Only three families occupied 681 Argyle Road over its 120 year history prior to its sale this Spring. The house was built in 1905 by Christian Baur, who was a partner of John R. Corbin until 1902. That’s when Corbin obtained options on a thousand building lots from the Germania realty firm and formed his own corporation, adding Germania’s VP as his own, and began mass production of frame house components in a mill along the LIRR at Flatbush Avenue.
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| 1908 Mar 16 Corbin Factory after LIRR tracks depressed |
Baur was not as prolific as Corbin but still managed to erect about a dozen houses in West Midwood (all north of the Glenwood Mall) and a dozen more east of the Brighton line (in Midwood Park, Fiske Terrace and South Midwood) before retiring in 1909 at age 66 to one of his wood frame buildings on the corner of East 23rd Street and Foster Avenue.
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| 1905 Sale of 681 Argyle aka E. 13th St (per 1870s Grid Overlaid on Then Empty Land |
Baur was a proud son of Germany and this might have accounted for his sale of 681 Argyle Road to fellow Hanoverian Society member, Gustav Kimpel, who was born in 1855 in “Klein Deutschland," a tenement area on the Lower East Side populated by German immigrants. In fact, Kimpel and Baur would become founders of the Kings Highway Savings Bank at the southeast corner of East 16th Street, serving as trustees at its 1923 opening. (Subsumed by Franklin Bank in 1971, its distinctive building now bears a ghastly T-Mobile facade.)
Gustav Kimpel was a successful traveling salesman and his product was hair. One might say he was groomed for his profession from an early age given that the 1870 census found the teenage Gustav employed as a “hair braider.” In fact, Victorian New York was awash in the human hair needed for wig and hairpiece makers, given the popular quack treatments for gray hair at the time, like Buckingham's Dye for the Whiskers, a ruinous combo of alcohol and – I’m not making this up – lead acetate.
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| 1900 Newspaper Ad |
After his 1874 marriage to Katrina Hoffman (a Manhattan daughter of German immigrants), Kimpel supplied his own hair shop located across from his East Harlem apartment on East 112th Street where eventually his sons Edward and George handled sales. Katrina gave Gustav three sons and three daughters before her untimely death, recorded in the Herald Tribune’s daily grim reaper column as October 28th, 1891 at precisely 9:10am, an indication that she was attended by a physician. Two years later, Kimpel married Amelia Niemann, a 30 year old “hair worker” living with her parents in Covington, Kentucky. The marriage occurred in Covington, suggesting that Kimpel must have met her (another daughter of German immigrants) during his business travels.
When Gustav and Amelia moved to Argyle Road, all of the children, then aged 19 to 29 remained behind in various Manhattan apartments while the couple immediately dove into the Flatbush high life, becoming fixtures at the Cortelyou Club, located at the corner of Bedford Avenue & Avenue D in a magnificent Colonial Revival building, erected in 1902.
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| 1906 Upington Directory for Brooklyn |
The clubhouse, designed by Corbin’s favorite architect, Benjamin F. Driesler, was built and funded by a group of about 20 local Flatbush men, led by Henry Meyer the President of Germania Real Estate & Improvement Company (former unsuccessful Brooklyn Mayoral candidate and developer of Vanderveer Park, West Midwood, Midwood Park and South Midwood) who formed the Club in 1896. Corbin, T.B. Ackerson, Lewis H. Pounds – who together built most of Flatbush south of Cortelyou to Avenue H between Ocean and Coney Island Avenues – joined the club, pooled resources, and financed the development of its upscale facilities to serve the community’s home-owners.
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| 1902 Cortelyou Club |
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| 1910 Cortelyou Club Post Card |
All these builders and realtors maintained homes in Flatbush throughout its development, helping to give the area out-sized political clout. For instance when State legislation created the Brooklyn Grade Crossing Elimination Commission in 1903, lobbying by the railroad magnates commenced. They immediately sought approval to remove the dangerous intersections by creating new elevated behemoths but were defeated by Flatbush residents, resulting in the trenches bordering all our cul-de-sacs today.
Gustav apparently had a knack for arranging dinners, outings and frequent fetes on behalf of the Club, leading to his being elected President three times. He was also politically astute. For instance, after the US Senate approved President Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany on April 5, 1917, the Club was criticized in the press for not raising the Stars & Stripes on its flagpole within 24 hours. To atone for this oversight, Kimpel publicly apologized, installed new illumination for Old Glory and offered up the Club for whatever use could be made of it as part of the war effort.
Meanwhile Kimpel continued traveling to Europe to buy hair for import, often accompanied by Amelia. His initial passport application in 1911 recorded him as standing 5’6” with blue eyes and black hair streaked with some gray. But after the War, with the advent of the Roaring 20s, business began to slow, leading Kimpel to retire in 1925. In a 1926 interview with the Brooklyn Eagle, he complained about the popularity of “bobbed” (short) hair among women drying up the demand for wigs and feathers and such. Weep not for Gustav for he had become a rich man thanks to realty and securities holdings accumulated since his Flatbush arrival. For instance he bought empty lots that would be developed into apartment buildings in the area.
The second owner was James Cullington, who bought the house with a $10,000 low interest G.I. Bill loan made possible by his son Thomas who served four years in Europe with the Army Signal Corps. Cullington and his wife Florence were already 60 years old when they moved into 681 Argyle with Thomas and his five siblings, aged 24 to 38 (a 7th offspring had married and established his own household). The Cullington’s had spent the first five decades of their life in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where James was a telephone lineman, then an insurance agent, until they relocated in 1940 to an apartment house just east of the Brighton line near the Albemarle footbridge. When Thomas enlisted in June 1941 he was a doorman and his father worked for a storefront realty firm nearby on Flatbush Avenue. The 1950 Census recorded James working as a supervisor of bank clerks and Thomas driving oil trucks for Texaco. Others worked in a post office, a bank, two at American Airlines and one as an investment broker.
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| 1950 US Census at 681 Argyle |
Florence passed away in 1974 at the age of 85 and James joined her in 1977 at age 88 when he died at the Kings Highway Hospital, leaving the house to his daughter Virginia, who sold it in 1979. Virginia, who never married, outlived all her siblings, passing in 2013 in a Scranton nursing home at the age of 91.
Charles and Ester Sciallo bought 681 Argyle Road for $56,000. Charlie grew up in a private home in Dyker Heights on 71st Street. His father Pasquale arrived from Naples in 1913 and worked as a watchman while Ester was reared in an Orthodox home in Borough Park.
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| 1959 New Utrecht HS Yearbook |
They were married in Manhattan in 1974 and were living in a two family house on 69th Street in Bensonhurst with their child Naomi when they found their home in West Midwood. Charlie operated a busy newsstand/candy store at the corner of Chambers & Church Street in Manhattan while Ester worked as a buyer in the Garment District for decades. After Charlie’s store was burgled many times, he and Ester decided to open a Kosher appetizer store in Midwood at 466 Avenue P, which became successful. Together they reared three children, the first youngsters to ever inhabit 681 Argyle Road, 75 years after it was built.
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| Sciallo Family Circa 2020 |
After Charles died in 2009, Ester became a successful real estate salesperson until she passed in July of 2024.
The Sciallo estate sold the house to Eric and Latchmie Dinaly in the Spring of 2026 and the house welcomed three more delightful children. Eric, a nurse anesthetist, grew up in this area, attending PS 217 and Midwood High and both he and Latchmie liked “its incredible historic charm and strong sense of community.”
They were also taken with the architectural character of 681 Argyle Road. Says Eric: “We have a deep passion for historic home preservation, so finding a house where we could restore and protect so many of the original period details was a dream come true for us and we have been enthusiastically diving into restoration projects since we arrived.”
