Louis Bonert: Five 8-Family Double Flats in Sterling Place

In 1909 Louis Bonert traded five four story, 8-family "double flat" apartment houses in Sterling Place for a large parcel on the other side of Prospect Park, in a deal recounted in the New York Times:

New York Times, August 4, 1909, p. 10 ("In the Real Estate Field")

The apartments are still there today, on the south side of Sterling Place, just off Flatbush Avenue:

164-180 Sterling Place - unprotected

168 Sterling Place - unprotected

The buildings exhibit some of the stylized hoods over the central stairway windows that we have come to associate with Bonert from his apartment houses in 3rd Street and in 6th Avenue:

180 Sterling Place - detail

The doorways are a riot of classical detail. We can make out swags and egg-and-dart molding, but our limited architectural vocabulary cannot begin to describe everything here. What are those pointy things on the upper corners called?:

164 Sterling Place - detail

Bader's roadhouse, which occupied a large parcel at the corner of Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue, just outside Prospect Park, was a popular destination for excursions, apparently as much for the outsized personality of its proprietor as for its convenient location and popular prices:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 4, 1897, p. 20 ("Havens for Cyclists")