How John Corbin Built His Houses

1908 Apr 12 - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Brooklyn-born John R. Corbin (1870-1937) was truly a pioneer among American manufacturers,  fashioning complete, precut houses in his factories for onsite assembly. He erected 1,000 buildings in southern Brooklyn between 1902-1910, including most of the one family homes in West Midwood & Midwood Park.

In addition to his work in Victorian Flatbush and points south, Corbin’s company also built attached brick row houses (I grew up in one near the intersection of Flatbush and Rogers Avenue), but here we will discuss only his wood-frame structures, which, almost 120 years later, continue to thrive…with the proper love and care, of course.

In 1908 & 1909 Corbin  published ads in the daily press providing the most thorough descriptions extant of how he built his houses. To begin, the John R. Corbin Company would buy vacant plots from developers. Given that the vice president of his company, John F. Dreyer, was also the vice president of Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company, it is not surprising that Corbin bought over 500 empty building plots from Germania, most of them in the Flatbush-Flatlands area. After Germania terraformed the land, removing trees, flattening the ground, creating roads, sidewalks and laying down gas, electrical, water and sewer lines to the plots, a City surveyor would map each plot created. Corbin and/or his architect – often Benjamin Driesler, whose fame would outstrip Corbin as the decades passed – would then file a “New Building” application in the Brooklyn office of the New York City Buildings Department. The paperwork would identify the plot on the surveyor’s map (since an address had yet to be assigned, it would indicate the exact distance from the nearest cross-street) and the footprint of the building, with diagrams for the structure and the anticipated cost of construction. Corbin and Driesler designed five basic house models, with a half-dozen interior/exterior options for each that could be selected by the buyer.

1909 Nov 21 - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

As the NYC Landmarks Commission pointed out in its marvelous report designating Fiske Terrace and Midwood Park, it is difficult to determine how much the design of these homes owe to the architect or to the builder: “[Architects] may have done little more than file already-prepared plans obtained from a book or [from] Ackerson [and] Corbin...Also puzzling is the relationship between architect Benjamin Driesler and the John R. Corbin Company. [S]ome new-building records for standard Corbin houses credit Driesler as the architect; the records for many houses constructed later by Corbin, but in exactly the same models, list the John R. Corbin Company as the architect. It is unknown whether Driesler was filing plans prepared by the company, or whether these houses were original Driesler designs that the company might have later acquired the rights to, and filed for on its own.”

1908 John Corbin

              1908 Benjamin Driesler

1908 Henry Meyer, Germania Pres.

         1914 Corbin (L) & Meyer (R)

Corbin and Driesler’s designs had to adhere to strict covenants instituted by the Germania company for all of the South Midwood expanse stretching from Flatbush to Coney Island Avenues. They prohibited any structures higher than three stories and required “a roof of the character known as a peak roof such as is used in the construction of Queen Anne or Colonial cottages.” Lawns were mandated by rules setting minimum lot sizes at 40 by 100 feet; front fences were prohibited, as well as closed-board fences and fences higher than four feet at the parcels’ sides and rears; and houses had to be less than 30 feet in width “exclusive of the eaves of the roof [and] bay windows.” These restrictions remained in force until 1940, when in West South Midwood and elsewhere, homeowner associations voted to let them lapse in favor of voluntary compliance.

Per the Landmarks report again: "[D]esigning and constructing suburban architecture during this period was largely a matter of ‘embellishing simple forms’ with ornament drawing upon a variety of styles, including the Colonial Revival, Arts and Crafts, and the fading Queen Anne. Their work often exhibited a whimsical eclecticism, with multiple styles freely mixed on the same house in a decidedly non-Academic way, and in a romantic manner inspired by the picturesque architecture of the previous era. Frequently defying traditional style classifications, the residences created by these architects and companies have been termed ‘Builder style’ houses…While not all of the houses in Fiske Terrace-Midwood Park fit this description, many do, particularly those constructed by the John R. Corbin Company.”

Corbin's houses incorporated three new styles (Foursquare, Homestead Temple, Bungalow) which had fully emerged at the turn of the century, along with older styles (Queen Anne, Colonial Revival and Dutch Colonial Revival). Many of them featured gambrel roofs (roofs with a shallower slope above a steeper one) and gables. Although Corbin constructed most of the homes along Argyle and Rugby Roads, no two houses look alike. This is because of his use of models which altered the style for each. About the only thing these houses had in common, aside from being free-standing wooden frames sitting on massive, rough-faced concrete block foundations, were their rectangular footprints, peaked roofs, projecting bays on three sides and their simple elegance.

Once the new building was approved by the City, the plot would be excavated to a depth of about eleven feet. Then a foot of Portland cement would be poured to form the foundation for the main structure – no foundation would exist for the front/back porches or the bays on each side. Solid concrete blocks would then be stacked on the perimeter of the cement floor to a height that reached grade level. Thereafter, hollow concrete blocks would be laid above grade for an additional three feet – to the level of the cellar’s roof.  All the blocks would be set in place with Portland cement mortar and neatly pointed inside to waterproof the basement.

1908 Brochure

Next, well-seasoned yellow pine lumber – cut, dressed and prepared in Corbin’s mill – would be carted to the lot. Corbin’s mill was part of an enormous plant he built in 1904 at Avenue I and Flatbush Avenue, on a five hundred foot long tract alongside what was then Manhattan Beach Railroad, a locomotive-powered surface line (now the Bay Ridge freight line of the LIRR) where he employed 175 workers. The mill itself was 100x200 feet and used new electric gizmos (a technical term) to do all the framing and cutting.

None of the homes in the neighborhood were built with garages - it was that brief interregnum in urban history when horse transport had given way to electrified trains for the transit of the masses. Then on December 1, 1913, Henry Ford’s assembly line started rolling, everybody wanted a car, and garages became abundant here, 1914-1917.

By 1908 almost all of Corbin’s homes north of Avenue H had already been erected and that LIRR railbed was in the process of being depressed fifteen feet below street level. Corbin then relocated his plant to an even larger factory located on the site of what is now Kings Plaza. This waterfront location enabled him to ship his pre-fab lumber to Fire Island where he was about to start a new development venture.

1910 Apr 24 - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Prior to the below grade submersion of the Manhattan Beach Railroad, which had increasingly morphed its revenue stream from excursion passengers to freight, did Corbin used those rails to “cart” his lumber? He paid the Railroad to lay down tracks that connected his plant to the mainline, allowing him to receive shipments of wood, iron, stone and brick, but did he use the line to transport his factory-processed material less than a mile to the dead ends south of Avenue H, extending from East 19th to East 13th Streets, thence to be placed on horse-drawn carts to each lot? Prior to 1907, the railroad sat on a small embankment which might have made off-loading more difficult. We may never know because incredibly, the only photographic evidence of the actual construction of homes here consists of a T. B. Ackerson sales booklet and horse-drawn trucks were the only conveyance depicted. 

1906 LIRR at Coney Island Ave trolley crossing looking NE to West South Midwood

1907 Jul 30 Corbin Houses under construction on Waldorf Ct & Glenwood Rd bordering Brighton "Dig" - seen from Fiske Terrace at Wellington Ct looking NW

In any event, the excavation, preparation and assembly work at the lots were carried out by day laborers. It was not uncommon for them to sweep building detritus into nooks and crannies, as many a homeowner has discovered when examining the area beneath their porches. (When I found the bottom of my projecting bay window sagging last year, I hired a handyman to investigate and eighty pounds of masonry debris came pouring out.) 

Corbin bragged that all the fittings of the house were carefully machined “to ensure accuracy when assembled on site.” He claimed that connecting the pieces via groove and tenon work reduced the volume of nails needed, creating “a neater finish and greater rigidity.”

The window frames featured pulley stiles and a sub-sill, tongue and grooved into the outside casing and the sill respectively, “preventing water from entering underneath the sheathing.” The trim consisted of hardwood cabinet finish, joined by the ancient but efficient mortise and tenon method, and the doors were hardwood veneered. The beams were all one size, “shaped up to insure uniformity in applying the lath, producing a smooth even ceiling, preventing cracking.”

The Corbin homes in West South Midwood, as our neighborhood was then called, did not have as many wrap-around porches and some of the other fancier exterior embellishments that would be found in Midwood Park in the following years. This was likely due to some smaller plots here and perhaps the Recession of 1902-1904 impelled more modest models.

1906 Feb 27 Patented Door Jamb

Corbin was not a public person, preferring to let his ads, salespersons and other company representatives do the talking. He was most at home in his factory. In addition to his craftsmanship (he was a trained carpenter and studied architecture), Corbin was something of an inventor.  In 1906 he patented an adjustable door jamb and a 1908 profile of his plant chirped that his ability to churn out 1,000 houses annually “is made possible by the use of special machinery and tools, many of the appliances being the invention of Mr. Corbin.” (Source: Flatbush of To-Day, 1908, page 104.)

Corbin’s factory along Mill Creek at the foot of Flatbush Avenue in Flatlands employed almost 400 workers as he built most of East Midwood (1909) and Slocum Park (1910), then shipped 100 bungalow cottages to Saltaire, Fire Island (1911). By 1912 he was active in Kew Gardens and Jamaica Estates, where he incorporated “pneumatic cleaners, laundry chutes, cold storage and other up-to-date devices.” But alas and alack, Corbin had over-expanded, got into financial difficulty, and went bankrupt. In May 1913, he was forced to sell his plant. Ironically it was bought by Germania Realty. 

1913 Germania Realty sells Corbin's plant shortly after buying it

1913 was also the year that Sears produced an expanded catalog showing over 200 models for mail order homes, a dramatic expansion from the 22 styles it began selling in 1908. To build a 2-story, 8 room house for $1,057, Sears would send: mill work, ceiling, siding, flooring, finishing lumber, building paper, pipe, gutter, sash weights, hardware, painting material, lumber, lath and shingles. However they would not supply labor, cement, brick, plaster and stone, which Sears estimated would cost their customer an additional thousand dollars - if they got “a fair price.” Also not included: Warm Air Heating Plant ($90), Steam Heating Plant ($191), Hot Water Heating ($243), Complete Plumbing ($120), Acetylene Lighting ($48).  Certainly cheaper than what Corbin was charging 8 years earlier, but then again, Corbin offered so much more: soup-to-nuts construction, gas, water, sewer and electric connections, wainscoting, a basement toilet, upper floor bathtubs, and on and on.

1913 Sears No 114 Modern Home Catalog

Of interest, the Sears materials would be sent by rail in two shipments and the customer would have to meet the freight trains with a wagon when its contents were unloaded from a boxcar. Sears shipped lumber, nails and outside frames first, so that “you can get the building enclosed and the roof on, giving you someplace to protect the 2nd shipment from the weather when it arrived a sufficient time later,” to wit: the inside finish, doors, flooring, etc. One imagines shipping all the materials at once would probably kill any draft animal pulling it!

As for Corbin, he declared bankruptcy in 1917 and retired to an Ulster County farm, memorialized in Brooklyn only by a small lane behind the three story brick building he constructed at the SE corner of Foster & Coney Island Avenue where a street sign, thanks to West Midwood’s Mohammed Chaudry, proclaims: “Corbin Court.”