1960 Park Slope

We finally had a chance to review the exhaustive New York Times coverage of the 1960 Park Slope airplane disaster. A lot of great old photographs accompany the articles; the Here's Park Slope blog has a comprehensive then-and-now portfolio. What strikes us is how little the neighborhood has actually changed in the 50 years since the tragedy, thanks in part to the creation of the Park Slope Historic District.

While the buildings are largely the same, the photograph below reflects some of the other changes that the Slope has undergone in the last 50 years. The picture below shows the intersection of 7th Avenue and Park Place, the subject of one of our "Lost Park Slope" posts from a while back:

7th Avenue and Park Place, 1960
New York Times photograph

The building on the right is the truncated remnant of the Doherty Building at Flatbush and 7th; the B67 bus stop is right there. On the left stands #10 7th Avenue, one of the earliest houses in Park Slope, and one of a row of simple Italianate dwellings built circa 1865.

If you look closely, you can make out the sign for a business named "Paradise" on the ground floor of #10 7th Ave. What do you want to bet that the "Paradise" was one of the many saloons that once lined the avenue?

Perhaps the most poignant photograph, for us, shows 126 Sterling Place after part of the doomed jet had sliced through its cornice:

126 Sterling Place - 1960
New York Times photograph

The brick wall was repaired, but the cornice was never restored. 126 Sterling Place, one of a row of three identical apartment houses, is on the left in the photograph below.

126-122-118 Sterling Place

We have no knowledge regarding who designed or built these apartment houses, or when. Perhaps our ongoing research in the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide will someday yield substantive information about them.

Plaza Theater

Updated: Commenter LGR is correct about the Bunny Theater. See subsequent post about the nearby Flatbush Pavilion.

The Brooklyn Public Library recently digitized and made available on the web its photographs of Brooklyn theaters. Naturally we reviewed the collection, looking for anything related to Park Slope.

One of the newly-available photographs features an early view of the Plaza Theater, at the corner of Park Place and Flatbush Avenue. The image is from 1914. The mansarded building on the right is the Durfey residence, 158 Park Place, which stood until 1932:

Plaza Theater, 1914
Photo: Brooklyn Public Library

The center building housed an amazing mix of businesses. All of these signs beckon the passerby:

Prospect Lunch
Brush's Dining Room
Oysters
Bedford Rubber Tire Co. - Auto Tires Repaired

The Plaza Theater lingered until quite recently, finally succumbing to the ultimate ignominy of becoming a chain clothing store.

Hundreds of Park Slopers walk this very sidewalk every day, between the Q train entrance just beyond the edge of the photograph, to the left, and the foot of 7th Avenue to the right.

More Boundary Madness

A recent Brownstoner story brings news that the carriage house at 90 Park Place is undergoing renovation:

90 Park Place - Park Slope Historic District
photo: brownstoner

According to the Park Slope Historic District's Designation Report, this "handsome little Italianate stable" was built to serve the adjacent house at the corner of 6th Avenue and Park Place:

117 6th Avenue - unprotected

However, in yet another example of the current historic district's irrational boundaries, the stable itself is within the boundaries of the Park Slope Historic District, while main house it was built to serve is not. The link between the two buildings, one inside and one outside the current historic district, is confirmed in the Designation Report:

Lost Park Slope: The Envelope Please

Our Lost Park Slope quiz asked readers to identify the location of the photograph below:

Where is this Park Slope location?

May we have the envelope please... Ruth Edebohls! correctly identifies the location as the corner of Flatbush and 7th Avenues. Below is the same location today; the view is from the Prospect Heights side of Flatbush, looking west across Flatbush at Park Slope:

Flatbush Avenue, 7th Avenue, and Park Place - 2010

The historic photograph is from the collection of the New York Public Library. The text on the verso reads:

The intersection of Flatbush Ave. and Park Place at Seventh Ave. The trolley tracks run northward on Flatbush Ave. At the left is the Durfey house, on the corner of Seventh Ave. and Park Place; beyond it appear Nos. 8-12 Seventh Ave. and the west side of Park Place. About 1912.

The Durfey house, with its wonderful front porch and mansard roof, on the left in the historic view, formerly stood at 158 Park Place, at the corner of Flatbush Avenue. Erected in 1872 in French Second Empire style, it was the home of Joseph Prentice Durfey, a successful jewelry merchant in New York, who died in 1900:

Brooklyn Eagle, June 26, 1900, p. 3 ("Obituary")
Correction: "Durfey & Shieble" should read "Durfey & Shiebler"

According to William Younger's essential Old Brooklyn Photographs, the Durfey house was occupied by the Durfey family until 1906. After later uses as a dancing school and restaurant, it was demolished in 1932. A 1-story commercial building now occupies the site. (N.b.: Younger reprints the same photograph, but identifies it as circa 1895.)

Younger's book identifies the building on the right, at the corner of 7th Avenue and Flatbush, as the Doherty Building. The building was standing at least as early as 1877, when the following ad appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle:

Brooklyn Eagle, March 12, 1877

The Doherty Building still stands today, although sadly its upper two stories were removed at some point. The original quoining can still be seen on its corners:

Doherty Building in 2010
Flatbush and 7th Avenues

The Doherty Building can be seen in the left foreground of the 1914 view below. The legend on the window identifies the occupant as "Brooklyn Post Office Station 86":

Doherty Building at left, 1914 view

In fact, except for the Durfey residence, all of the other buildings in the top photograph still stand today, albeit in somewhat altered form.

2009 House Tour: 129 Park Place

This essay completes our series of articles about the 2009 Park Slope Civic Council House Tour. This year's tour will be held on Sunday, May 17, 2009, from noon until 5:00pm. Advance tickets are available here; tickets are also available on the day of the event at the tour's starting point, 50 Prospect Park West. Keep in mind that all of the tour's proceeds are returned to the Park Slope community through the Park Slope Civic Council's unique grants program. As far as we know, no other community group in Brooklyn runs an annual grants program like ours. So come on out, visit some great houses, and help support your local community on May 17! And our sincere thanks to the generous, community-minded people who have agreed to open their houses to the public for this tour. You have done a great service to Park Slope.

Our tour house, 129 Park Place, is one of a row of five classic Italianate brownstone-faced row houses, built in 1874-75 by neighborhood builder John Gordon. It is within the current Park Slope Historic District. These are among the oldest houses in Park Slope, having been built within convenient distance from the horsecar lines that once ran in Flatbush Avenue and 7th Avenue, which provided easy access to the New York ferries at the foot of Fulton Street.

129 Park Place - Park Slope Historic District

The Italianate style is seen in the flush front; the fully-enframed windows; the rounded entryway with segmental-arched door hood; the naturalistic, acanthus-leaved brackets below the door hood; and the cast-iron stoop balusters resembling chess pawns:

129 Park Place - detail

This house lacks the original Italianate stoop newel posts, which can still be seen on the house immediately to the right:

131 Park Place - stoop newel post

The house to the right also sports a projecting, V-shaped bay window at the second floor. This probably represents a 19th-century attempt to "remuddle" an Italianate house into a more modern, neo-Grec V-fronted house. It's true the house gained a nice projecting bay. But, at what cost? The house lost not only the distinctive, segmental-arched door hood, but also the lovely, naturalistic brackets, which were replaced with the more geometric neo-Grec versions, resulting in a kind of bizarre, stylistic mish-mash:

131 Park Place - detail

In short, we're not sure we would have traded in a pristine Italianate door hood for that bay window.

The first owner of 129 Park Place was probably George W. Alexander, bookbinder, who is listed at this address in the 1879 Lain's Brooklyn Directory:

ALEXANDER George W. bookbinder 10 Astor pl N.Y. h 129 Park pl

Alexander's business occupied a series of locations in Manhattan over the course of several decades. By 1893 he no longer resided at 129 Park Place, but a sensational fire in his business on W. 18th Street in New York generated headlines for several days:

New York Times, June 22, 1893

As early as 1883, 129 Park Place was in the hands of Benjamin H. Bayliss, a lawyer in New York. Bayliss was a "man of faith" and was associated for many years with the Memorial Presbyterian Church at 7th Avenue and St. Johns Place in Park Slope. Indeed, the first evidence we have of his residence at 129 Park Place is a notice that he is searching for a precentor for his church choir:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 23, 1883, p. 3

Bayliss was apparently as frugal as he was faithful, renting out rooms to lodgers over the years. An Eagle notice in 1895 recounts that one George H. Gardner of 129 Park Place, most likely a lodger, was relieved of his pocket watch on a trip to Coney Island after succumbing to the "easy familiarity" and excitements of that locale and to the "enthusiastic charms" of a Miss Stacy and her friend, Mr. "Hart Stag", from whom he had accepted the offer of a carriage ride at 3am:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 21, 1895, p. 12

Benjamin H. Bayliss died suddenly at 129 Park Place in 1897, aged 54, of "paralysis", apparently while preparing to go to church:

New York Times, March 9, 1897

The Eagle notes that Bayliss was eulogized as an "every day good man" and was memorialized by his congregation in the form of a Tiffany window installed in Memorial Prebyterian Church later that year. The paper carried a drawing of the window, whose subject, "Christ Blessing Little Children", befits the man who ran the church Sunday School for 25 years:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 27, 1897, p. 5

His son Lucien, named after his maternal grandfather, apparently assumed ownership of 129 Park Place after his father's death. Lucien, who ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, is listed as the resident of 129 Park Place in the 1897 Lain's Brooklyn Directory:

BAYLISS Lucien S. lawyer 170 B'way N. Y. h 129 Park pl

Lucien continued the family's custom of letting rooms to lodgers. Several ads appear in the late 1890s Eagle for room and/or board at 129 Park Place:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 29, 1899, p. 10

The association of the Bayliss family with 129 Park Place continues into the early 20th century. The New York Times on January 18, 1908, carries notice of the incorporation of the Economy Electric Company of Brooklyn, NY, one of whose directors is Donald Bayliss of 129 Park Place. By 1916, Lucien Bayliss is referred to as the "late".

In 1927, the Times recounts that Uno Dahlquist of 129 Park Place was killed in an automobile accident on the Montauk highway. Whether Mr. Dahlquist was a tenant of a still-resident Bayliss family, or whether the house was now a rooming house, is unclear. Mr. Dahlquist and four colleagues were returning from a job in Westhampton, Long Island, where they were engaged in painting a house.