Rare Dutch Documents On View at Lefferts House

We would all be speaking Dutch, right now, if it weren’t for the Treaty of Westminster, which resolved once and for all that New York — then known as New Netherlands — would be ceded to the British, a transfer that officially happened in November of 1674 — 335 years ago this month. England had actually first captured the city in 1664, but the Dutch managed to recapture it 1673 before finally giving it up again in 1674 in exchange for Suriname.

Our brief stint as a Dutch holding is often overshadowed in the history books by the British colonial period. But this weekend we can brush up on our Dutch origins by visiting the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, where rarely seen 17th century documents will be on display on Nov. 14 and 15 from 1 to 4:30 p.m. They include land deeds signed by Peter Stuyvesant (pictured), the authoritarian, one-legged director general of Dutch New Netherlands from 1647 to 1664.

Built by a Dutch family in the 18th century farming village of Flatbush, Lefferts Historic House interprets the history of Brooklyn’s environment from pre-Colonial times until the present. The house is accessible through the Park’s Willink Entrance, at the intersection of Flatbush and Ocean avenues and Empire Boulevard. Admission is free.

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Great Slide Show at B'klyn Heights Blog

Click here to see a lovely four-minute long slide show of historic images of Brooklyn Heights and the surrounding downtown area, including some precious film footage of trolleys packed with commuters.

Jacob Patchen’s Fight Against Brooklyn Development

Brooklyn loves to do battle over real estate. Whether over projects as grandiose as sports arenas and skyscrapers, or as modest as what shade of brown to paint the landmarked houses of an historic district, dedicated denizens of the borough are always rekindling the contest between progress and preservation.

These issues are not new to Brooklyn, and though the borough’s growth—in real population and in status—has been considerable in recent years, Brooklyn’s 19th century transformation from farmland to the third largest city in the country was far more abrupt, drastic, and divisive.

No one person better personifies Brooklyn’s contentious path forward than the man they called “the last of the leather breeches” and “the great protester.” Jacob Patchen, a resident of Brooklyn who lived between 1790 and 1840, was a “sworn enemy to all improvements.” He refused to sell his property to the city trustees, and thus he was literally carted away from his home on Fulton Street, when its demolition was required to enable the development of a central market near the ferry landing.

Patchen essentially lived upon the economic lifeline of Brooklyn with his two adjoining lots on Fulton near York St. He was a butcher, and according to a contemporary who recollected Patchen to an Eagle reporter, “he was never known to own but one pair of leather trousers at a time. These he wore until they were so smeared with dirt that they were unpresentable.” His home, “a quaint and ancient oak framed, scallop shingled house,” was reported to be at least 150 years old by the time he moved into it.

Patchen’s resistance to development began in 1816 when he ignored an ordinance to gravel and curb the sidewalk in front of his property. Though he was fined for disobeying, he flatly refused, stating “that the old cobblestones had been good enough to walk upon for many years, and were good enough for him, and therefore, for others, for many years to come.”

To further communicate his indignation at the ordinance, upon making his own way through town, Patchen refused to use the sidewalks and would often be seen walking in the middle of the street. But this was a minor scuffle compared to what was ahead of him.

In 1826, the city offered Patchen $6,850 for his property so they could open a new street, Market Street, to connect with the market on James Street. The court rejected his first attempt to contest the sale, so he then “persistently avoided any tender of the cash.” When he was finally awakened one early April morning by officers with a cartload of silver dollars, he excused himself so that he might put on his breeches (leather ones, of course.) He then escaped through a back window to the ferry to further delay the transfer.

But the government was not to be avoided. His house was sold at auction and ordered to be removed. The contents of the house were taken out one by one on a cart, and “then the last of the leather breeches, still seated in his chair, was carefully deposited on the top of the load.”
One witness wrote, “I well remember seeing the old fellow, clad in knee breeches and silver buckled shoes, sitting upon the tail of the cart with his legs dangling down and gyrating with every jolt of the cobblestones.”

But old leather breeches was persistent if nothing else and he refused to give in to the “new fangled notions,” as he liked to call them. So in 1832, “the thick set little gentleman,” after years of litigation, managed to possess his lands once again, though they were now a paved street with stores and dwellings, having become the principal avenue to the market.

In a demonstration of pure obstinancy, Patchen built a fence around his reacquired land, “played the tyrant, refused a right of way to all who needed it,” and landed himself right back into a host of lawsuits.

This time the city offered him $16,000 to reopen the street, which he and his lawyer fought until his death in 1840, by drowning, of all things. (One wonders if it was an accident, considering all the trouble he caused). Most of the money, which was awarded to his wife and daughter, went to pay fees to his lawyer.

Today, we battle over skyscrapers, pro sports teams, and waterfront parks. Jacob Patchen watched the “progress of innovation whereby the fair face of nature had been marred…” waxed an old Eagle reporter. “The farms had been cut up into streets, the sheep and cow paths had been straightened, the hills had been laid low…”


PATCHEN’S BROOKLYN: This painting by Francis Guy depicts the ferry district in the quaint village of Brooklyn in 1820. The people seen in the painting are supposedly recognizable portraits of the real members of the community, including Jacob Patchen. Tradition has it that while working near his window, Guy would call out to friends and passersby, asking them to stand still while he captured their characteristic postures.

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A Crown Heights History, Told by a Crown Heights Resident

Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. She is a third generation Brooklynite, and a genealogist. She has written two books tracing the history of her family — which stretches as far back as Jamestown on one side and to the Revolutionary War on the other.

In the course of her research, she became increasingly fascinated with the history in her own backyard, and so has since released two more books about the Brooklyn neighborhoods she has called home, most recently Crown Heights and Weeksville, released in 2009.

“In school we never learned about the local, neighborhood history,” she lamented on Wednesday night during a slide presentation at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Published by Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, the pictorial neighborhood history gives a glimpse of the “vanishing roots of central Brooklyn.”

Largely relying on the archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Brooklyn Collection of the Brooklyn Public Library and her own memories and roots in the neighborhood, Kelly uncovers the people, places, institutions and geography that have defined the community of Crown Heights and the microcommunity of Weeksville, an early settlement of free blacks established in the 1830s.

Crown Heights is now home to roughly 300,000 people, about 10 percent of the borough’s population. But this abundant citizenry was late in coming, as the rocky, high terrain that is the neighborhood’s foundation deterred substantial settlement for many years. While the towns of Bedford to the north and Flatbush to the east flourished, a wilderness between them, situated atop some of the highest elevations in New York City, remained uninhabited but for squatters. One resourceful resident ensconced the hull of a ship in the side of hill and called it home, says Kelly.

During the Revolutionary War, a contingent of Hessian soldiers (mercenaries in the employ of the British) camped in quarters at Franklin Avenue and Bergen Street for the duration of the British occupation. Remnants of the site were found when the hilly lands were being graded in the 19th century.

The names of some of the area’s peaks — Prospect Hill, Ocean Hill and Crow Hill — evolved into the names of neighborhoods. Crown Heights is said to have derived its name from Crow Hill.
It was charitable institutions in need of cheap land that first recognized the potential of the area, a potential that only increased after Eastern Parkway was laid out in 1868. Hospitals, almshouses, orphanages, monasteries and homes for the aged were established, such as the Howard Colored Orphanage, St. Joseph’s Home for the Deaf, the Swedish Hospital and the Kings County Asylum for Chronic Insane. The last remaining example of these, Kelly says, is the Methodist Episcopal Home for men on St. Marks Place between Brooklyn and New York avenues. It is now a Seventh Day Adventist school.

One of the area’s more infamous institutions was the Brooklyn Penitentiary, which stood where Medgar Evers College is today.

But the most beloved of the neighborhood’s bygone structures is certainly Ebbets Field, which was bounded by Bedford Avenue, Sullivan Place, McKeever Place and Montgomery Street until it was torn down in 1960. Another beloved institution was spun off of a nearby property of Ebbets Field. The Empire Rollerdrome opened in what had at one point been a parking garage for Ebbets. Among those who took a spin around the roller rink in its 50 years of existence were Cher, JFK Jr. and Paul Newman.

Some of the talented people who have called Crown Heights home include record producer Clive Davis, the first black congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm and Erich Segal, author of the book-turned hit film Love Story.

As home to the worldwide Lubavitch Chasidic movement of Judaism, and a large Caribbean-American population, Crown Heights holds an incredibly diverse population. On August 19, 1991, three days of deadly riots seized the neighborhood, an incident that has largely defined Crown Heights for people who have never been there. “Tragedy and loss of life have always dominated the media, and this unfortunate neighborhood incident proved to be no exception,” writes Kelly.
“Crown Heights is, and remains, an American location of beauty and promise, with a dynamic history that is, and hopefully continues to be, a glowing example of multicultural successes and unlimited accomplishment,” she writes.

Kelly’s books on Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights are available at arcadiapublishing.com and at many local Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Some of the pictures from her book are included on the Eagle's web site here
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Centennial for an Overshadowed Landmark

It’s fair to say that the Manhattan Bridge has always stood in the shadow of a certain other East River span. When the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, connecting the two great cities of New York and Brooklyn, it was a celebration for the ages, attended by U.S. President Chester Arthur, and pretty much all of New York. At the time it was built, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, longer than any other by half, and was called the eighth wonder of the world.

On the contrary, “the most impressive thing about the official opening” of the Manhattan Bridge, “was that it was Mayor [George] McClellan’s last formal act before handing over the keys of the city to the incoming administration,” according to a New York Times article published the day after the Manhattan Bridge’s comparatively humble beginning on December 31, 1909.

New Yorkers had become accustomed to the opening of great bridges between the boroughs, it was said at the time by former Brooklyn Bridge President William Berri. It was, after all, the fourth suspension bridge over the river, the Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges having already been completed.

So it’s not the oldest and it’s not the longest, and has even been plagued by a series of structural problems. But the New York City Bridge Centennial Commission is giving the Manhattan Bridge its moment in the sun, with a week-long centennial celebration next week, complete with a parade of historic vehicles, walking and bike tours, public discussions on the history and construction of the bridge and, yes, fireworks.

For more on the bridge and the upcoming centennial events, see the rest of my article in the Eagle. Also check out the Centennial Commission web site, http://www.nycbridges100.org/

The photo at top from the Library of Congress shows the Manhattan Bridge under construction about 9 months before it was completed. The photo below was taken by Dave Frieder from the top of the Manhattan Bridge in 1997.


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New Thirteen.org Series, and Other Things to Look Forward To

Apologies for my weeks of absence — end of summer blues, I suppose. Tried to squeeze in as much Prospect Park frolicking as possible. But, autumn is upon us, and among other things it means that many of the city's cultural organizations are revving up their engines again with some new exhibits and programs on the way.

Thirteen.org has sent word of a new online, mini-documentary series they launched this week, called “New York on the Clock.”

Each episode will feature an on-the-job interview with some of New York’s quintessential residents – a tugboat captain, a street artist, a location scout, a pizzeria owner...

Naturally, the series begins with a Brooklynite. Jerry Menditto oversees a crew that inspects, repairs, and operates the Cyclone Roller Coaster — one of America’s oldest and most beloved thrill rides. A Coney Island native, he began working as an electrician at Astroland in the mid-1970s before taking the helm of the playland’s most famous ride.

“Growing up in Coney Island was a great experience,” he tells Thirteen. “My backyard was an amusement park.”

A new episode of “New York on the Clock” will premiere every two weeks. The series follows on the heels of a previous online series by Thirteen.org, “The City Concealed,” a collection of short documentaries about New York City’s hidden treasures. “The City Concealed” can be streamed at http://watch.thirteen.org/, Thirteen’s video portal.

To view the New York on the Clock episode featuring Jerry Menditto, visit http://www.thirteen.org/nyontheclock/.

Upcoming Events

Take a tour of the beautiful Brooklyn Historical Society, a New York City landmark building. Designed by architect George Post and built in 1881, the Brooklyn Historical Society’s building was ahead of its time. Using the latest technology, Post created a magnificent structure with amazing craftsmanship. On this guided tour you’ll learn not only about the building as an architectural gem, but you’ll also find out the “more than meets the eye” history of one of Brooklyn’s premier cultural institutions. The tour will be held at 2 p.m. on September 19. BHS is at 128 Pierrepont St.

A new photo exhibit showcasing Brooklyn’s natural beauty, past and present, will be opening at the Brooklyn Public Library on September 15. “Nature Seen in Brooklyn, Now and Then: Three Photographers Look at Brooklyn: Brainerd, Austin & Golden (1877 - 2009)” will be on display on the ground floor of the library’s main branch at Grand Army Plaza until November 5. George Bradford Brainerd and Daniel Berry Austin were amateur photographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that photographed landscapes of Brooklyn. Some of their work will be on display along with the work of contemporary photographer Richard Golden.
The Brooklyn Public Library will open its new photo exhibit “Riding the Rails: A Hundred Years of Brooklyn’s Trolleys and Trains” on Tuesday, September 22. Included among the photos will be never-displayed Cyanotypes and other images of Brooklyn’s transit system. The exhibit will be held at the main branch at Grand Army Plaza.


An illustrated talk on “The Story of Crown Heights” will be given by Wilhelmina Kelly at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Wednesday, September 30 at 7 p.m. Kelly will also sign copies of her new book on the neighborhood.

The new Public Perspectives exhibit Brooklyn Utopias? will open at the Brooklyn Historical Society on Thursday, October 1 at 5:30 p.m. Curated by Katherine Gressel, an invited group of artists respond to the question of Brooklyn’s future by presenting their differing visions of an ideal Brooklyn.

Dave Frieder, aka “Dave the Bridge Man,” will deliver a lecture on the 100th anniversary of the magnificent Manhattan Bridge at the Brooklyn Historical Society on Thursday, October 8 at 2 p.m. The lecture will include a video presentation, information on the engineering, history and building of the bridge, as well as the problems the bridge has encountered over the years and what was done to correct them. Frieder will also present photos of the bridge that he’s taken over the last 16 years. Visit www.davefrieder.com for more information.
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Big Fire at the St. George

We are approaching the anniversary of the St. George Hotel fire. I only just learned about this blaze when someone wrote into the Eagle's Ask Anything about Brooklyn column (ask@brooklyneagle.net) wondering when the Clark Street entrance to the hotel reopened after the fire.

Situated in north Brooklyn Heights, just above the Clark Street subway station, the St. George Hotel was at one time the largest hotel in New York City, which is an accomplishment.

It was a modest 30 rooms when it was first built in 1885, but it continually expanded and eventually amounted to eight interconnected buildings. By the time the St. George’s Tower Building (facing Hicks Street) was completed in 1930, the hotel occupied the full city block bounded by Clark, Henry, Pineapple and Hicks streets and had 2,632 guest rooms.

According to Francis Morrone’s An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn, both the hotel’s 11,000 square foot ballroom and indoor saltwater swimming pool were said to be the largest in the world. The roof was home to a fashionable nightclub.

With all this grandeur, you can imagine the caliber of the guests that paraded through: they ranged from F. Scott Fitzgerald to FDR. Stories of the hotel’s glitzy past are being collected by a St. George Tower Oral History Project, a Yahoo group started a few years ago by a resident of the tower, which was converted into co-op apartments around 1984.

It’s no secret that over the years the hotel’s opulence faded and pretty much died when the property was broken up between multiple owners and some of the rooms were used as welfare residences in the 1980s. Some of the buildings were vacant by 1995, when a fire broke out around 3 a.m. on the morning of August 26.

According to the United States Fire Administration, which issues reports on selected major fires throughout the country, the fire at the St. George Hotel was the largest New York City had seen in more than 20 years. It took more than 700 firefighters to get it under control.

Residents of nearby brownstones were using garden hoses to protect their own homes as sparks leapt from the enormous fire to nearby rooftops and open windows. Many elderly and handicapped people lived in the adjacent Tower Building and firefighters had to force their way into 84 apartments to assist in the evacuation of residents. Everyone got out safely.

The top floor of the 9-story Clark Building, then vacant, was where the fire originated. Since it had been vacant, the standpipe was out of service, which only complicated the firefighters’ efforts. The fire quickly escalated and spread to adjacent buildings, but by far the worst damage was done to the Clark Building itself, which essentially collapsed with only the masonry bearing walls remaining.

It was rebuilt and opened in 2005 and is now used as student dorms, run by a company called Educational Housing Services (EHS).

The photo of the fire is from video shot by Eddie McDonald and was obtained via the United States Fire Administration report
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Brooklyn's ‘Sunny Jim’

One of the greatest horse trainers of all time, "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons, was from Brooklyn. He is pictured here in the foreground along with jockey Jim Stout, who sits astride “Johnstown” after winning the 1939 Kentucky Derby. “Johnstown” went on to win the Triple Crown that year. He also sired another Triple Crown winner, “Omaha.” To this day, there have only been 11 Triple Crown winners, and Sunny Jim is the only person to have trained two of them.

Sunny Jim had an auspicious start in the horse business as he was actually born on the land that was to be become Sheepshead Bay Racetrack, one of three tracks in southern Brooklyn. There were also tracks at Gravesend and Brighton Beach.

We ran a story and more photos about this guy in the Eagle recently. The photos were sent on to us by his great grandson, Jimmy Carr.
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Author Benjamin Feldman Finds Inspiration at Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery has proven to be fertile ground for author Benjamin Feldman. This summer marked the release of his second book, and just as his first, it tells the true and titillating tale of one of the historic cemetery’s permanent residents.

“I like raising the dead,” says Feldman, “revivifying the past, and connecting with what was blowing in the wind back in the 1850s or 1920s.”

After years spent unearthing documents in dusty basements, courthouses, libraries, and of course, the Green-Wood archives, Feldman emerged with Call Me Daddy, which recounts the story of millionaire real estate mogul Edward West Browning, a man whose salacious antics frequently graced the sensational front pages in 1920s New York.

After divorcing his first wife in 1924, Browning placed an ad for a teenage “playmate” for his 9-year-old adopted daughter, interviewing many of the 12,000 applicants as they sat on his knee. When it turned out the chosen girl lied about her age and circumstances, Browning, 51, turned to sponsoring high school sorority dances, where he met his 15-year-old wife-to-be, Frances “Peaches” Heenan. The couple’s divorce proceedings went on for years and were avidly followed by a scandal hungry public as the eccentric details of their union were spilled in the courtroom.

“It’s not so different from what goes on today,” says Feldman. “People have an interest in scandals and highly eccentric stories, men who have no self control. If we really thought it was awful we would ignore it.”

Feldman’s first book, Butchery on Bond Street, tells a similarly sensational, albeit more gruesome, story of the murder of a prominent Manhattan dentist, Dr. Harvey Burdell, and his mistress, Emma Cunningham, who was suspected but acquitted of the crime in a trial that made front page news for months in 1857. Thirty years later, Cunningham ended up buried in Green-Wood, just a few hundred yards from Burdell.

“If you were anyone if Manhattan or Brooklyn, and you weren’t Catholic or Jewish, you were buried in Green-Wood. Everyone was buried there,” says Feldman. Founded in 1838, Green-Wood was one of the first “rural” cemeteries in the country, and with its beautiful landscaping, gently sloping lawns, and impressive sculptures, it was a huge tourist attraction as well. It is the final resting-place for more than a half million people, ranging from the noted to the notorious, and behind every gravestone is a story.

“I lived in New York City for 31 years before I set foot in Green-Wood Cemetery,” marveled Feldman, a Tennessee native who at age 10 vowed to live in New York.

“I went to the Memorial Day Concert in 2000, and at the intermission wandered around and came upon Jeff Richman’s beautiful book [Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure, 1998],” Feldman recalled. “I took it home and I couldn’t put it down. I finished it that night, of course.”

And so the gothic gates of Green-Wood offered Feldman passage to another life. After toiling away as a lawyer and real estate executive for decades, Feldman now devotes himself full time to writing, and to New York City history, a lifelong passion. “I was the in-house historian,” Feldman says of his real estate days. “I was the guy poking around in the basement after we bought a property.”

Now he works as a volunteer archivist at the cemetery every week. Although people are still being interred at Green-Wood, “it is trending toward becoming an historic site,” says Feldman. Its rapidly growing archive is home to thousands of historic items — photos, paintings, letters — mostly pertaining to the cemetery’s interred, making it a tremendous historical repository of 19th and 20th century New York, and an endless source of inspiration for Feldman.

In addition to his two books, he has published several essays on other historic figures and objects he has come across in his time at Green-Wood.

“There is a lifetime of work at Green-Wood for me,” Feldman says.
“I just love the place.”

To purchase Call Me Daddy or Butchery on Bond Street, both of which are published by the Green-Wood Historic Fund, visit www.green-wood.com. The books are also available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn. For updates on Feldman’s abundant research, visit his blog, new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com.

See Also the Eagle's interview with Feldman in 2007 after the release of his first book, Butchery on Bond Street
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Support City Reliquary!

The City Reliquary in Williamsburg will be holding its annual benefit this Saturday night, July 25, from 6-10 p.m. in the form of the Brooklyn Boogaloo Barbeque.

I first covered this fascinating little not-for-profit last March when they held a rent party to catch up on their monthly bills. Their museum at 370 Metropolitan is a repository of eccentric artifacts pertaining to New York City history and they hold all sorts of community oriented events, from bake-offs to bike rides.

The lineup of upcoming museum exhibitions and events include Fiona Gardner’s Miss Subways photography and ephemera exhibit, The Miss G Train Pageant, The Havemeyer Street Bake Off, return of the New York City firefighter auction and Patrick D’Emic’s Tammany Hall of Fame.

The event this Saturday is slated to include NYC’s indigenous Boogaloo music, spun by CR favorites, DJ Stacher and Sister Kate, a Boogaloo Dance Contest, Pulled Pork barbeque made possible by Dan Cipriani of the Lodge, Urban Rustic and Penny Licks, Spanish foods and a silent auction with donations from Mikey’s Hook Up, Earwax Records, Hair Metal Salon, Crest Hardware, Artists Joy Cox and George Ferrandi and Levy’s Unique New York tour-guides.

Your admission ticket is choose-your-own-price!
$25, $50, or $100 with all drinks and full dinner included for your donation! Pay at the door, or in advance at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/72759

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