The Stories Your House Could Tell: 1435 Glenwood Road

1898: From Woods to Suburbs

In December 1898 the Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company bought 100 acres of woodland from the John Z. Lott Family, descendants of a Huguenot Dutchman who arrived in the mid-17^th century and settled in the little village of Midwood (Midwout or “middle woods”) up near the Dutch Reformed Church in what would become the town center of Flatbush (Vlackebos or “wooded plain”). The huge tract that Germania bought extended from Flatbush to Coney Island Avenues along Foster Avenue and they called all of it “South Midwood” because Foster Avenue formed the southern town line of old Flatbush, and having wood in the name sounded better than bush. Indeed, the nearby train stop at Newkirk Avenue, then called Parkville, would be temporarily rebranded as “South Midwood” from 1903 to 1907. On the western end of this expanse, our area would be dubbed West South Midwood, mercifully shortened in the 1950s when the “South” was booted from our name.

Little appreciated today were the design decisions by Germania’s President, Henry Meyers, one of the four German Americans who operated the company. A Republican candidate for Mayor of Brooklyn defeated by the Democratic machine in 1891, Henry was a Williamsburg grocer before he turned to real estate and moved into a big house at 2509 Newkirk Avenue (long since demolished for a large apartment building). Perhaps his immersion in Flatbush social life impelled him to lay out the Flatbush Malls here not only as a bookend to the Albemarle Malls in Prospect Park South, but to outdo their scope: He extended them along Glenwood Road from Coney to Flatbush, separated only by the surface Brighton trolley line, and created other malls along East 17^th Street and Avenue H. [Sadly, the malls along H and east of Bedford were lost to the automobile nazis, predecessors of today’s bicycle nazis.] Meyer also decided not to continue E. 15^th St. (Marlborough Road) and E. 16^th St. (once called Buckminster Road) into the woods south of Foster.

1903 Brighton RR Looking North from Foster Avenue

That was bold because ever since the 1875 creation of a street grid for southern Kings County, developers were required to adhere to the lines drawn on that map. But Meyer had political clout. He realized that adhering to those map lines would have resulted in lots only 75 feet deep, leaving little room for front/back yards and sidewalks. Take a walk down the east side of Marlborough between Newkirk and Cortelyou – make sure you don’t bump into a light pole – and you’ll see what was avoided here.

Instead, in September 1900 Meyer successfully petitioned the NYC Board of Public Improvements to “alter the map of the City of New York by the closing of East 15^th and East 16^th Streets from Foster Avenue to Avenue H and the laying out and grading of Dekoven Court, Waldorf Court, Wellington Court…and Irvington Place.” These cul-de-sacs also served to increase visibility for the Brighton line, electrified in late 1899. The trains, one to three cars running on two tracks with headways of a half hour, were quite genteel compared to their noisy steam locomotive predecessors. It was a welcome feature of this suburban landscape, not a bug. But Henry failed to anticipate the momentous changes that would shortly ensue.

1900 Sep 25 - Mapping of “The “Courts”

1905 Dec 18 Looking northeast from Foster Aveacross the Brighton tracks at the "South Midwood" station house & BRT workman's cabin

In 1900 the mighty Pennsylvania RR (think “Penn Station”) bought the Long Island RR and ramped up its freight revenue by floating rail barges from their continental terminal outside Jersey City to the rail dock at 65^th Street in Bay Ridge. That meant many more freight trains rumbling across the LIRR’s 15 miles of Brooklyn tracks to destinations north and east. And with travel between Manhattan and the shore becoming faster and more convenient – in 1895 the Brighton line finally connected to cars over the Brooklyn Bridge – the trolleys ran more frequently, stopping for yet more grade crossings, not to mention the accidents and fatalities. And so, as development expanded, delays mounted. There were about two dozen grade crossings from Albemarle Road to Brighton Beach but for the Penn RR there were more than 50 on its Bay Ridge and Manhattan Beach spurs. They were a major catalyst for the State Legislature’s creation of the Brooklyn Grade Crossing Commission in 1903.

1901 Map of LIRR in Brooklyn After Merger with the Pennsylvania RR

There were only two ways to eliminate the crossings: go high or go low. The Brighton line, owned by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), which controlled most of the borough’s rail lines, wanted to build an elevated structure through Victorian Flatbush, all the way to the sea – the cheapest solution. Imagine today’s Culver line on McDonald Avenue with trains above and traffic below. Yikes! The aroused citizenry of Ditmas Park, the Beverley Squares and Prospect Park South all said: EL NO! Fortunately, the Commission was headed by a Flatbush resident who negotiated a compromise: landowners abutting the railroad would give up two feet of their surface property (and a few more feet below ground) to allow concave retaining walls, and the depressed track bed would be expanded to insert two middle express tracks, with the catenary wires and poles removed in favor of electrified third rails.

1905 Dec 5: Camera looks northwest from Brighton tracks, near where dig will begin at Glenwood Road, to John R. Corbin's sales office, located on Foster Ave. See ad below.

1904 Dec 17: John Corbin Ad

1906: Camera looking north from just beyond Glenwood Rd. On left a new retaining wall is installed. Beyond the worker in a white shirt is a house on DeKoven Ct being built; beyond that is Corbin's sales shack, where Marlborough Court would be built

The dig began in August 1904 on the Penn/LIRR tracks but the BRT didn’t start its 15-foot-deep excavation until December 1905. By that time most of the houses in West Midwood had been built but the ones alongside the railroad were started and finished last. A glimpse of the photos taken by the BRT to document the work of contractors would explain why: it was an absolute noisy, dirty mess until the Fall of 1907 when the bulk of the activity was concentrated in creating new station houses and the embankments south of Avenue H.

1906 Apr 24: Looking northeast from DeKoven Ct past Foster Avenue .

It’s hard to believe, but to maintain its revenue stream for stockholders, the BRT continued to operate its rail line during the entire three year project. While construction took place on the west side, trains would run on the east side and vice versa. Thus, tracks were constantly being moved on the temporary surface level to accommodate construction and residents complained they were so close, they could have conversations out their windows with the riders. This general bedlam accounts for why the houses along the tracks were also the last to sell.

1907 Jul 30: Looking nortwest from Fiske Terrace at houses nearing completion across tracks on Waldorf Ct and Glenwood Rd

And where did the Brighton dig begin? On the west side of Glenwood Road, right where the Finkel Family has lived since 1979...

1905 Dec 28: Dig began this day to left of the camera's position, abreast of Glenwood

The first owner was the man who designed the house, the architect Benjamin Driesler, who bought it from the builder, John Corbin, in April 1908 for $10,000. For Driesler, it might have been an investment since the Upington Brooklyn Directory and other sources listed a house on New York Avenue in Vanderveer Park as his residence.

1908: Driesler profiled in "Flatbush of Today" by Herbert Foster Gunnison

While working out of a storefront on Flatbush Avenue next to what is today our Council Member Farah Louis’s district office, Driesler designed over a thousand homes in Flatbush and provided Corbin with most of the plans he used for the one family houses in West Midwood and Midwood Park. It’s also possible that in the Fall of 1908 Driesler began using his house as a drafting studio, given its location at the foot of the new Glenwood Road pedestrian bridge over the Brighton tracks allowing instant access to Midwood Park and Fiske Terrace.

1915 NY State Census of 1435 Glenwood

The 1910 Census found the house unoccupied but shortly thereafter it appears to have passed to an Ohio widow, Edna Browning Bruce, and her teenage daughter Dorothy. In 1914, then 38 years old, Edna married Samuel G. Munn, a stockbroker six years her senior who promptly died, apparently leaving her a healthy estate. Meanwhile, in 1916 Dorothy wed a local lad, John L. Hammer, an insurance broker who lived with his wealthy father, William Lockwood Hammer, an executive with the Cunard Line, on East 19^th Street in Fiske Terrace.

1895: Fiske Mansion Built by realtor George Fiske on Ocean Avenue near Avenue H

Dorothy and John set up house in the old Fiske Mansion at 1280 Ocean Avenue which T. B. Ackerson (the man who developed Fiske Terrace and all the 2-3 family houses on Westminster Road) had sold in 1913. But by 1920, the mansion had been converted into a woman’s boarding house (it would eventually burn to the ground in 1930), so they moved to a new apartment house on Ocean Avenue south of Church Avenue, built on the grounds of Tennis Court, the first suburban development within Flatbush (in 1886), which had fallen victim to rampant real estate speculation. By 1925 they had moved again to another new apartment house, at 2112 Newkirk Avenue and and Dorothy was now working as a librarian because John was frequently ill.

1896-1928 John L. Hammer

Alas, on May 10, 1928, Dorothy also became a widow when John died of kidney failure in their apartment. Dorothy moved to a two family house on East 16^th in Beverly Square East and worked as a secretary for a printing company. By 1940, Edna had moved in with her daughter at yet another Ocean Avenue apartment and they resided together until Edna passed away in 1958. Dorothy joined her 10 years later.

Meanwhile, back on Glenwood Road, the home was bought in 1918 by lifelong Brooklynites, George Kellogg Herr and his wife of five years, Adele Foltmer, who had just given birth to their daughter Miriam the year before while renting in Crown Heights. George, the son of German immigrants, was then a 32 year old salesman for an asbestos and rubber company in Manhattan. Luckily for George, he soon switched to selling less toxic items (first linen, then real estate) and eventually clerked for a steamship company in the 1950s.

Miriam would wed her boyfriend Robert Bellinger upon his return from World War II in 1946 and move to Garden City to raise a family, but George and Adele would remain in their house for more than 40 years. According to their estimates of the home’s value for census takers, in 1930 it was worth $13,000, but plummeted during the Depression until by 1940 it was worth $9,600, less than what it was first sold for 32 years earlier. The Kerrs would sell the house in the 1960s and move to a Ditmas Park apartment. George died in 1967 and Adele in 1973. Both are buried with their daughter and son-in-law in the Kerr family plot in All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village.

1925 Jun: NYS Census shows Herr Family at 1435 Glenwood

Thereafter George Todisco owned the home for a few years and sold it in 1967 to Andres Dubouchet & Gloria Cernosia. Five years later they sold to Bruce & Louise Coulter and in 1979 the Coulters sold the house to Benjamin Rizzo and Joanne Hawkins Rizzo.

1940 NYC Tax Photo (Colorized) of 1435 Glenwood Shot from Pedestrian Bridge in Fiske Terrace

Ben and Joanne were an interracial couple renting an apartment in Sheepshead Bay and with a toddler named Wendy, they were looking for more room and a welcoming neighborhood. Forty-five years ago, Flatbush was in transition, a polite way of saying white flight, redlining, crime and anxiety…lots of anxiety. Only four years earlier, the Flatbush Development Corporation had been formed by a gaggle of concerned residents, our Mike Weiss and Bill Schlansky prominent among them, to fight back and prevent further deterioration. Pioneers like Joanne helped by voting with their savings. But they were tough times and her marriage did not survive. In 1986 Joanne wed Henry F. Finkel, a Correction Officer, and two more children would soon be watching trains roll by their windows.

Joanne’s three children have now made their way in the world: Dr. Wendy Rizzo is a surgical pathologist in Richmond, Virginia, with a home in Virginia Beach. Anthony, the founder of Ditmas Park Helpers, is now managing his growing firm, DPH Property Maintenance. And Henry, a DPH mainstay, is now with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

1961: 1435 Glenwood; photo taken from pedestrian bridge

Joanne (L) with then Council Member Jumaane Williams and Halloween Parade Organizers Virginia Waters & Lina Howell. The Parade has begun outside the Finkels' home for decades.