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| 2019: 1304 Glenwood |
As 1908 dawned, the southern corners at the intersection of Glenwood and Argyle Roads in West South Midwood were empty lots. Then the Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company gifted the southwest corner to a group that in 1913 erected the Wells Memorial Church (today’s Church of the Latter Day Saints). And in February Germania sold the southeast corner to their favorite customer, John Corbin.
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| 1908: Germania sells plot to "master builder" John Corbin |
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| 1907: Soulé Patent |
The first occupants of the new Corbin house were the Soulé Family, who moved in during that Summer. Edward Davis Soulé was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to a German immigrant barber on the same day the first battle of the Civil War erupted, at Little Bull Run. He moved to Manhattan as a young man, clerked for a clothier and married Jeannette Brandy, a native New Yorker. He founded his own shop, Schlesinger & Soulé, near Broadway & Bleecker Street, where he invented a new sort of hat for women and children, securing a patent in the year before he and Jeannette moved to Glenwood Road.
With his wife and Albert, their 26 year old son, helping out, Soulé opened a hat and clothing store on Flatbush Avenue between Newkirk and Foster. Financially secure, the Soulé’s immediately hired a succession of three maids over the next decade. Frugal, they frequently advertised the availability of a furnished room or two for lodgers. In 1917, a burglar lurking in their yard was arrested by a patrolman from the Lawrence Avenue station, and in 1919 their new store on Flatbush Avenue, across from Erasmus High School, was also burglarized, only weeks after it opened. The crime was front page news in the three major Brooklyn dailies of the time, given the brazen character of the break-in: a brick through the plate glass storefront window, followed by a complete ransacking of the shop, located next to the Flatbush Savings Bank and very near the Snyder Avenue precinct house.
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| 1910 US Census: Soulé Household Appears in Lines Labeled 59 to 62 |
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| 1912: Soulé Fined $25 for Skipping Jury Duty |
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| 1919: Ad for Soulé's New Store |
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| 1926: FDNY Responds to Fire at Soulé's Home |
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| 1919: Soulé's Store Burglarized |
In any event, the publicity might have helped because Soulé’s new venture – clothes on the 2nd floor and toys/stationery on the main floor – would become a mainstay in the heart of the Flatbush shopping district for the next 20 years. Along the way, Edward lost his wife to illness in 1931 at the age of 70 and he followed her in 1942, both dying at 1304 Glenwood Road.
Some murky events ensued involving Albert, then age 62, who inherited the house. For reasons unknown he secured a mortgage from the Ulster County Savings Bank together with Bertha, a younger woman who would feature four surnames by the end of her 90 year lifespan. The bank foreclosed on the mortgage in October 1946 and the house was bought by Edmund Preiss, a 34 year old attorney residing nearby in a $55 a month apartment at 832 Ocean Avenue with his wife of seven years, Pearl, a statistician.
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1946: Soulé's Son Loses House
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Preiss arrived with his family in New York from Eastern Europe in the wake of the World War at the age of nine. He became active in Jewish charities in high school and with the arrival of World War Two, he enlisted in the Army. After his discharge, he successfully defended a G.I. locked up for engaging in Sgt. Bilko-like profiteering in Germany, a story widely reported by the Associated Press. Settling in on Glenwood Road with Pearl, Preiss became a realty attorney and by 1964, was serving as a Small Claims Court Arbitrator in Brooklyn, honored by the UJA that year for his decades-long volunteerism. Thereafter Preiss became the legal brains for the Computer Diode Corp, which issued an Initial Public Offering in 1967 and promptly patented a solid state temperature measuring device. Edmund & Pearl relocated to Sutton Place and in 1975 sold the house to native Brooklynites: Nicholas Clemente and his wife, Ann Marie.
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| 1940: NYC Tax Photo |
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| Soulé Plot in Green-Wood Cemetery |
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| 1940 Draft Card for Edmund Preiss |
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| 2007: Jacket for Clemente Novel |
Clemente was a Korean War vet who served as a legal officer with the 101st Airborne Division. He earned his law degree thereafter with help from the GI Bill. In 1980, after working as the county attorney for the Democratic Party, he was elected as a judge to Brooklyn Supreme Court where he served for 21 years. After relocating to Sullivan County, he served three more years on the bench there and wrote novels about medical malpractice – his area of expertise on the bench – before passing away in 2009.
In 2002, the Clementes sold the house to Jerome and Maureen Weiner of Gerritsen Beach. According to neighbors, Jerome spent most of his time on Glenwood operating a printing press in the basement, churning out documents for late-night visitors, while Maureen tended to gardens in the side yard. With property values exploding, the Weiners sold their house in 2009 to Christopher & Elizabeth Speed for $999,999. (Jerome and Maureen passed away in 2014 and 2020, respectively.)
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| 1983 NYC Tax Photo |
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| 1959: Looking East from 1304 Glenwood |
With a B.S. in biochemistry and a Masters degree in human nutrition from the University of Sydney
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2009
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“down under,” Chris was a consultant to an array of food, wine, nutrition, health-wellness and public relations companies during his West Midwood days, while Elizabeth, a graduate of U Mass Medical School in Worcester, after completing her residency, became a faculty member at NYU based at Bellevue, and then moved to Methodist Hospital in the Slope as the Director of Patient Safety to be closer to home.
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| Chris & Liz, 9/1/2015 |
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| Declan & Maeve on the Porch, 9/1/2015 |
In the early morning of Thursday , September 3, 2015, just after 4:00am, Chris, Elizabeth and their children, Declan and Maeve (ages 8 and 6), were awakened by a commotion on Glenwood Road. A fire had quickly erupted in the front of the building next door at 1312 Glenwood, engulfing that house and eventually spreading to the upper floors of the Speeds’ house. There were no injuries, but some harrowing memories for all involved. The family was forced to abandon their home and belongings and relocated to Park Slope for the next two years. After Herculean battles with the Buildings Department and their insurance company, the Speeds rebuilt their home and returned in 2018.
Worn out by their struggles, and anxious to take advantage of opportunities in Liz’s native Massachusetts, the Speeds relocated to Cape Cod. Chris and Liz look back now with fondness for the diversity and closeness of the neighborhood, their kids thriving at PS 217, and concluded: “There will always be a special place in our hearts for 1304 Glenwood Road. It's where we started our family and we can't think of anywhere else in New York we would live other than West Midwood.”
In June of 2019 they sold their home to Robert Pavlacka and Jessica Pizzo, who arrived from Manhattan with 9-month old Vera in tow.
Jessica grew up in East Rockaway, Nassau County, and Bob in the Poughkeepsie area. Jess, an NYU (BA) and Columbia (MBA) grad, is a partner in a private equity growth investment firm which infuses needed capital into small companies. Jess will be presenting at a prestigious private equity forum on Artificial Intelligence later this year.
Bob has a doctorate in Materials Science from Penn State, worked for many years at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, is an adjunct professor of physics, and owns a patent for a chemical synthesis that…well, it’s complicated, OK? He’s also continuing post-Doctoral work in Dad-ology when caring for Vera – and Lucie, who arrived in 2021.
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| Jess & Bob |
Jess met Bob when he crashed her 30th birthday party. Marriage and a move to a Hell's Kitchen apartment ensued. In January 2016 they got lost on the way to a friend’s place in Kensington and were awed by the beautiful houses and tree-lined streets of Victorian Flatbush. “Bob is more of a suburbs/trees guy and I’m a city girl, so this area seemed like the perfect compromise.” Three and a half years of scouring listings from the Park to the LIRR cut followed before 1304 Glenwood came on the market.
“We felt that ‘special’ connection to the property as soon as we toured it,” Jess and Bob explained. “We both feel incredibly lucky to have found this place. Between the beautiful mall we see out of our front windows, to Jung's floral wonderland next door, it feels like living in a secret garden in the middle of New York City. I don’t think we fully appreciated the sense of community that we were walking into, either. Everyone knows each other and stops to say hi, kids play together on front lawns until the streetlights come on, we can just walk out into our backyard and people will stop by to say hello, share a juice box, jump on our trampoline, stay for a quick BBQ…It’s been such an amazing surprise. Vera is fully convinced that she is the mayor of this quarter mile square, that she has dozens of adopted grandparents and aunts and uncles, little cousins to play with. We’re very grateful for the community that’s been built here over the decades and we look forward to carrying that torch forward.”
For the first one hundred odd years of its existence, 1304 Glenwood Road never heard the cries of babies or the laughter of children at play. Declan, Maeve, Vera and Lucie changed all that. Personally, I'm grateful Bob & Jess got lost seven years ago. Otherwise, I'd be missing all the joyful sounds erupting from their home that cheer me as I pass by.
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| 2023: Solar Panels Added by Bob & Jess |
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