The Stories Your House Could Tell: 1428 Glenwood Road

1428 Glenwood Road was constructed in 1907 by John R. Corbin and its first owners were members of the Lefferts family, descendants of an original 17th-century Dutch settler who arrived a few thousand years after the Lenape tribe first roamed this woodland. Charles A. Lefferts and his family occupied the home for 40 long years – after generating some juicy scandals in northern Brooklyn – in sharp contrast to the sedate James Lefferts branch of the family in northern Flatbush who were then selling off most of the land that became fancy-schmancy Lefferts Manor.

1906 Sep 17: "Highest Ground in Flatbush" - Brooklyn Daily Eagle Ad. Argyle Heights, anyone?
NB: West Midwood was known as "West South Midwood" until the late 1950s.

In the first decade of Charles A. Lefferts life, while New Mexico, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah became US territories, his father John opened a store not far from the Brooklyn Navy Yard at 120 Sands Street, plying his trade as an undertaker, coffin maker, carpenter, and occasional ironman. By 1860, Charles, age 20, had become a married machinist and in quick succession, his wife Elizabeth

bore him two children. On March 11, 1865, as the Civil War still raged, Charles bought his way out of the draft, and when Lincoln was assassinated a month later, his parents donated money to the Lincoln

Monument Fund.

1854: Lefferts' Father was an undertaker.

Soon thereafter, Charles’s father joined Abe in the Great Beyond. And by the summer of 1866, his mother’s inheritance of six properties on Nassau & Jay Streets were taken in foreclosure, forcing her to take lodging in a Dekalb Avenue boarding house where she would soon die. Things got worse on May 1, 1867, when Charles was arrested for burglarizing his employer’s shop on Nassau Street, taking $60. A month later his third child was born, followed by a fourth in 1869. Despite the turmoil, the growing family survived thanks to Charles’s hard work.

1867 May 1: Charles A. Lefferts Busted

Flash forward to 1898: the oldest child, Charles, Jr., age 36, is now working in his father’s new ironworks foundry on 2nd Avenue near 11th Street in Gowanus. But Junior is unhappy, accusing his wife Emma of adultery with young men. Reporters gather. Emma admits to liking a good time and having feelings “younger than my years,” but counters that Junior is withholding support. Emma gets a warrant and Junior flees to Omaha to get a divorce. But a Brooklyn court refuses to recognize it.

1898 Apr 14: Brooklyn Citizen

1907 Jul 2: NY Sun

Many headlines later, Junior finally pays Emma what he owes and they separate, just as their 19-year-old daughter, also named Emma, elopes with a dance hall guy named Teddy Smith. Yikes. In 1908 the growth of the Charles A. Lefferts Iron Columns and Structural Castings Company finally allows Charles to buy his first home: 1428 Glenwood Road. Now a respected businessman, Charles serves on multiple committees for the Allied Boards of Trade.

1910 US Census. From 1907 until 1950, the house number was 1426, and thereafter, 1428.

But in 1916, Junior, still separated from Emma, dies of pneumonia on Glenwood Road, and Charles Sr. joins him in 1918 after succumbing to heat exhaustion. The foundry is inherited by son-in-law John Jung and the house by Charles’s widow Elizabeth until she passes in 1929, leaving the property to her daughter Jennie. When John Jung dies in 1947, long after the ironworks have been auctioned off, Jennie and her chemist son Elbert, sell the home to the Liroff family.

1940 NYC Tax Photo. Within the next 10 years it would be extensively remodeled.

1983: Glenwood footbridge partially demolished

1940: Bridge Stairway (L)

Elliot Liroff, his spouse Evelyn, a daughter, two sons, and a live-in maid were occupying the house as of the 1950 Census. Elliot, the son of Russian immigrants, became an attorney in 1930 but twenty years later he was running a printing business. Perhaps Elliot was responsible for the massive reconstruction of the building during this timeframe, or perhaps a fire had intervened. There are no records to instruct us. But we do know the Liroffs, formerly of Ditmas Park East, were also related to the Abrams family who then owned 30 Dekoven Court. The next owner, Jacob Millstein, was also a lawyer, and he immigrated from Russia as a child. In 1933, his fiancé was killed in a car crash on Long Island and a few years later he married another Russian immigrant, Sonya. They had two teenage boys when they moved into 1428 Glenwood. Coincidentally, their prior address was 57 Lefferts Avenue in humdrum northern Flatbush. In 1966 the Millsteins sold the house to Martin & Frances Bandler, living in an apartment at 91 Ocean Parkway in southern Flatbush, the best part.

2009: Dr. Martin Bandler saw patients at a
President St Park Slope office for decades

In Vienna in 1930, Martin Bandler was born to Polish parents while Frances Feffer, three years later, was born in Paris to Polish immigrants. After the Anschluss, Martin’s father, Szulim, a physician, was shipped to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany because he was Jewish. But Martin’s mother, Sara, scraped together every penny she could find to personally bribe the monster Adolph Eichmann, thereby securing her husband’s release before the mass executions began. The three Bandlers then trekked through Austria, Italy, Vichy France, a fraught descent across the Pyrenees into Spain, and on to Lisbon, Portugal.

1941 Jun 12: Martin Bandler, age 10, departs Lisbon on board the SS Serpa Pinto.

There, on June 12, 1941, the exhausted Bandlers boarded the SS Serpa Pinto, along with hundreds of other Jewish refugees bound for America, including the future Lubavitch Grand Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.and the eventual Fillmore East & West/rock music impresario, Bill Graham.

Meanwhile, Frances’ father had joined the French army but was swallowed up by the German advance into Paris. On July 16, 1942, the French police, on behalf of the occupying Germans, rounded up 13,000 Parisian Jews, including 4,000 children. Almost all were transported to Auschwitz and executed, among them Frances’ mother. Miraculously, Frances had been left in the care of family friends and then hidden by nuns in a Paris convent. As the war ended, she was reunited with her POW-liberated father and in 1950 she came to America to be cared for by relatives in New York. They encouraged her to become a nurse, and she did, working at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital where she met…Dr. Martin Bandler!

Frances Feffer Bandler & Dr. Martin Bandler

They were married in 1958: 3 children and 11 grandchildren ensued. Ruth Waide, their youngest, recounted her father’s professional life: a Lieutenant and physician-in-charge in the US Navy, a published medical scholar, a clinical instructor at SUNY Downstate, and a Chief of Gastroenterology: “But mostly, he did what he loved, a healer for 63 years, seeing patients up until the day before he collapsed in 2017.”

Ruth owned a home on Waldorf Court in Fiske Terrace for many years but returned to Glenwood Road with the two youngest of her four children as her mother’s health deteriorated. When Frances passed away in September, Ruth, in a moving eulogy, described her mother as a giver – to patients, to neighbors and, ever and always, to family. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree in this instance since Ruth has toiled most of her life in schools--the Luria Academy and Yeshiva of Flatbush High School, where she’s served 30 years as Director of Student Support Services.

Looking back on her West Midwood years, Ruth recalled the Glenwood Road footbridge of her youth (allowing her to quickly connect with pals on the other side of the tracks, until bottle-throwing varmints led to its dismantlement), and especially the wonderful memories of the times she’s shared with family and so many neighbors who became dear friends. “It’s been like living in a small town,” she smiled.