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| 1940: 726 Argyle Rd (NYC Property Tax Photo) |
On Thanksgiving eve in 1905 the high and mighty of Flatbush gathered to celebrate the communities of wood frame houses created over the previous ten years, stretching for two miles from Prospect Park south to the LIRR tracks near Avenue H. Their meeting place was the opulent Midwood Club, on Flatbush Avenue near Clarendon Road.
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| 1900: The Midwood Club |
Over oysters, salmon, pumpkin pie, coffee and cigars (the menu card featured a photo of the new Erasmus Hall building), speakers rose to urge improvements for Flatbush: the Brighton line was a mess; a new public hall was needed; a map should be printed showing Flatbush was no longer “a primitive place of woods and wild animals;” and a law should be passed to “make it as easy for men to vote as it is to talk.” Not women, though. This was, after all, a males-only dinner.
One speaker, however, had a much loftier desire. Edward Cragen of Marlborough Road opined, “If I had my way, I would make this a paradise for children, with all kinds of playgrounds. And I would make it a paradise of birds and flowers – flowers and birds all the time! – and everywhere there should be fragrance and song.” Judging from the fauna and flora that surround us and the feedback of generations of children reared here, I would venture to say that: 1) Mr. Cragen’s wishes came true; and 2) his whiskey supply was probably cut off after he sat down.
In attendance were “the fathers” of Vanderveer Park (Henry Meyer), Ditmas Park (Louis Pounds), Beverly Square Fiske Terrace & Westminster Road in West Midwood (T. B. Ackrson), and Midwood Park & West Midwood (John Corbin). Also celebrating was John Egolf, a 25-year-old branch manager with the Flatbush Trust Company who, two months earlier, had purchased a new home at 726 Argyle Road from the John R. Corbin Company. It was one of the seventy-odd homes erected here by “the master builder.”
1905: Midwood Club
Despite their relative wealth, John and Ruth Egolf were not immune from disease and injury. One of their daughters died in the spring of 1911 at the age of five after a brief illness, and another daughter passed away from spinal meningitis contracted at a summer camp. But three other children survived to enjoy the morning bird-songs here until 1919, when John and Ruth moved the family to New Jersey so John could take a more prestigious banking job.
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| 1911-1984 The Egolf Plot in Green-Wood Cemetery |
The house then passed to the MacIntosh family, who had been living only a short stroll away on Wellington Court. Walter Leaman MacIntosh was born in Provincetown, Cape Cod, in 1882 to a Scottish sea captain. He graduated with an engineering degree from Pratt Institute in 1901 and was employed by Consolidated Edison (and its forebear incarnations) for the rest of his life. In 1906 he married Mabel Thurber, a public school teacher, in a ceremony at the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of North Gowanus on 12th Street that the Brooklyn Standard Union described as “one of the largest in South Brooklyn.” But soon after the birth of their first child, Mabel passed away.
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| 1910: US Census 726 Argyle Rd & Neighbors |
Two years later Walter married Anna Nordenholt, seven years his younger, and they bought a house at 24 Wellington Court, where Walter’s second daughter was born. Anna apparently came with baggage in the form of her parents, George & Katherina Nordenholt, who would live with them in West Midwood for more than a decade.
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| 1920: US Census 726 Argyle Rd & Neighbors |
Anna’s father George Nordenholt was twelve in 1873, when he emigrated from Germany with his family. He became an exporter and amateur archaeologist who collected Mexican artifacts, and upon settling in Flatbush he became a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1901, he and seven other men incorporated Almada Refineries, proposing to build the largest sugar refinery in Mexico with $3.5 million of 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 seen visiting Diaz’s finance minister, Jose Yves Limantour, at the Plaza Hotel.
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| 1930: US Census 726 Argyle Rd & Neighbors |
Limantour was then meeting with J.P. Morgan, whose interest was keen given the billions of American capital invested in Mexico. Although Nordenholt was described as “an intimate friend” of the Mexican VP, Ramon Corral, and was also friendly with Diaz and some of his military leaders, it appears Nordenholt never profited from his Mexico ventures and depended on his daughter for lodging thereafter, until January 1930, when he died at 726 Argyle Road of “a heart problem.”
In 1933, Walter, Anna, their three children and Anna’s mother and sister relocated to Scarsdale. Walter died three years later during a trip to Chicago on behalf of Con Edison. Walter sold the house to Philip H. Hardie, a mechanical engineer at Con Edison, and presumably an associate of MacIntosh. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1901, Hardie had been renting a house near Marine Park, and was an Alf Landon Republican active in the Young Men’s Chamber of Commerce and soon thereafter the Brooklyn Civic Council. In their decade as West Midwood residents, they were active in the community. Philip’s wife Emily was a leading member of a church choral group and along with “Mrs. Ralph C. Jones” of 741 Westminster Rd, ran a bridge club that sometimes met in the Wells Presbyterian Church at Argyle & Glenwood Roads (Mrs. Hardie’s and Mrs. Jones’ first names were never identified in dozens of news articles referencing them, stirring echos of James Brown's "This Is A Man's Man's Man's Man's Man's Man's Etc. World").
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| 1940: US Census 726 Argyle Rd & Neighbors |
The Hardies had two children while they lived at 726 Argyle Road. They also had boarders: John A. Loehmer and his father. John enlisted in the US Army in 1942 at the age of 21 and served in the 5th Army Air Force. In March 1944, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the South Pacific. In December 1944, Philip Hardie sold the home to the Carroll family and the Hardies moved with their two children to Garden City. Emily died in 1979 and Philip followed her in 1996 after moving home to Auburn, Alabama.
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| 1996 Philip H Hardie Grave, Auburn |
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| 1983: NYC Property Tax Photo |
Amnon Zvi Abramowitz graduated from Albert Einstein Medical College in 1969 two years after his Bronx marriage to Heni Bloch (both born in 1945), and became a successful cardiologist. His father, Hayim, was a founder and/or principal of three Conservative Jewish schools in Midwood. In August 1997, after two and a half decades and raising four children on Argyle Road, the Abramowitzs sold the building on Ocean Avenue where Amnon had practiced for many years, and two months later relocated to Israel, where three of their four children and multiple grandchildren are living. Just after Heni and the younger three children boarded the plane to Tel Aviv, Amnon closed the deal to sell the house at 726 Argyle Road to Tori and David Rosen.
David Rosen and Tori Potts Beattie married in 1986. David, an anthropologist who was also a practicing attorney, is a professor of anthropology and law at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and is currently interim dean of the faculty there. He has written several books about child soldiers (Armies of the Young and Child Soldiers – a third is nearing completion).
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| 2005: Arnies of the Young |
