomas J. Carroll, Jr., married in 1952 while then “associated with Williamson Adams Inc” and still attending Mechanics Institute of NY. The Carroll's daughter, Margaret M. Carroll, was deeded the property in June 1967 (possibly from the estate of her deceased parents) and in October 1969 she sold the property to Ernest J. Lombardi. |
| 726 Argyle Road | Ernest J. Lombardi | 1969 | Lombardi sold the property in May 1973 to Amnon Abramowitz. |
| 726 Argyle Road | Amnon Abramowitz | 1973 | In October 1997 Abramowitz sold the house to the Rosen Family. |
| 800 East 12th Street | C.W. King | 1911 | Resident of luxury apt building which in 1937 became the Hotel Oak. His father served in the Civil War under General Sherman. |
| 19 Dekoven Court | Dr. Walter Balfour Gunnison | 1916 | Dr. Gunnison, the Principal of Erasmus HS since 1896, died here in the home of his son on 12/19/1916. |
| 12 Waldorf Court | James A. Fairley | 1907-1910 | School teacher arrested 11/3/1908 on bogus election fraud charge. Vacationed in Cape Rogier, Maine, for entire Summer of 1907. Letter to Eagle editor in 1910 re: new court house site on Court Street. |
| 12 Waldorf Court | Florella Electra Peabody | 1915 | Spouse of Captain Theodore G. Peabody. Died Sep 1915 in her home |
| 12 Waldorf Court | May Lewis | 1912 | In May 1912 was victim of “theft” of rings by ex-con servant named Agnes Madison but intrepid probation officer found rings in home, clearing Agnes. |
| 12 Waldorf Court | Cpl Henry Tower Barnaby | 1918-1921 | Killed in action during The Great War on the Hindenburg Line, 9/27/1918. Memorial services held at parents' home at 12 Waldorf Court on 4/17/1921. |
| 20 Waldorf Court | John & Mary Bartlett | 1905-1945 | John was a fishmonger. Mary, an Irish immigrant, sold the house in an estate sale in 1945 to Michael & Ethel Morris. |
| 1404 Glenwood Road | John & Marjorie Bratton | 1909-? | Bratton was co-composer of “Teddy Bear's Picnic” (played it in concert at Fort Green Park in 1908; in 1952 it was said to be 4 year old Prince Charles's favorite tune). A June 1908 ad listed this corner home (“at Avenue G”) for sale for $12,000. |
| 1421 Glenwood Road | F. G. Ten Broeck | 1918-1929 | Died in Malbone Street disaster on 11/1/1918 at age 46. Born in Elmira and graduated Cornell in 18'95. For 17 years was chief engineer of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Co, Astor Building, Manhattan. Survived by wife, Anne, and two daughters, Delphine and Adria, and two sons, David and William, who sailed for France the week before the wreck. Funeral services were held in the home and he was buried in Elmira. When Adria married in 1929 she was still living in the home. |