In October 1904 John Kahaly and Gabrielle Cobb bought land on Rugby Road at the foot of Waldorf Court and within a month a new building permit was issued based on plans submitted by the architect Benjamin Driesler. Most of the 30 models used by the John R. Corbin Company to erect the hundreds of one family houses still standing in West Midwood, Midwood Park, East Midwood and Midwood Manor from 1904 to 1912 can be traced to Driesler, whose designs allowed for dozens of variations.
The Kahalys were so delighted that exactly three months later they bought the vacant lot to their immediate south and kept it a grassy field for their eight-year stay on Rugby…Well, that’s one interpretation. Another is that being real estate speculators, they saw the houses around them selling like hotcakes and decided to build one themselves on the neighboring vacant lot – but their real estate deals were not paying off and they had no money to fund new construction. Or…Unfortunately, the Kahaly Family left no written record of their musings or decision-making, social media then being limited to gossiping on their welcoming front porch.
Those two sales on Rugby were registered to John’s wife, as were dozens of other realty transactions ranging from Suffolk to Manhattan, but most occurred in the red-hot Brooklyn market. The wheeling and dealing attributed to Gabrielle commenced at the time John became a wholesale “raw feathers” importer, likely to shield his financial liability – a common practice in an age when national divorce rates were less than 1% and even lower in New York due to the most restrictive divorce laws in the country, flagrant adultery being the only grounds here.
Born during our Civil War – in either Syria, Egypt, or Turkey, depending on which census record you believe – John Kahaly arrived in New York as a pre-teen. He was working as an Arabic-speaking corn merchant on Schermerhorn Street in Boerum Hill when in 1887 he married Gabrielle, the daughter of Brooklyn dentist Omar Cobb, a Turkish emigree. The next year Brooklyn papers took their first notice of John when, as a staunch Republican, he suffered multiple ejections while trying to vote in the presidential election of 1888 until finally he was arrested, one of Tammany’s time-honored voter suppression strategies, much in evidence during the 1908 election here.
The June 1905 NY State Census of the Kahaly household found: two sons, John and Arthur, Dr. Cobb, and a Polish servant. A year later Dr. Cobb died in the home at age 73 due to a brief illness brought on by “over-exertion” despite being attended by a physician – according to a neighbor countering press reports that Cobb’s room had “a gas lamp with four leaks.” Of course, both of those reports could be true (a death by gas lamp occurred around the corner on Argyle Road in 1915 as we reported here).
Over the next six years John Kahaly took at least seven voyages to Europe to arrange shipments for his feather business and once his entire family accompanied him. He always booked passage on the Cunard luxury liners – the Mauretania, Lusitania and Caronia – but his last continental foray occurred in 1911, so perhaps the epic 1912 misfortune that befell Cunard’s Titanic passengers discouraged any further trans-Atlantic travel, thank you very much, Cunard.
When not consumed by business, Kahaly served as first President of the Board of Directors of the Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church upon its founding in 1906 by pastor William Gates of 14 Irvington Place. Kahaly’s principal mission was to secure $40,000 for construction of the church building. The congregation first gathered in a storefront at 1045 Coney Island Avenue (aka 1045 Corbin Court per its residential eastern entrance - named for John Corbin who erected that block-long building), then in a tent, followed by a small wooden house purchased on the north side of Foster Avenue near Argyle.
They eventually sold that building, using the cash to buy a lot at the corner of Argyle & Glenwood Roads. Construction finally commenced there in September 1912 and the first service for its 200 members took place on March 23rd, 1913. When consecrated in June, Wells was considered one of the most progressive churches of its era, welcoming worshipers from a dozen different denominations.
Only weeks later, in the new Corbin home the Kahalys had just purchased on East 10th Street in Midwood Manor, Gabrielle died. She had been suffering from nephritis for some time and was only 49. Soon thereafter John and daughter Helen relocated to a spacious apartment in Park Slope while the sons flew from the nest, lured to a swanky development in Bay Shore, out in Suffolk, featuring yacht canals, gazebos and even a lake called Nosrekca – “Ackerson” spelled backward.
When the Kahalys first arrived in West Midwood, T.B. Ackerson was still selling his new 2 & 3 family houses on Westminster Road, and had just bought the mansion that fronted Ocean Avenue south of Glenwood Road, along with some 140 empty lots west of there, all from failed developer George Fiske. While terraforming Fiske’s terrace, Ackerson threw many a mansion party which the Kahalys attended. When the venue for the fabulous soirees shifted to Ackerson’s Shangri-la enclave, dubbed Brightwaters, John Jr., his wife and younger brother Arthur all relocated there.
In 1917 the brothers were drafted into the US Army and Arthur was seriously injured in a mustard gas attack in the Argonne only 14 days before the armistice ended the fighting. He would suffer from the debilitating injury to his lungs until his death at the age of 47. His father predeceased him in 1934, dying in Helen’s Flatbush home on Kenilworth Place.
The next residents of 730 Rugby Road were direct descendants of the original mid-17th century Dutch settlers of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, then known as Bushwick, one of the five original Towns of Brooklyn. The Meserole family’s surname survives in Brooklyn as a separate Avenue (Greenpoint) and Street (Williamsburg) but I’ll always remember it as the name of the movie theater in Greenpoint where I saw “Jaws.”
Before relocating to our suburban patch in 1912, William Harrison Meserole, born during the Mexican War in 1847, operated a large building materials supply store on Greene Avenue in Clinton Hill for many years while living on St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights. Accompanying him on the move south were: his wife Mary, also 65 years old, who devoted much of her life to the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum on Kingston Avenue; his son Archibald, then age 42, who ran the supply store, and Archibald’s wife Florence (herself the descendant of a Rhode Island Declaration signer), along with their two teenage sons – employed as a bookkeeper and a salesman (joined a few years later by one of their wives, an accountant); his daughter, Elizabeth, age 39, single but with a female roommate employed as a secretary; and finally, the 10th member of the household, a Finnish orphan girl.
Immediately upon settling in, notices started appearing in February 1913 for “Meserole Tours” to Europe (e.g., an ocean cruise followed by an auto tour for “a small party” – only $639). As summer began, a 10 day auto tour of New England was advertised for $145. The ads appeared in multiple Brooklyn papers and provided a contact phone number at 730 Rugby of “Flatbush 779.” Subsequent events would identify Elizabeth as the originator of this venture.
In April of 1914, the family’s considerable assets and influence were evident when ads appeared in Buffalo papers for the sale of a large lot with a 250 foot bulkhead adjoining the recently approved Erie Canal Barge terminal along the East River in Greenpoint near Newton Creek. The seller? “Meserole, 730 Rugby Road.”
A different sort of attention was focused on William’s grandson, Hillis, in 1916 when he was nabbed by police for joining 21 other teenage athletes who had somehow crammed themselves into-atop-and-around a two-seater for a wildly dangerous joy ride from Coney Island to Lynbrook, hitting every roadhouse along the way. (Lynbrook being Brooklyn half-spelled backwards might have accounted for the inebriated teens’ destination; whether the Ackerson lake in Brightwaters played a part is unknown.)
When William’s mother Mary passed away in 1924, three years after the rapidly thinning nest had moved to a smaller Ditmas Park home, she was remembered for her 50 years of devotion to the care of Brooklyn’s orphans, while her husband, who died in 1926 (like Mary a member of the Wells Church), was said to be “one of the best known men in the building supplies” industry. Just guessing that Mary had a shorter wait at St. Peter’s gate.
Meanwhile, in 1921 the Meserole home on Rugby was sold to John Mahon, a 40 year old bachelor attorney, and his three sisters, age 39 to 43, who, like John would never marry. John’s two brothers, a lawyer and a medical doctor, were also confirmed bachelors and frankly, the only explanation that could account for this would be misplaced fear of an imminent nuclear apocalypse. But the Mahon’s were all reared in Hartford by an Irish immigrant mother and a successful father also of Irish ancestry long before Oppenheimer, so ‘tis a puzzlement. John obtained his undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, then moved to Manhattan in 1906 where he practiced with his brother Edward, a product of Villanova/NY Law.
John’s first article was published by the American Law Review in 1907 and he would become a prolific writer after serving with Connecticut’s 165th Infantry in the World War. Soon after his return from Europe, his widely-read 1919 article, “The Propriety of Ratifying the League of Nations” urged passage of the Treaty of Versailles. Although 32 states would urge its adoption and thus entry into the League, the Senate voted it down. He would subsequently write about the reasons behind the war (“to save France”) and his estimation of presidential candidates (“meh”).
For the 1930 US Census John reported he bought the home with a mortgage he was still paying off and estimated the present value of the house at $20,000.
By all accounts the brothers would often render legal assistance to needy clients and John also served as a volunteer President of the Midwood Taxpayers Association. And so as the Depression deepened, frequent ads for sale of household items at 730 Rugby would appear and it became apparent the family faced financial difficulty: rugs, autographs, a gas range in 1936, followed by a ten piece dining room set, piano, rugs, and antiques in December 1937. Five months earlier the oldest sister Bridget, an accomplished church organist, died in the home at age 61. John followed suit in January 1939, also in the home, at age 55, leaving the house to his sister Mary.
In October 1939, a default judgment against her by the bank led to a posted foreclosure sale in November 1939 but there appears to have been no takers. Edward then moved in with Mary and in March 1940 more items were put up for sale: “Porch set, Kelvinator, furniture, rugs, Bauer piano.” On April 5th, the US Census found only Edward and Mary in the home, whose value had sunk to an estimated $11,800. A 1940 NYC tax photo shows a for sale sign nailed to the porch and in 1944 the house was being advertised in the Eagle for sale by a realtor at $8,250. A few months later Edward died in a new apartment he shared with Mary on Ocean Avenue, a block north of the Fiske/Ackerson mansion which had burned to the ground 14 years earlier, and Edward was remembered in the press for giving “legal counsel to the poor and the disabled.”
Another Irish family, the Kirvin’s, would then own 730 Rugby from 1944 to 1966. James Kirvin grew up one of four brothers in the old Irish neighborhood of Vinnegar Hill (now Dumbo) during the construction of the Manhattan Bridge. His father was a tobacco hauler and James became a trucker, creating a profitable business that by 1919 had enabled him at the age of 26 to buy 502 Rugby Road, north of Ditmas, from its original owner for $12,000. The 1930 US Census found James still trucking, with wife Katherine and seven children, ages 2 to 14, occupying the house. But the Depression deepened and by January 1939 the Kirvin’s lost their home in a foreclosure sale and relocated to 26 Waldorf Court which they rented for $85 a month. The April 1940 Census found the family had rebounded: James was now employed as an assistant custodian at a public school, earning a $1,500 salary (equal to $35k today) and the three oldest children were bringing in a combined annual income of $2,760 from white collar jobs. By late 1943 they had saved enough to buy 730 Rugby Road, literally at the end of their block, and James’ 81 year old mother Theresa joined them in their new home.
In 1944 Fred Hollenbach, the husband of the oldest Kirvin daughter, Katherine, was drafted and soon assigned to one of the most dangerous jobs of World War II – piloting B-24 Liberator bombers on daylight missions over Germany. On his 34th mission, over chemical plants in Blechhammer (near Auschwitz), two of Fred’s engines were shot out and on the way home he lost a third. Upon its miraculous landing, the plane had to be towed off the runaway. Oddly, on the same day that Hollenbach was mustered out as a Captain in the US Army Air Corps, January 10, 1947, the Kirvin’s advertised 730 Rugby Road for sale in the Eagle for a wildly inflated $25,000, an ad that was withdrawn after only three days. Fred finished his education as an engineer and he and Kathrine relocated to Los Angeles where they passed away in 1986 and 1998 respectively.
The April 1950 Census found the Kirvin’s still owned the house but now only their youngest, 23 year old Thomas, a full time grocery clerk, resided with them, Theresa having passed in December of 1945. James, now 58, was listed as “looking for work.” In 1951 he wrote an angry letter to the Eagle, accusing the paper of siding with foes of Senator Joseph McCarthy, eliciting a long reply in which the editors proudly proclaimed their anti-Commie bona-fides. Fifteen years later James and Katherine would sell the house and move to the Catskills, but when James died of a heart attack in 1970, his funeral service was held at St. Rose of Lima.
Nathan, a 52 year old machinist who became a US Postal Service driver, and Shirley Markowitz, age 47, bought 730 Rugby from the Kirvin’s in September of 1966. They had been living in a very small house in Canarsie and prior to that, rented an apartment in East New York for many years. They had two daughters, Janice (born 1943) and Harriet (born 1945).
MML Development Corporation bought 730 Rugby Road from the Markowitz’s for $780,000 and made many tasteful interior renovations while maintaining much of the charm of the original construction. A year later they sold the home for a tidy profit.
Confronted with a dramatic rent increase at their Peter Cooper Village apartment in 2006, Maura Rose and her then fiancée Thom figured if they had to pay so much for their lodgings, they might as well get a lot more space and greenery, so off they decamped to Rugby Road with 6 year old Una. Maura, now retired from a fabulously successful career as a marketing executive for Fortune 100 financial corporations, and Una, who works at the Frick Collection when not improving her remarkable fluency in Japanese, are happy campers.
As a life-long Manhattanite, Maura said she was initially nervous about having front, back, and side doors to lock. But that quickly vanished. “From the earliest days,” she told us, “coming home here felt like stepping into something magical.” Asked to elaborate, Maura did not disappoint: “Over the years, this house has been the setting for progressive dinners, porch-side cocktails, and spontaneous meals with neighbors who became my dearest friends…There was even a black cat who used to escort me to the train each morning! West Midwood is more than a place to live – it is a community I cannot imagine living without.”
1940 (Note For Sale Sign on Porch Pillar):
1983:
2026:
1945:
1912 (Empty Red Rectangle = 734 Rugby):
1920 (Green Arrow = 730 Rugby):
1905 “Meserole House” on Lorimer St (Demolished 1924):
1950 Census for 730 Rugby in Red:
1940 Census for 730 Rugby in Red:
1930 Census for 730 Rugby in Red:
1920 Census 730 Rugby in Red:
1910 Census for 730 Rugby in Red: 
In the New Building Permit above, the name of the real estate agent expediting the permit (George L. Ayers) is mistakenly combined with the owner, Kahaly. By late November/early December, ground in NYC generally becomes too hard to excavate. However, if the excavation could have been accomplished prior to the actual start of the building construction, John Corbin’s assembly line methods could have finished the job relatively quickly. His factory was then located (per the many transactions recorded at that time) only a mile away “alongside the Manhattan Beach R.R. at Flatbush Avenue and Amersfort Place” where a siding allowed direct delivery of the lumber and stone he needed. There the frames, beams and interior trim would be cut to scale, then delivered to the site for assembly. Finally, Benjamin Driesler was prolific throughout Brooklyn, for instance in Lefferts Manor in 1901:
105 virtually identical, simple bow fronted neo-Renaissance style houses arranged along the eastern edge [of the Historic District] were designed by the architect Benjamin Driesler. Driesler moved to Flatbush in 1892 and is known to have designed many frame houses as well as rows of simple masonry dwellings. Although he used the same styles favored by Axel Hedman, Driesler's work lacks the finesse and originality that Hedman brought to his designs.Source: Dolkart, Andrew, and LaFrank, Kathleen (N.Y. State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation), Lefferts Manor Historic District, nomination document, 1991, National Park Service, National Regiser of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
I do not subscribe to that point of view, but what do I know. Sadly, Driesler, who lived briefly in West Midwood at 1435 Glenwood Road, died penniless, an alcoholic, while John Corbin declared bankruptcy in 1917 and retired to an upstate farm, all recounted in a much earlier episode.
In this ad for Corbin homes then being erected on Rugby, Argyle, Glenwood and the Courts, “Highest Ground in Flatbush” was a frequent selling point. Height meant less flood-prone and more exposed to southerly ocean breezes in the summer when fans weren’t nearly as effective and window air conditioners the stuff of science fiction.