Educators, Soldiers & 50 Shades of Yellow
For the 6th installment in our 242-part series, we wandered west to Westminster Road where, in 1904, 39 two-family homes were built by Thomas Benton Ackerson, the father of two other notable Victorian Flatbush enclaves – Beverly Square West and Fiske Terrace.
Ackerson acquired the Westminster block after Germania Real Estate Company first cleared what was then known as “Lott’s Woods,” laid down roads and sidewalks, built the mall along Glenwood and ran gas, sewer, and water lines to all the empty lots.
Ackerson would later boast that all the houses were sold by March of 1905. In fact many homes were still being advertised by the end of that year.
Each of the Ackerson houses consisted of two apartments. His August 1905 ad stated: “Each apartment contains 8 rooms, bath and store room, and trimmed with hardwood throughout, with hardwood polished floors, high wainscoting in dining room and beam ceilings. Backus gas logs in each parlor and dining room; latest model gas and coal ranges in kitchens; also ice box built in; furnished with shades and screens. Price $9,500 to $12,000.”
725 Westminster Road, then the third house from the southeast corner of Glenwood, was first occupied by the Lawrence Merk family, who bought it from the T. B. Ackerson Construction Company in January 1906, after securing a $6,000 mortgage.
Merk was a traveling book salesman born to immigrant German parents during the Civil War. He and his wife Winifred, herself a Canadian immigrant, relocated from Rochester with their six-year old daughter and Winifred’s mother-in-law to settle in what many realtors called “Western South Midwood.”
The Merks rented out the bottom floor for $45 a month (equivalent to their mortgage payment) to Wendell McKown, an attorney who was appointed a Commissioner of Deeds by the City in 1909 and then promptly moved to New Jersey where he became a principal developer of Colonia Hills.
In 1914 the Merks sold the home to an investor, Emma Gratis Lee, and moved to another Ackerson-built home at 324 Rugby Road in Beverly Square West, then owned by the renowned Victorian Flatbush builder, Arthur E. Strong. Arthur was the brother of Edward R. Strong, who developed all of Marlborough Court in 1913. Merk passed away in his Rugby Road home in September of 1919 and is buried in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Rochester.
Emma G. Lee’s ownership was short-lived: she sold to another investor, Clarence Hodge, in October 1919. At the time of the sale, the house had been occupied by two tenants for the previous five years: the Washburn and Cameron families. They continued to reside there while Hodge, a bookkeeper/realtor who dabbled in magic, lived nearby in Parkville.
Caleb Cameron was a young office-equipment salesman who shared his half of the house with his wife (Marian née Smith) and in-laws. Frederick E. Washburn was a linotype operator for the NY Times for 42 years (retiring in 1943). He and his wife Hattie had a son, Earle, who was drafted during World War I while a student at NYU and gained some notoriety when he wrote a long charming letter to his parents about life as a dough-boy in France that was widely published.
In 1926 Hodge moved to New Jersey and sold the property to John Wesley Cunningham, whose family would be the principal owner-occupants for the next 28 years. Cunningham was born to English-immigrant parents in Canastota, twenty-five miles east of Syracuse University, where he met his wife, Olive, while both were pursuing degrees in 1910.
Upon graduating the following year, Cunningham relocated to Brooklyn to accept a position as a mathematics teacher at the Polytechnic Preparatory School (now Poly Prep), where he remained until his retirement in May of 1954.
John Wesley and Olive had a daughter, Roberta, and a son, John Dale, who also became well-known as a result of his war-time service in Europe, this time in Italy in 1944. Serving near Naples in January of that year, a war photographer caught a picture of the 21 year-old Cunningham speaking with an Italian prisoner who was showing him a picture of his uncle in Brooklyn.
John, an American Field Service ambulance driver, was a conscientious objector whose religious and moral convictions precluded bearing arms. A veteran of the grueling African desert campaigns of the British Eighth Army, he was technically a noncombatant – which made little difference in the hellish environment of the Battle of Anzio. While evacuating wounded near Rome in June, his ambulance took a direct hit from German shells and he died instantly.
His parents placed more than 70 ads for tenants in New York papers – all specifying that only Christians need apply – in the decade before his death. But none thereafter. In 1954, as John Wesley bade farewell to Poly Prep, he sold the house, then assessed at $13,300, to John Petropoulos.
Petropoulos flipped the property three years later, selling it to Pietro and Mary Arigo and Mary’s sister Frances and brother-in-law Walter Biderman. Pietro, who immigrated from Italy during the 1920s, was a life-long Con Edison employee who died in the home in December 1972 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. Walter Biderman died in the home in July 1975 and joined Pietro in the family plot, not far from the grave of T. B. Ackerson.
Their heirs sold 725 Westminster Road in October 1979 to the stars of this episode: the McCormack family.
Tom McCormack was born in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland, where as a lad he became a Franciscan Brother. He emigrated to New York in 1967 to teach at Cardinal Hayes High School, one of a number of Catholic institutions in this area where the Franciscans have served. While taking some courses at St. Francis College (naturally), Tom met Maureen Black, a Flatbush girl from a typically large Irish-American family and the beauty of Maureen’s soul convinced Tom that he might also serve the Lord as her husband. Three children later (there would eventually be seven), Tom and Maureen, together with Maureen’s parents, scraped together enough cash to buy 725 Westminster Road for $67,500.
During a recent visit to their home, familiar to all who have attended the Progressive Dinner over the past decade where they have often served as gracious “dessert hosts,” the McCormacks reminisced about their lives as teachers and 40 years on Westminster.
When they first saw the house, they were warned that West Midwood was “at risk,” code for “about to become (gasp!) integrated.” Still, they persisted, and eventually confronted 1,200 square feet of living space that was completely yellow. The walls and ceiling and woodwork were all painted yellow. The carpets were yellow. EVERYTHING was yellow. And as a parting gift, the evacuating sellers cut down two magnificent peach trees in the back yard, possibly upon realizing they weren’t entirely yellow.
The McCormacks waked Maureen’s father, Martin Black, in the home when he passed in 1991. Many such wakes had occurred on Westminster Road over the years but by the 1980s, they had all but disappeared. Come the morning of the funeral, however, the fully-loaded casket just would not fit through the door. As the coffin was gingerly passed through a front window, Maureen recalled her mother Edith’s oft-heard jest to Martin: “If you do that, I'll throw you out the window.”
After Edith herself passed on a decade later, amidst the sprouting of many grandchildren, the McCormacks finally accumulated the resources to renovate their yellow home. Patricia, the eldest (also a teacher) and her banker husband, Thomas Robertsen, housed Tom and Maureen in their Midwood apartment while the work commenced and when it was done, 14 months later, the Robertsons were rewarded with the ground floor apartment. Unfortunately, for an antiquarian such as I, in addition to un-yellowing the premises, the contractors also vaporized a kitchen-table sized boulder in the basement, around which T. B. Ackerson had originally built the house.
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| 1940 NYC Tax Photo for 725 Westminster Road |
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| 1907: T. B. Ackerson |
Ackerson acquired the Westminster block after Germania Real Estate Company first cleared what was then known as “Lott’s Woods,” laid down roads and sidewalks, built the mall along Glenwood and ran gas, sewer, and water lines to all the empty lots.
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| 1905 Post of Ackerson's Purchase of Westminster aka E 12th St from Germania in Late 1904 |
Ackerson would later boast that all the houses were sold by March of 1905. In fact many homes were still being advertised by the end of that year.
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| Published 1907 in Ackerson Sales Pamphlet for Fiske Terrace |
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| Published 1907 in Ackerson Sales Pamphlet for Fiske Terrace. Note Ackerson's Sales Shack SE Corner, Coney Island Ave & Glenwood Rd. Every House In Photo Built by T.B. Ackerson |
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| Published 1907 in Ackerson Sales Pamphlet for Fiske Terrace. Looking South Down Westminster Road Past Glenwood Rd. Every House In Photo Built by "T.B." |
Each of the Ackerson houses consisted of two apartments. His August 1905 ad stated: “Each apartment contains 8 rooms, bath and store room, and trimmed with hardwood throughout, with hardwood polished floors, high wainscoting in dining room and beam ceilings. Backus gas logs in each parlor and dining room; latest model gas and coal ranges in kitchens; also ice box built in; furnished with shades and screens. Price $9,500 to $12,000.”
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| 1905 Oct 21 Eagle Report |
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| 1905 Oct 31 Eagle Ad |
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| 1907 Map Shows All 39 Ackerson Homes & Sales Shack |
725 Westminster Road, then the third house from the southeast corner of Glenwood, was first occupied by the Lawrence Merk family, who bought it from the T. B. Ackerson Construction Company in January 1906, after securing a $6,000 mortgage.
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| 1st Line Should Read "Westminster Road e.s. 150 s so Ave G" Translation: Westminster Rd, East Side, 150 ft South of Ave G aka Glenwood Rd |
Merk was a traveling book salesman born to immigrant German parents during the Civil War. He and his wife Winifred, herself a Canadian immigrant, relocated from Rochester with their six-year old daughter and Winifred’s mother-in-law to settle in what many realtors called “Western South Midwood.”
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| 1910 Census for 725 Westminster Road. Merk on Line "62" |
The Merks rented out the bottom floor for $45 a month (equivalent to their mortgage payment) to Wendell McKown, an attorney who was appointed a Commissioner of Deeds by the City in 1909 and then promptly moved to New Jersey where he became a principal developer of Colonia Hills.
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| 1914 Feb 2 Ad in Brooklyn Eagle For White Housekeeper |
In 1914 the Merks sold the home to an investor, Emma Gratis Lee, and moved to another Ackerson-built home at 324 Rugby Road in Beverly Square West, then owned by the renowned Victorian Flatbush builder, Arthur E. Strong. Arthur was the brother of Edward R. Strong, who developed all of Marlborough Court in 1913. Merk passed away in his Rugby Road home in September of 1919 and is buried in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Rochester.
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| 1919: Merk's Obituary in NY Tribune |
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| 1918 Story on Sgt. Earle Washburn |
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| 1923 Jun 25 Earle Washburn Weds at Wells Church Located at 700 Argyle Rd (Now Church of LDS) Just Around the Block from His Home |
In 1926 Hodge moved to New Jersey and sold the property to John Wesley Cunningham, whose family would be the principal owner-occupants for the next 28 years. Cunningham was born to English-immigrant parents in Canastota, twenty-five miles east of Syracuse University, where he met his wife, Olive, while both were pursuing degrees in 1910.
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| 1930 Census for Westminster Road |
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| 1944 John Dale In Italy |
John, an American Field Service ambulance driver, was a conscientious objector whose religious and moral convictions precluded bearing arms. A veteran of the grueling African desert campaigns of the British Eighth Army, he was technically a noncombatant – which made little difference in the hellish environment of the Battle of Anzio. While evacuating wounded near Rome in June, his ambulance took a direct hit from German shells and he died instantly.
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| 1944 Jun 11 Brooklyn Eagle |
His parents placed more than 70 ads for tenants in New York papers – all specifying that only Christians need apply – in the decade before his death. But none thereafter. In 1954, as John Wesley bade farewell to Poly Prep, he sold the house, then assessed at $13,300, to John Petropoulos.
Petropoulos flipped the property three years later, selling it to Pietro and Mary Arigo and Mary’s sister Frances and brother-in-law Walter Biderman. Pietro, who immigrated from Italy during the 1920s, was a life-long Con Edison employee who died in the home in December 1972 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery. Walter Biderman died in the home in July 1975 and joined Pietro in the family plot, not far from the grave of T. B. Ackerson.
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| 1924 May 30 T.B. Ackerson Obituary |
Tom McCormack was born in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland, where as a lad he became a Franciscan Brother. He emigrated to New York in 1967 to teach at Cardinal Hayes High School, one of a number of Catholic institutions in this area where the Franciscans have served. While taking some courses at St. Francis College (naturally), Tom met Maureen Black, a Flatbush girl from a typically large Irish-American family and the beauty of Maureen’s soul convinced Tom that he might also serve the Lord as her husband. Three children later (there would eventually be seven), Tom and Maureen, together with Maureen’s parents, scraped together enough cash to buy 725 Westminster Road for $67,500.
During a recent visit to their home, familiar to all who have attended the Progressive Dinner over the past decade where they have often served as gracious “dessert hosts,” the McCormacks reminisced about their lives as teachers and 40 years on Westminster.
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| 1983 NYC Tax Photo for 725 Westminster Road |
The McCormacks waked Maureen’s father, Martin Black, in the home when he passed in 1991. Many such wakes had occurred on Westminster Road over the years but by the 1980s, they had all but disappeared. Come the morning of the funeral, however, the fully-loaded casket just would not fit through the door. As the coffin was gingerly passed through a front window, Maureen recalled her mother Edith’s oft-heard jest to Martin: “If you do that, I'll throw you out the window.”
After Edith herself passed on a decade later, amidst the sprouting of many grandchildren, the McCormacks finally accumulated the resources to renovate their yellow home. Patricia, the eldest (also a teacher) and her banker husband, Thomas Robertsen, housed Tom and Maureen in their Midwood apartment while the work commenced and when it was done, 14 months later, the Robertsons were rewarded with the ground floor apartment. Unfortunately, for an antiquarian such as I, in addition to un-yellowing the premises, the contractors also vaporized a kitchen-table sized boulder in the basement, around which T. B. Ackerson had originally built the house.
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| 2019 - 725 Westminster Road |