A STROLL DOWN WEST MIDWOOD's HIDDEN PAST
(The 2nd of 83 Parts)
Transportation
When
not being arrested, another
irritant to the original home-owners here was transportation.
Since automobiles were not in frequent use, almost everyone relied on
the Brighton line of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) Company to get
around. Soon after the Brooklyn Grade Crossing Commission was created
in 1903 by legislators in Albany, controversy hounded the BRT. First,
and perhaps not surprisingly, it had opted to go with the lower-cost
solution for eliminating grade crossings by building an elevated line
through Victorian Flatbush rather than depress the railway below the
surface. There is no evidence that Robert Moses was on their payroll
at the time.
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1905: Brighton train at Ave H station. LIRR track spur far right.
The Ackerman sales office visible, left of the train. |
The Commission, knowing politically influential people
when it saw them pounding on their doors, then appointed a “Committee
of 100”, largely consisting of furious Flatbush homeowners between
Newkirk and Church Avenues, to negotiate a solution. Our northerly
neighbors thankfully browbeat the BRT into depressing the Brighton
line or cars would now be zooming under a Glenwood Road overpass at
warp speed. In return, an easement of one foot by all adjoining
property owners was agreed to, allowing the company to create a
containment wall and expand the track bed from two to four rails,
while creating express stops at Church and Newkirk Avenues.
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| 1906 grade crossing work before Bay Ridge LIRR spur was depressed. |
In
1899, the Brighton line was electrified via overhead power lines,
just like the street trolleys that had become so popular all over
Brooklyn. But the LIRR excursion line, which branched off
southwesterly at Fiske Terrace near East 17th and 18th
Streets - and then paralleled the Brighton line on its own tracks to the
gaudy Manhattan Beach Hotel - was still powered by steam locomotives.
As part of the Grade Crossing project, the BRT and LIRR were ordered
to share their track beds and the earth excavated to form the BRT and
LIRR cuts was dumped south of Avenue H to form the embankment still
in place all the way to Sheepshead Bay.
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2010: Neck Rd LIRR station stairway remains
but station is gone. Brighton station on left. |
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| 1910: Neck Rd LIRR station. Brighton station on far left |
Long after third rails had
replaced overhead trolley wires on the Brighton line, the LIRR
continued to run steam locomotives both south and east of Avenue H,
prompting constant complaints to the Public Service Commission from
sleep-deprived residents of our neighborhood. An October 1924 news
article reported that West South Midwood's pleas had been heard and
the LIRR was ordered to electrify. Rather than bear that expense, the
LIRR ceased operations shortly thereafter on its Manhattan Beach
line. Today the only remnants can be found in some old concrete
blocks near Avenue I, a staircase to nowhere at the Neck Road station
and an odd series of LIRR easements near
Avenue V inherited
by
the MTA which were bequeathed to homeowners in 2011. An aerial photo
of Brooklyn in 1924 shows the empty land where the Manhattan Beach
spur cut across what became E. 17th
and E. 16th Streets, north of Avenue I.
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| 1924 Aerial Photo of West South Midwood - Red star is Avenue H at Rugby Road. Note the empty land at lower right where the LIRR Manhattan Beach spur ran through E. 18th and E. 17th Streets and then ran parallel to Brighton line. |
Despite
the great success of the completed Brighton line, in June of 1908,
Joseph Clapham of 716 Rugby Road, along with the Flatbush Taxpayers
Association, complained to the Public Service Commission that since
service had been extended to Coney Island, express trains were no
longer stopping at Newkirk and Church Avenues. Hmmm. Sounds like some
serious payback by the BRT to the Committee of 100 trouble-makers!
The Commission ordered the company to resume its express stops
forthwith. Ten years later, a number of West South Midwoodians were
among 93 souls who perished on a BRT express train speeding
recklessly into the curve at the beginning of what is now the
Franklin Avenue Shuttle, just outside the Prospect Park station. As a
result, the BRT went bankrupt and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit
Company (BMT) was born. See
http://argyleheights.blogspot.com/2007/06/west-midwood-centennial-internet.html
for more on the Malbone Street Wreck if you could possibly stand the excitement.
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| E. 18th St. at south side of LIRR cut today. |
Transportation
issues emerged again at the Fall 1924 meeting of the West
South Midwood Property Owners League when the director of the BMT was
requested to provide new exits at Newkirk and Foster Avenues to ease
congestion on the single stairway that descended from a token booth
in the middle of Newkirk Plaza. The request was denied despite the
fact that Plaza store-owners claimed 25,000 persons passed their
shops each day.
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| Newkirk Plaza, East Side, looking North from Brighton RR entrance toward Newkirk Avenue (Brooklyn Historical Society). |
Again,
in May 1929 “a
hundred members of West-South Midwood” (apparently 100 was still
the magic number to get transit officials' attention) crowded into
the church on Argyle to demand the BMT build another exit at the
over-crowded Newkirk Avenue station. But the BMT claimed the lone
existing eight foot stairway had a maximum capacity of 9,600
strap-hangers an hour and they counted only a measly 5,356 citizens
descending the stairs between 7am and 10am and 5,036 ascending the
staircase between 4pm and 7pm. Let us all stop and give thanks that
we never had to use that single stairway!
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| Newkirk Plaza, East Side, looking South toward Foster Avenue (Brooklyn Historical Society). |
The
Westminster Wash-Gate Scandal
In early 1922 the owner of 790 Westminster Road, Edgar H.
Pennypacker, removed the peaked roof of his Ackerson house and
started to make other changes to convert it from a two family to a
three family dwelling. Pennypacker told his neighbor, Charles H.
Merritt of 785 Westminster Road, who was also treasurer of the
Westminster-Marlborough Property Owners League, that he was merely
“making a sleeping porch” on the third floor. HaHaHa! After many
complaints, Pennypacker agreed to restore the peaked roof but when he
then installed dormer windows that projected out to the porch line,
Merritt and the League filed suit in Kings County Supreme Court and
an injunction was issued to prevent “the injection of a harsh note
into the architectural beauty of the neighborhood”.
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| Former Pennypacker Home at 790 Westminster. |
In
November 1922 matters escalated to a level so petty, the Eagle
placed
its coverage of the
League's Fall meeting on its front page: amidst news of murders,
labor unrest, and the flight of the Turkish Sultan from
Constantinople, the headline shouted: “Family Wash On Front Porch
Shocks Flatbush – Westminster-Marlborough
League Holds
Indignation Meeting and Scores Mrs. Pennypacker”.
The
key quote emanated from the lips of Charles Merritt, who asked the
League: “Can nothing be done to stop Mrs. Pennypacker from hanging
her wash on the front porch?”. Sort of recalls Henry II asking if
no one would rid him of the troublesome Thomas Becket. In her
defense, Mrs. Pennypacker told the reporter she had to put her wash
on the front porch because her back yard was full of the building
material that lay scattered about since that darned injunction.
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| Westminster Road Today |
Clearly
this was a story that had legs. The next day another piece appeared
quoting indignant residents, including Mrs. David Plough of 781
Westminster Road. Plough “was greatly mortified...when she
entertained a friend at a luncheon” only to have her guest be
confronted by the sight of “the wash of a family of three people,
consisting largely of underwear hanging out on Mrs. Pennypacker's
front porch.”
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| Former Home of Mrs. Plough at 781 Westminster. |
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| Former Home of Charles Merritt at 785 Westminster. |
More
telling was Mrs. Pennypacker's accusation that many of the other
owners on Westminster Road were housing three families and one had
four families. “Why didn't the neighbors come to us instead of
going to court?” she lamented to The
Eagle.
“We did not know this block was restricted to two family houses
for the next two decades. We bought our house two years ago and the family on the
top floor was here when we arrived. There was nothing in the deed
about this restriction.” She ended by adding that her neighbor,
Mrs. Otto R. Friedman, and the second floor tenant of the League
President, William Goodwin, both “hung out a wash on their front
porches.”
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| Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church, Now Church of the Latter Day Saints, At Glenwood and Argyle Roads |
Well,
with the Westminster Wash-Gate scandal in full bloom, there was
nothing left to do but change the name of the neighborhood
association and elect a new president who didn't live on Westminster
Road. Both of these events happened within weeks of the press
coverage, but alas and alack, by January 1924, with the suit dragging
on, the newly appointed League president, John C. Mahon of 730 Rugby
Road, announced his disagreement with the policy against two and
three family houses, feeling these conversions were necessary because
of the housing shortage of the time and promptly resigned at the
January meeting. At the next meeting in April 1924, after a stormy
session, the League voted to withdraw the suit against Edgar
Pennypacker, although his neighbor, treasurer Charles Merritt,
announced with a trace of weariness “if anyone else wishes to carry
the suit on, they may.”
Over
a hundred newspaper ads were run by Pennypacker during the next 15
years for apartments at 790 Westminster, some referring to a “sunny
room for a bachelor", presumably on the 3rd
floor. Many of the ads specified Christian applicants were desired.
Ironically, some of the noteworthy residents of the property
following the Pennypackers were Jewish, including Meyer
Berman, the founder of the M. Berman & Sons clothing firm, who
died in the home in 1961.
Westminster-Marlborough
Yields to West South Midwood Property Owners League
The new name selected in late 1922 for our community association, the
West South Midwood Property Owners League, remained in effect through
at least early 1955. At that point The
Brooklyn Eagle,
whose reporters recorded many of the League's stormy meetings for
posterity, ceased publication. Presumably, the League became moribund
by the 1960s, as the new suburbs called. The emergence of the West
Midwood Community Association, however, is a story for another day.
But be sure to pay your dues.
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| Argyle Road driveway. |
At
the Fall 1926 meeting, Deegan championed the League's “planting of
fresh trees and shrubbery wherever needed” and “decorating the
ornamental pillars which mark the boundaries of the district”. At
this same meeting, members denounced the poor mail delivery,
“particularly at the end of Argyle Road”. This stood in stark
contrast to a 1924 letter from the League to our US Congressman of
yesteryear, urging that postal workers' salaries be increased to
$2,400 per annum.
When
Deegan passed away in 1932 at the age of 59 in his Rugby Road home,
the New
York Times
obituary noted that he was “a member of the New York Produce
Exchange and former president of the West South Midwood Property
Owners' Association”.
Deegan
was likely also responsible for the League's importing 10,000
tulips annually from Holland and planting them throughout the
neighborhood to maintain its self-proclaimed reputation as “the
garden spot of Brooklyn”. Sadly this practice appears to have
fallen victim to the Depression.
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| Tulips still bloom in Argyle Heights. |
The more I read about Deegan, the more I wished I knew him. Like many
other residents of West South Midwood before and after him, he was an
immigrant. There will be more on the immigrant roots of our
neighborhood in coming Chronicles, so for now, let's move on.
The
Menace of Traffic
By November 1929, with pharmaceutical importer Adrian Frederick
Paradis of 758 Westminster Road serving as President, the League
voted to petition the BMT to further depress the subway tracks from
Foster Avenue to Avenue H so that traffic might pass over the cut.
Thankfully, the BMT rejected the request but the following year the
League discussed the erection of a bridge over the LIRR cut at Argyle
Road.
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| Looking North on Brighton Line tracks toward Glenwood Road, from Avenue H platform more than 70 years ago. Florida? Is that you calling? |
The bridge debate was presided over by H.
Mart Smith of 783 Rugby Road, the next president of the League.
Smith was also President of the Board of Trustees of Wells Memorial
Church and helped burn their paid-up mortgage of $150,000 on
4/12/1929, a sure-fire photo-op the press did not miss. Smith
presided over another press event in 1930 whereby residents were
stationed along Rugby Road south of Foster Avenue to hand out
circulars to truck drivers. At that time, Rugby was the only paved
street between Ocean and Coney Island Avenues that ran uninterrupted
to Sheepshead Bay. The handbill read in part: “The roadway on this
street is only 33 feet wide and was not laid for heavy trucking...You
will please detour to Coney Island Avenue three blocks west [which
is] 70 feet wide and well paved from curb to curb...The residents of
Rugby Road earnestly seek your co-operation in relieving us of the
noisy and heavy traffic”. No fist-fights were reported.
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| West South Midwood: Same As It Ever Was? |
Photos
of our streets back in the 1930s showed few parked cars. Indeed, most
lots contained garages, erected in the decade surrounding World War
I. And alternate-side parking was still a distant dream of City
revenue collectors. Yet, cars were now a big priority for West South
Midwoodians, to judge from the League's suggestions for inclusion in
Long Island's 10 Year Plan in 1931: 1) amend the existing law to
allow owners of private garages on residential properties to rent all
or part of those premises without paying a tax to the Firemen's
Pension Fund; 2) immediate construction of a tunnel connecting
Flatbush Avenue to the Rockaways; and 3) swift completion of “the
Linden Boulevard”.
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| Looking South over Argyle Road stanchion from corner of Foster Avenue |
COMING IN PART THREE: A RADICAL
SOCIALIST LEADS THE COMMUNITY.
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