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| 1940 |
659 Rugby Road
By Joe Enright
In July of 1903 Captain Frederick C. Dennington, a Spanish-American War veteran, fixed his compass and stretched his chains along Rugby Road. He was standing just south of what had once been a small rural lane that served for 240 years as the southern boundary of the old town of Flatbush, or what the original Dutch settlers called Midwout. Beyond that lane a thick grove of oaks teeming with birds, known as Lott’s Woods, had beckoned generations of adventurous lads. But now the landscape was being rapidly transformed. The lane, Foster Avenue, had recently been enlarged to an 80-foot wide thoroughfare and the trees and brush of the woodland had been leveled, with all the branches and stumps buried in the middle of rectangular blocks of empty land which right now needed the services of a City Surveyor.
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| 1891 Map: Lotts Woods in Green, Stradling Rail Lines |
Captain Dennington’s view eastward from an empty Rugby Road would have encompassed two surface tracks of the Brighton Railroad and beyond that, a few wood frame homes going up near East 17th Street. He probably had an unobstructed view of an 1804 farmhouse sitting on a slight rise on Ocean Avenue, owned by Robert Van Brunt Magaw, the son of a Continental Army colonel. In 1822 Magaw’s father sold Abraham Lott 150 acres of the land surrounding his home, most of which Dennington was now surveying. The Captain must have loved what he saw because years later he died in an Ocean Avenue home, not far from that Magaw house. (The Magaw House was moved in 1916 to 1041 East 22nd Street and was landmarked in 1969.)
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| 1915: The Van Brunt Magaw Homestead |
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| 2011: Landmarked as Van Nuyse-Magaw House |
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| 1821: Magaw Van Brunt Sells Surrounding Land to Abraham Lott |
The Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company took the survey map that Dennington filed with the City in January 1904 and used it to sell his meticulously measured lots to developers. 500 of the lots were bought by John Corbin for $500,000. Since one of the Germania officers also served as an officer for Corbin’s construction company, this was something of an inside deal and helps explain why Corbin built so many houses hereabouts. We are fortunate he did, given the quality of his workmanship.
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| 1906-1908 Map: Foster to G and Argyle East Side to BRT |
In 1905 Corbin’s team finished erecting a Colonial Revival masterpiece designed by architect Benjamin F. Driesler, 110 feet south of Foster Avenue. It was one of Corbin’s “Model C” houses, crowned by a triangular gable that contains a smaller, off-center gable heading a second-floor three-sided bay window. Its back yard faced a large empty field that fronted the Brighton railroad tracks, populated only by Corbin’s sales shack, which looked much like the T. B. Ackerson sales shack that became the Brighton station house at Avenue H.
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| 1907: Upington Directory James L Crosby, Inspector, 659 Rugby Road |
The first owner of this home was James L. Crosby, an Irish inspector for the City in his early 30s who undoubtedly owed his job to Tammany Hall. His wife Catherine made dresses in the home, assisted by three other females in the household. Then the political tides shifted, and Crosby found himself a railroad clerk. In 1913, when Edward R. Strong started constructing nine beautiful low-profile bungalow homes in that empty field behind his house, Crosby fled to Freeport in Nassau County. I suspect he didn’t like all that hammering.
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| 1910 Census: 659 Rugby Road, Et Al |
The second owner was a retired fruit broker, John Relyea, and his wife, Susie. Both were born in Brooklyn in the 1840s, when Brooklyn definitely wasn’t cool. They had two sons in the clothing business, one of whom, Albert, rented an apartment nearby at 782 Westminster Road. The Relyea’s also took in a young lass, Elizabeth Tapley, who was very active in the new Wells Presbyterian Church at Argyle & Glenwood Roads. Alas, John Relyea died in the home and was waked there in October 1917. His widow sold the house months later.
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| 1920 Census: Margaret Winslow At Very Top |
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| 1920 Census Summary: Rest of Walter B. Winslow Family |
The third owners, the Winslow family, would stay 55 years, for which I am grateful since it saves me from a lot of additional typing. Soon after Walter B. Winslow, an insurance broker, and his wife Julia bought the home, they were joined by Walter’s 84-year-old aunt, Margaret E. Winslow. Margaret had devoted her life to the temperance movement and never married. She wrote many articles and books, becoming “an authoress of no small reputation” as her nephew boasted. But only two weeks after America “went dry” with the kick-off of Prohibition on January 17, 1920, Margaret kicked the bucket at 659 Rugby Road.
Perhaps the excitement was just too much. Unfortunately, a long-protracted probate battle commenced when Walter and two other nephews inherited her estate. A disappointed great niece and great nephew, living ten blocks away, just off Foster Avenue, accused Walter of fraud and claimed great auntie Margaret must have been nuts to leave them nothing. After hearing a couple of witnesses, the Surrogate judge directed the jury to deliver a verdict in favor of Walter.
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| 1922 May 12: Trial Ordered in Suggogate Court |
The Winslows had two sons, both Erasmus alums. Edward, the oldest, became an attorney and formed a partnership with his father in the Wall Street area, Winslow & Son, where the younger son, John, also worked on marine insurance matters for the firm. Both were married in Episcopal ceremonies as war clouds gathered, with John moving to a new home on Glenwood Road, while Edward and his bride took an apartment in the West Village. All of that was short-lived. Months after Pearl Harbor, Edward enlisted in the Signal Corps and John became an Army warrant officer. The Winslows survived the war but in 1950 their father, at the age of 67, became the third resident to die in their bed at 659 Rugby Road.
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| 1942: Draft Registration Card, Walter B. Winslow |
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| 1983: NYC Tax Photo of 659 Rugby Rd aka 659 E 14th St |
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| Gail |
Gail’s recent retirement has allowed her to spend more time creating ceramic artworks which have sold like hot cakes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop. But she also spends much time in community service (even though she was never sentenced to do it by a court – imagine!!)
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| Ilene |
