Acme Hall's Architect

The history of Acme Hall, on the northwest corner of 9th Street and 7th Avenue, is well known by now, having been recounted on the old Gowanus Lounge and Here's Park Slope blogs.

It is well established from these previous accounts that Acme Hall was built in 1889-1890 by Charles Nickenig, who also built the adjoining mixed-use (flats over stores) row extending to 8th Street.

Acme Hall
Charles Nickenig, Owner/Builder
J. G. Glover, architect - 1889

However, we've never before seen the name of Acme Hall's architect. Perhaps someone has posted it elsewhere, but we're not aware that he has been identified, until now. According to the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide, the architect is J. G. Glover:

"Buildings Projected - Kings County," RERBG v. 44, no. 1116 (August 3, 1889): p. 1094.
- 1693 - 7th av, n w cor 9th st, one four-story brick club house, 38.6x71, tin roof, iron cornice; cost, $30,000; Chas. Nickenig, 368 11th st; ar't, J. G. Glover.

J. G. (John Graham) Glover's name is familiar to us; he was the architect of C. B. Sheldon's great Verona apartment building at 7th Avenue and President Street. Glover's name also appears frequently in various historic district Designation Reports.

Liberty Row

In June, 1887, the American Architect & Building News, a trade periodical that later evolved into today's American Architect, carried news of a quartet of buildings to be erected on the west side of 7th Avenue, 21 feet north of 10th Street:

"Building Intelligence; Houses; Brooklyn, N. Y.," AABN vol. 21, no. 599 (Jun. 18, 1887): p. xiii.

– "Seventh Ave., w s, 21' 6" n Tenth St., 4 four-st’y brick and brown-stone stores and dwells., tin roofs; cost, each $8,000; owner, Chas. Nickenig, 368 Eleventh St.; architect, W. H. Wirth."

A few weeks later, the same publication listed plans for the building to occupy the corner lot itself. The builder and architect are the same as in the earlier listing above:

"Building Intelligence; Tenement-Houses; Brooklyn, N. Y.," AABN vol. 22, no. 601 (Jul. 2, 1887): p. xii.

– "Seventh Ave., n w cor. Tenth St., four-st’y brick store and tenement, tin roof; cost, $10,000; owner, Charles Nickenig, 368 Eleventh St.; architect, W. H. Wirth."

Given these listings, one might reasonably expect to find a group of five related structures occupying adjacent lots on the northwest corner of 10th Street and 7th Avenue in Park Slope. And indeed there are five such buildings standing there today:

7th Avenue & 10th Street - n w corner
William H. Wirth, architect
Charles Nickenig, builder - 1887

It is a fine row of 5 mixed-use (flats over stores) buildings, still nearly unchanged since they were built in 1887. The original commercial space on the corner building's ground floor has been converted to residential use. This kind of conversion was opposed by the ROSAS organization, since it tended slowly to kill off a commercial street.



The corner building features one of those marvelous cantilevered corner window bays projecting into the center of the intersection, and is crowned by the name "Liberty". One suspects the building is named for the Statue of Liberty, which can be glimpsed on its harbor perch from many South Slope blocks. The Statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886, not many months before plans for these buildings were filed.



Both the builder, Charles Nickenig, and the architect, William H. Wirth, are by now quite familiar to readers of this blog. Among other buildings, Nickenig built Acme Hall at the corner of 9th Street, and Nickenig and Wirth collaborated on Acme's Hall's neighbors between 9th & 8th Streets.


The row features highly distinctive brick and terra cotta work including small brick arches where one would normally expect to find a wooden or pressed metal cornice. Separating each building is a column of rusticated brownstone blocks.

7th Avenue, 10th to 11th Streets, West Side

By request, we turn our attention now to the west side of 7th Avenue between 10th & 11th Streets in the South Slope.

To the casual observer, the entire blockfront might appear to have been built as a single unit. Each building is of brick, brownstone-faced, 3 stories, flats over stores, 3 bays, flat front, with identical neo-Grec detailing around the windows:

350-358 7th Avenue (sw corner 10th Street)

(Our photos are from 2008-2009 and show the late, much lamented Tea Lounge!)

360-368 7th Avenue (nw corner 11th Street)

On closer inspection, certain subtle differences appear. The side facade of 350 7th Avenue, at the 10th Street end, is plainer than the side facade of 368 7th Avenue, at the 11th Street end, which features decorative sawtooth brick patterns and a slightly projecting chimney stack:

350 7th Avenue (sw corner 10th Street)

368 7th Avenue (nw corner 11th Street)

An even closer view of the corner buildings highlights the identical facade detailing of the window frames, but also reveals differences between the cornices:

350 7th Avenue - detail

368 7th Avenue - detail

So what do you think? Same builder/owner/architect, or not? It is indeed puzzling. Compounding the confusion is the fact that we have not yet found any supporting attributions in our usual sources (Brooklyn Eagle, American Architect & Building News, etc).

However, our researchers have actually pulled the Dept. of Buildings files for this stretch of 7th Avenue, so we do have findings at least for some of the row.

Regarding 350 7th Avenue, at the sw corner of 10th Street, the building files yield a surprise: the original permit, dated September 3, 1885, was for a row of two buildings at the northeast corner of the intersection, diagonally across the street! But pencilled in at the top of the permit, with a date of Sept. 12, are the words:

It is now proposed to erect the below buildings on the S.W. cor 7th Ave + 10th St - To front on 7th Ave Also to build 3 houses Two to be 20 ft. front Approved David Acker Depty Comm

Building permit, 350-354 7th Avenue
September 3, 1885
Revised September 12, 1885

Apparently the plans were changed at the last minute, to build a row of 3 buildings on the SW corner of the intersection, instead of a row of 2 on the NE corner. (One can see that the letters "N.E." in the original plan, above, are struck out.)

The next page of the permit reveals the names, quite familiar to us by now, of those responsible at least for this row of 3:

350-354 7th Avenue - 1885 building permit, showing:
C. Nickenig, owner
R. Dixon, architect
L. Bonert, builder

Charles Nickenig of course built Acme Hall and other 7th Avenue buildings; Robert Dixon was a prolific Park Slope builder; and Louis Bonert would go on to develop a vast amount of Park Slope property including some of the finest houses within the current historic district.

The plans also contain the original architect's drawing with R. Dixon's name stamped in the corner; the rendering shows the commercial space with two floors above, and the cellar floor below ground level with thick foundation walls:

350-354 7th Avenue, rendering
R. Dixon, architect, 1885

Our researcher also found DOB files for 368 7th Avenue, at the northwest corner of 11th Street, the building at the other end of the row. The plans, dated October 19, 1886, are for a single building, with Bonert now listed as owner as well as builder. The architect for 368 7th Avenue is listed as Frederick E. Lockwood:

368 7th Avenue - building permit dated Oct. 19, 1886

368 7th Avenue - building permit
Owner - Louis Bonert
Architect - Frederick E. Lockwood
Mason/Carpenter - Louis Bonert

No other original building files for this blockfront were found by our researcher. So what is one to make of this confusing situation? A row of highly similar buildings; plans extant only for the end buildings; different architects; Louis Bonert a constant in both.

Below is what our researcher, a professionally trained preservationist, has to say about the row, beyond what is revealed by the building files above:

All buildings in this block share distinct architectural elements including building height, brownstone facing, a unique wood cornice, and machined window entablature so while it is not reflected in the Buildings Department records these buildings were built within a short span of time. Records for the corner buildings, lots 41 and 50, show different owners, architects, and builders, but the same key elements, and were built in 1885 and 1886 respectively, providing a timeline for construction of the infill buildings.

Acme Hall's Neighbors

The story of Park Slope's Acme Hall, on the northwest corner of 9th Street and 7th Avenue, is fairly well-known these days; Ruth Edebohls chronicled its history in an article published on Bob Guskind's inimitable "Gowanus Lounge" blog. Ms. Edebohls states that Acme Hall was built in 1890 by C. Nickenig.

Perhaps less well known is that Charles Nickenig apparently also built the rest of the block running north from Acme Hall to 8th Street, a row of seven mixed-use buildings containing flats over ground-floor commercial space:

314-326 7th Avenue - unprotected

Plans for the five buildings closest to 8th Street appeared in both the Brooklyn Eagle and the American Architect and Building News in March, 1889:

"Building Intelligence; Stores; Brooklyn, N. Y.," AABN vol. 25, no. 689 (Mar. 9, 1889): p. xviii.

– "Seventh Ave., w s, 22' s Eighth St., 4 four-st’y brownstone stores and dwells., tin roofs; cost, each, $7,000; owner, Chas. Nickenig, 437 Ninth St.; architect, W. H. Wirth; builder, not selected."

– "Seventh Ave., s w cor. Eighth St., four-st’y brownstone store and tenement, tin roof; cost, $8,000; owner, Charles Nickenig, 437 Ninth St.; architect, W. H. Wirth; builder, not selected."

Brooklyn Eagle, March 02, 1889, p. 2 ("Houses - Lots")

Note the two errors in the Eagle citations above: the first listing reversed "street" and "avenue", while the second listing mangled Nickenig's name.

A few months later, the Eagle carried a notice regarding the rest of the row, two buildings closer to 9th Street:

Brooklyn Eagle, June 22, 1889, p.1 ("Real Estate")

The architect was William H. Wirth, whose work we last encountered in 6th Avenue, in a row of small brick houses designed for builder Thomas Butler.

The 7th Avenue buildings are brownstone-faced, and the upper floors of each feature a three-sided projecting window bay surmounted by ornate swags just below the elaborate cornice:


The orientation of the window bays alternate so that the buildings stand in matched pairs; except for the mismatched paint, the pair below could easily be mistaken for a single building:



Such an orientation places the entrances to the upper floors next to each other on the ground floor. In the pair of buildings shown above, the upper-floor entrances have been combined into a single doorway. The combined entry may have been a later alteration; as shown below to the left, some of the building pairs still have separate entrances to the upper floors:



The buildings are in near-original condition, still housing flats above and shops on the ground floor, just as they have done since they were first constructed in 1889.

Introducing Louis Bonert, Park Slope Builder

Today we're launching a series of articles about a builder quite central to the history of Park Slope. His first name is usually Louis, sometimes just L., and occasionally Lewis; his last name ranges through variations including Bonert, Bonnert, Bonnet, Bonirt, Bonard. He is most frequently called Louis Bonert, and he built an enormous quantity of structures within Park Slope, so it will take a while to work through all our material on him.

Bonert ultimately developed what are now considered some of the finest residential "park" blocks in Park Slope, including most of the south side of First Street and the north side of Second Street. He also built a delightful small row of neo-Georgian homes on the north side of First Street. This row always brings to our mind the side streets of Knightsbridge or Belgravia:

1st Street, Park Block, Park Slope Historic District

At any rate, First Street is the end of the Bonert story. We want to go way back to the beginning, to our earliest sighting of him in Park Slope, when he was probably just getting off the ground as a builder. The story begins in the 1879 Brooklyn Eagle:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 19, 1879, p. 3 ("The Building Business")

When we find a reference such as this one, we next check our online photo database of Park Slope to see if we can find anything that looks like the building mentioned in the article. The first step is to figure out what block it is on. The article cites "south side of Eleventh street, west of Eighth Street[sic]", so we presume "west of Eighth Avenue" is meant. The photo album for that block is here. Conveniently, there is only one brownstone-faced building on the block, specifically #546, shown below; the rest of the block consists of early apartment houses or brick-faced buildings:

546 11th Street - unprotected

The general appearance of the building matches the Brooklyn Eagle description. But can we make a more definitive attribution? Note that the Eagle article indicates the distance west of 8th Avenue. How far west of 8th Avenue is #546?

We can check the distance from 8th Avenue by consulting the interactive NYC block-lot map. Punch in the building's address and one is presented with the screen below (partial screen-shot):

The subject property, 546 11th Street, is highlighted in red. Click the "Lot Info" tag and a pop-up box, including the lot width, appears. Use the "Select" tool to select adjacent properties. If one adds up the lot width of all lots between our subject property and 8th Avenue, one gets 189.92 feet, which is very close to the 182' mentioned by the Brooklyn Eagle article. The difference is certainly less than the width of a house.

The match between the Eagle description and the current appearance, plus the match between the Eagle description and the distance from 8th Avenue, together create a strong case for attribution of this house as an early work of Louis Bonert, builder. The owner cited in the article, "C. Nirknig", has become known to us under a variation, Charles Nickenig, whose work we will explore later on this blog.

We should admit at this point that #546 11th Street is somewhat known to us already, since it was on the Civic Council House Tour in recent years. It is a remarkable house, having been joined to the adjacent brick structure (with the garage door) to create a very wide house with private garage, an exceptional rarity in Park Slope. There is also a complex of outbuildings connected to it in the rear yard. 11th Street house numbers can be tricky because the street was renumbered in the early 1890s. But according to the 1897 Lain's Brooklyn Directory, the resident of this house, Ira Hunter, operated a dairy in 7th Avenue:

HUNTER Ira C. dairy 180 7th av h 546 11th

It is possible that the owner of 546 11th Street operated the wholesale end of his business in the outbuildings behind his home, and also operated a retail outlet at 180 7th Avenue. 180 7th Avenue no longer exists, having been replaced by P.S. 321 in the 1960s.

We will be seeing a great deal more from Mr. Louis Bonert!

Before we leave 11th Street, we should note another of the many correspondences we've come to appreciate since starting to pay closer attention to the buildings we pass every day. Look closely at the flat house to the left of the brownstone in the photograph above, noting particularly the door hood and the unusual panels between the first and second floor bay windows:

548 11th Street - unprotected - detail

Compare these details to some very similar buildings elsewhere in Park Slope:

These apartments are not by Bonert and we will return someday, we hope, to these 8-family flat houses elsewhere in Park Slope. But for now the nature of these "correspondences", the location of these "mystery" buildings, is left as an exercise to the reader.