5th Avenue Neergaard Pharmacy

Updated: Commenter Francis says below that the peripatetic 5th Avenue Neergaard occupied several other locations before settling into its current spot in 1915. Thanks, Francis!

The Winter, 2011 issue of Borough President Markowitz's "Brooklyn Newspaper" arrived the other day, bringing with it an interesting article about the 5th Avenue Neergaard Pharmacy:

Neergaard Pharmacy
454 5th Avenue
Est. 1888

In a city that never sleeps, Brooklyn’s got the place that’s been awake the longest. The Neergaard Pharmacy on 5th Ave. in Park Slope opened its doors in 1888, when Brooklyn was still its own city. Founded by a Danish immigrant named Julius de Neergaard, the store remained in the de Neergaard family through three generations, until the Tomassetti family purchased it in 1987. Since 1901, Neergaard has been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week—except for a few days during World War I.

Today, Neergaard is the oldest independently owned pharmacy in Brooklyn, and one of the oldest in the City— and one of the few pharmacies that are open 24 hours a day. “Doctors know they can send patients here at all hours,” store manager Tom Sutherland said. Neergaard is also uniquely set up to serve Brooklyn’s growing senior population, and even includes a surgical shop that sells everything from walkers to wheelchairs (Neergaard also operates a 7th Ave. location that is not open 24 hours).

From the crash of a United Airlines jet in Park Slope in 1960 (a Neergaard employee is visible in the photo The New York Times ran the next day), to the attacks of September 11, 2001 (Brooklynites who walked home from Manhattan queued up for masks and other supplies), Neergaard has been there through the city’s most perilous times.

“We endured through the Great Depression and two world wars and we’ve always kept up with the times,” Sutherland said. “Park Slope is still the place to be.”

Neergaard Pharmacy, 454 5th Ave. Open 24 hours every day; (718) 768-0600; or visit www.neergaardpharmacies.com

The 5th Avenue Neergaard Pharmacy actually occupies two adjacent brownstone-front buildings, part of a row of 5 very old buildings on that block. All we know about them is that they appear on the 1880 Bromley Brooklyn Atlas, so they must have been standing by that time.

5th Avenue, 9th to 10th Streets, west side - circa 1870s

Further uphill, at 234 8th Avenue in the Park Slope Historic District, stands another building with a connection to the pharmacological Neergaard family:

234 8th Avenue - Park Slope Historic District
Charles F. Neergaard Residence
Aymar Embury, architect - 1913

Regarding 234 8th Avenue, the Park Slope Historic District's Designation Report tells us:

It was built in 1913 and designed by the well-known architect Aymar Embury, 132 Madison Ave., New York, as a private residence for Charles F. Neergaard. His grandfather, John W. Neergaard, was a founder of the New York College of Pharmacy.

1870s Park Slope: Prospect Place

A while ago we introduced the 1880 Bromley Brooklyn Atlas, which color-codes structures by building type: pink for brick, yellow for wood.

The excerpt below shows that development in the northwest Slope was well advanced by 1880. The excerpt shows 5th Avenue to the left, 6th Avenue to the right, Flatbush Avenue on the diagonal at the top, and Bergen, St. Marks, and Prospect Place from top to bottom.

1880 Bromley Brooklyn Atlas showing NW Park Slope

Prospect Place between 5th & 6th Avenues, north side, circa 1870s -
unprotected

Park Slope's Fifth Avenue Theater

Another historic Park Slope Theater appearing in the Brooklyn Public Library's collection of newly-digitized Brooklyn theater images is the Fifth Avenue Theater. The library's caption indicates that the theater was located at 5th Avenue and 4th Street in Park Slope:

Fifth Avenue Theater, Park Slope, 1911
Image: Brooklyn Public Library

We were completely unfamiliar with this theater, and inquired of the Brooklyn Collection's curator regarding it. She kindly responded that the Fifth Avenue Theater had indeed once stood at the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and 4th Street, as indicated on the "Belcher Hyde atlas" for the period. We were also unfamiliar with the Belcher Hyde atlas, but a quick web search reveals that it is available on the HistoricMapWorks.com website, and the 1916 Belcher Hyde map does in fact show the Fifth Avenue Theater at that corner (circled in green below):

Fifth Avenue Theater (circled)
5th Avenue & 4th Street, Park Slope
1916 Belcher Hyde Atlas (image: HistoricMapWorks.com)

The theater's location is where the J. J. Byrne Playground stands today, near the Old Stone House.

Our library correspondent further states that the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Sunday, Nov. 2, 1919, announces a performance of "The Country Cousin" at Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue Theater under the heading "At the Play in Brooklyn". Sure enough, here it is below; the play was co-authored by Booth Tarkington and Julian Street and is the story of a "country girl" who falls prey to the "machinations of a group of selfish relatives":

Brooklyn Eagle, Nov. 2, 1919, p. 7

Note that the "Belcher Hyde" maps are listed as "Ullitz" maps in the New York Public Library's digitized collection of atlases of New York City. A close inspection of the title page indicates that Hugo Ullitz was apparently the engineer who put together the maps, while "E. Belcher Hyde" was the publisher:

3rd Street - Back from the Brink

This week the Brooklyn Paper celebrates its 30th anniversary with short portraits of Brooklyn's neighborhoods describing how they've changed over the past 30 years. The Park Slope feature is accompanied by a photograph from the north side of 3rd Street between 4th & 5th Avenues, showing buildings in a frightful state of abandonment:

3rd Street between 4th & 5th Avenues (Brooklyn Paper photograph)

The article notes that the block, which looks out upon Washington Park and the Old Stone House, "is now one of the most delightful blocks in Park Slope." We certainly agree with that assessment.

The buildings that were in such terrible shape 30 years ago are four story "double flats", i.e. two apartments per floor, perhaps built to house the families of workers employed in the industries ranged along the nearby Gowanus Canal. The buildings are apparently part of a row constructed in 1893 by local builder Charles Hagedorn (whose last name sometimes appears in variants including Hagedon, Hagadon, and Hagadorn).

"Building Intelligence; Houses; Brooklyn, N.Y., AABN vol. 40, no. 905 (April 29, 1893): p. xvii.

- Third St., n s, 175' w Fifth Ave., 12 four st'y brick dwells., tin roofs; cost, $7,500 each; owner, Chas. Hagadorn, 227 Thirteenth St.

American Architect and Building News, April 29, 1893, p. xvii.

The 1897 Lain's Brooklyn Directory lists Charles Hagedorn, lawyer, in residence at 227 13th Street, the same address as in the above AABN listing:

HAGEDORN Chas. lawyer h 227 13th

According to Brooklyn Eagle accounts, Charles Hagedorn was a substantial property owner along the 5th Avenue corridor, and was also president of the Fifth Avenue Property Holders' Rapid Transit Association, which was "anxious to see rapid transit along Fifth Avenue":

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 21, 1888, p. 1 ("Fifth Avenue Property Holders")

The campaign was successful and service along the new 5th Avenue line of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad commenced in 1889.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1903 carried a photograph of one of the 3rd Street buildings when it was resold to a new investor. Note the awnings on the building to the left:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 13, 1903, p. 11

The entire row comprises twelve identical double flats, all now restored to near original condition.

315-345 3rd Street - unprotected

341 3rd Street - unprotected

341 3rd Street - detail

341 3rd Street - detail

Perhaps even more remarkable than the individual buildings themselves is the fact that all twelve still survive. It remains to be seen whether the buildings will still be standing when our multi-phase, multi-year project to expand the Park Slope Historic District progresses this far downhill.

Peace is Not a Dream in Storage

The Rite Aid at the southwest corner of 5th Avenue and 10th Street in Park Slope has come in for its share of abuse on this blog.

But only when we read On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weismann did we realize the role this Rite Aid played in another nasty fight over a community mural in Park Slope.

5th Avenue & 10th Street, SW corner

Our last post reviewed the unfortunate events surrounding the destruction of Mary Patten's First Street Mural in 1977. Park Slope was apparently to wait over 20 years for its next community mural, and it too was destroyed prematurely because of the opposition of nearby residents.

The 10th Street mural was organized by the new Groundswell organization, incorporated in 1998. Peace is Not a Dream in Storage was a response to a series of attacks on women using the 9th Street/4th Avenue subway station in 1999. Groundswell organized a group of teen-aged girls from the nearby Center for Anti-Violence Education to serve as the mural's artists. According to the authors of On the Wall:

Not until the mural was finished did objections -- never previously expressed -- arise from a small segment of the community. Cultural differences and fears about race, gentrification, and property values ultimately led to the mural's destruction.

At the mural dedication, amidst the controversy, the young artists eloquently stated the mural's intent and what they hoped it would achieve: "We wanted to send a strong message that problems need to be solved, not hidden away in a box... We want to publicly express our cumulative disgust with violence...

Instead of entering into a dialogue with the artists and the mural sponsors, a small group of residents circulated a petition demanding that Rite Aid "remove this insulting and ugly mural" because, in the words of one homeowner, "it makes "our 'hood look ghettoish".

A Rite Aid representative, to his/her credit, initially backed the mural and tried to facilitate a meeting between Groundswell, the artists, and nearby residents, in order to resolve differences. A series of talks and meetings dragged on for months. Ultimately Rite Aid turned against Groundswell and the artists, and the mural disappeared under a coat of whitewash.

A contemporary account of the controversy can be found in the New York Times archive, here.

One begins to suspect, after the premature destruction of Mary Patten's First Street Mural, and of Groundswell's Peace is not a Dream in Storage, more than 20 years later, that Park Slope is particularly inhospitable to community murals. Why is that, we wonder?

One also suspects that Ride Aid's corporate policies were soon changed to preclude any possibility that such an unpleasant situation could ever recur. The idea that a store manager would even permit a community mural to be painted on the side of the store seems almost quaint these days. Even if he or she liked the idea, one suspects the current corporate policy says, in effect, that "no unauthorized store decoration shall be undertaken by any manager" and that failure to comply with this policy is tantamount to "voluntary resignation".

Mary Patten's First Street Mural

Buoyed by the success of her 1976 Douglass Street Mural, Mary Patten commenced plans the following year for another community mural in First Street, just above Fifth Avenue. It was perhaps another attempt to heal the animosities exposed by the Park Slope riot, just a few years past.

The authors of On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City describe Patten's approach to the First Street Mural, and the differences between this project and the Douglass Street Mural:

Seven blocks separated the two projects, presenting Patten with a new set of residents, mostly white, with different values and concerns. For the First Street Mural (1977), Patten recruited local teen artists from the Youth Corps summer employment program. Its low-paying jobs rarely attracted the area's white youth, who were more likely to gain employment in the private sector, and the teens of color who were hired considered themselves lucky to get jobs.

One already suspects that this project is perhaps going to encounter difficulties. If the mostly white residents were not already uneasy by "outsiders" coming onto their block, they became truly alarmed when they saw the actual designs for the mural:

In the mural, long lines of youth wait for non-existent jobs, fights break out over the few existing opportunities, and a policeman with a nightstick arrests a protesting youth...

The first concerns were voiced... at a First Street block party where "there was a handful of people -- white homeowners -- who felt the mural theme was 'too violent, too political' and did not contain enough unity images"...

The group began to paint, but as the mural neared completion, the artists heard rumors that some First Street residents wanted to whitewash the wall. The rumors were true. Before the artists could organze a community meeting, the mural was defaced, bombed by white paint, the perpetrator or perpetrators unknown. The muralists were quick to point out the irony of the act that people criticizing the imagery as violent had ignored the violence inherent not only in the mural's defacement but also in the racial insults later hurled at the artists.

There is a heartbreaking photograph of the defaced mural in On the Wall. The imagery seems entirely consistent with the many other community murals of its time, combining depictions of challenges faced by the city's youth, together with more hopeful images of a diverse group of residents, coming together in common cause, working in unity for more jobs, better housing, equal justice, and an end to racism.

The artists were devastated by the racism and the hatred underlying the comments expressed by some white residents: "There are too many Black people in the picture," and "Black and Latino teenagers could never have thought up this mural in the first place." The main objection to the mural likely was the fear expressed by one resident: "It's going to bring down property values."

After a period of impasse, permission for the mural was rescinded by the apartment building on which it was painted, and the defaced mural was whitewashed in the middle of the night.

On the Wall's authors, Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman, frequently emphasize the fragile nature of community murals: a mural can fall into disrepair; its host building can be demolished; a new building can arise to block an existing mural; a wall on which it is painted can require repair or rebuilding. In the case of the First Street Mural, however, the project lost the essential community support on which every mural depends.

One still finds a faint trace of the First Street Mural today, on the north side of First Street, just above 5th Avenue. The mural covered only the first few stories of the apartment building overlooking the parking lot, and the whitewashed wall remains today, a kind of palimpsest of the aborted community mural and the drama that briefly surrounded it:

Site of Mary Patten's First Street Mural in Park Slope

The 1973 Park Slope Riot

As we wrote our previous post about Mary Patten's Douglass Street Mural, we were struck by the On the Wall authors' assertion that several Black families had been firebombed out of their homes in lower Park Slope in the mid-1970s. We could not simply pass this assertion by, so we tried to research those events. And although we were unable to discover more about those particular incidents, we did stumble upon something else that provides insight into the social conditions from which Mary Patten's community murals emerged: the Park Slope riot of 1973.

In those days, Park Slope's 5th Avenue was vastly different from the baby-carriage-clogged restaurant row that it is today. Union Street was the dividing line between a largely Italian community to the south, and a growing Puerto Rican community to the north. Tensions between these communities simmered along 5th Avenue; the intersection of 5th Avenue and Union Street was the epicenter of this tension; and Park Slope exploded in late June of 1973.

Tuesday, June 26, 1973, was primary day, and Puerto Rican candidate Herman Badillo was in a tight race for nomination in the Democratic mayoral primary runoff election. He lost narrowly that day to Abe Beame. Late that evening, a car pulled up in front of 6 Berkeley Place, just above 5th Avenue. Armed men emerged, firing at two Puerto Rican brothers who were sitting on the stoop, wounding both. The assailants drove off, yelling "if Badillo had won, we would have killed you!"

Word of the assault spread quickly on Wednesday, June 27, and as darkness fell, large groups of Puerto Rican and Italian Park Slopers gathered near the intersection of 5th Avenue and Union Street. Insults were hurled; then bottles and bricks; then people began throwing hundreds of fireworks; and the riot was on, with windows smashed, cars firebombed, and finally gunfire exchanged along 5th Avenue. Five youths were shot, and five police were injured trying to break up the fight:

New York Times, Thursday, June 28, 1973

The worst injured was 15-year-old Jose Colon, shot through the neck and paralyzed from the neck down. The next day, police found spent .22-caliber shells atop 238 5th Avenue (now the Sunflower Academy), on the Italian side, and later found a rifle with sniperscope on the building's fire escape.

News accounts note that the windows of the Manufacturer's Hanover Bank branch at the corner 5th Avenue and Union street were smashed out, and the building was firebombed; presumably it was the building on the southeast corner:

5th Avenue and Union Street, southeast corner

New York Times photographs

Interestingly, the New York Times accounts indicate that the ground-floor apartment at 6 Berkeley Place, where the initial attack occurred, was "the headquarters of a Puerto Rican political group called the Machetes." A detective noted that "this is not a gang, but a political organization that wants independence for Puerto Rico," and a member of the group indicated that it was an offshoot of the Young Lords, a radical Puerto Rican social service organization modeled somewhat after the Black Panthers:

New York Times, Friday, June 29, 1973

A 2006 Times account of the riot notes that the Machetes were "by some accounts a street gang and by others a Marxist political group."

The Machetes, or Macheteros, are apparently still in existence today, a clandestine organization still fighting for Puerto Rican independence. They are also called the Boricua Popular Army and are described by the FBI as a terrorist group.

Below, Puerto Rican residents of Park Slope, standing in front of the ground-floor Macheteros headquarters at 6 Berkeley Place:

New York Times photograph

The detailing above the ground floor windows has been shaved off since the New York Times photograph was taken in 1973, but the location of the Times photograph is easily recognizable today:

6 Berkeley Place, left

6 Berkeley Place - Macheteros headquarters, 1973

6 Berkeley Place - detail

The 1973 Park Slope riot had a sad coda three decades later, in 2004, when Jose Colon, the 15-year-old shot through the neck on the night of the riot, ultimately died. The wound was said to be a contributing factor in his death. The shooter, who had earlier served three years on a charge of reckless endangerment, was then charged with 2nd degree murder, but ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter in 2006 and was sentenced to two to six years.

Such was the charged atmosphere of lower Park Slope in which Mary Patten soon began to organize around the creation of her Douglass Street Mural, which both frankly acknowledged the reality of social conflict, but also pointed toward the possibility of communities working together in cooperation.

One could make the case that Park Slope's tradition of cooperation was already quite evident in 1973. Historian Francis Morrone, in his recent book about Park Slope, notes that the riots occurred just one month before the current Park Slope Historic District was designated in July, 1973. And as the Park Slope Food Coop's sign in Union Street declares, the Coop was "est. 1973".

A Complete 5th Avenue Blockfront

In the April 29, 1886 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, we read that George Brown had completed "five brown stone front houses" at the southwest corner of 5th Avenue and Douglass Street. The article noted that each "house" (actually a mixed use building) contained a store and three flats or apartments above:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1886, p. 1 ("New Buildings")

Checking our comprehensive Park Slope photo archive, we find that the original buildings are still standing. Each of them is three "bays" or windows wide.

5th Avenue & Douglass Street, SW corner - unprotected

The cornice detailing, or what remains of it, matches on two of the adjoining buildings:



An earlier Eagle notice for the same row attributes the buildings to W[illiam]. H. Brown, who may have been in the same firm with George Brown. William Brown was also active in this area of the Slope around the same time:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 21, 1885, p. 1 ("More Houses")

At the same time George Brown erected his 5th Avenue row, he also constructed a building in Douglass Street, just to the rear. Its completion was noted by the Eagle in the same article that noted the completion of the 5th Avenue row:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1886, p.1 ("New Buildings")

It was not unusual for builders to control lots on both sides of a corner, as here. The building is actually only trimmed, not faced, with brownstone:

410 Douglass Street - unprotected

But the cornice detailing matches that of the 5th Avenue row:


And it is also the only three-story, three-family building on the south side of Douglass Street, which facilitates the identification.

Meanwhile, the four buildings at the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and Degraw Street were erected by Dan Buckley, as noted in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of March 19, 1887:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 19, 1887, p.1 ("Buildings")

Unlike George Brown's row to the north, which is faced with brownstone, the Buckley row is brick with brownstone trim. Again, the quoins on the corner building nicely punctuate the row:

5th Avenue & Degraw Street, NW corner - unprotected

Oddly, the corner building in this block, at 17.5' wide, is much narrower than the other three, which are each 27' in width. The former held only one family per upper floor ("single flats"), while the wider buildings held two ("double flats").