Louis Bonert, 6th Avenue & 4th Street, northeast corner

We have been following the evolution of Louis Bonert's four-story, four-family apartment houses in Park Slope. His earlier style often features three stories of "fancy brick" over a brownstone first story and basement, with a full-height, three-sided projecting window bay, and terra cotta spandrel panels (often featuring a "Green Man"). The top-floor windows are arched, and Romanesque clustered columns flank the doorway.

299 6th Avenue - unprotected

Around 1896, Bonert begins building a new style of apartment house. They are still four stories in height. The full-height projecting window bay is now gracefully rounded. The spandrel panels are gone, as are the Romanesque columns flanking the doorway; instead, the doorway features classical columns and entablature. More importantly, the "fancy brick" facade is dressed up even more, becoming fully faced with limestone. And most distinctively, Bonert employs some highly unusual window hoods:

317 6th Avenue - unprotected

In 1897, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports yet another cluster of new Bonert apartment houses, at the northeast corner of 6th Avenue and 4th Street. The Eagle mistakenly attributes the buildings to "L. Bossert". Louis Bossert was a contemporary lumber magnate, who also built the Hotel Bossert on Montague Street, but our buildings are obviously the work of Louis Bonert, not Bossert. It is not the only time the two men were confused: a New York Times article from 1910 reports the sale of an unfinished house on the south side of First Street in the park block "for Louis Bossert", even though Louis Bonert is known to have built that entire block.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 13, 1897, p. 12 ("New Buildings")

In this row, Bonert seems to retain the form and detailing of his more recent style of apartments, while reverting to the use of "fancy brick" instead of cladding the buildings entirely in stone.

389-391-393 4th Street - unprotected

The corner building has a wonderfully varied 6th Avenue facade: projecting window bays, both angled and gently rounded, alternate along the facade, interspersed with chimney stacks. Twinned granite columns support an elegant entrance portico. The top-story windows, consistent with Bonert's later apartment style, are not arched.

343 6th Avenue - unprotected

The second and third story windows on the 4th Street facades employ the highly distinctive window hoods that Bonert first used in his nearby 6th Avenue row.

343 6th Avenue - detail

The row employs "fancy brick" of slightly varying shades, with either limestone or brownstone trim, over a brownstone base, with rounded window bays, and classical doorways. The row hybridizes the form and detailing of Bonert's emerging apartment house style, with the materials (brick with stone trim) of his earlier buildings.

391 4th Street - unprotected

391 4th Street - detail

Louis Bonert: 6th Avenue & 2nd Street, 1896

In 1896, Park Slope builder Louis Bonert is issued a building permit for a row of four four-story, four-family buildings on the southeast corner of 6th Avenue and 2nd Street:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 1, 1896, p. 13 ("Real Estate Market")

After building, as we have seen, a great many brick-faced apartment houses in previous years, Bonert here develops a handsome group of limestone-faced, bow-front apartment houses, in a new building style pioneered the previous year at the northwest corner of 6th Avenue and 3rd Street. But whereas previously he tested the market with only a single new building in this style, he here employs the new style to create an entire block of apartments:

6th Avenue & 2nd Street, southeast corner - unprotected

Note how his older style persists on the side elevation: as we have seen so many times previously, it is characterized by "fancy brick" with brownstone trim, arched windows at the top floor, and terra cotta spandrel panels beneath the windows.

The front facade, fully clad in stone with almost no ornament, is more austere, and more formal at the same time. Bonert here introduces the unusual window hoods that will become almost a kind of "signature" in his later buildings:

307-309 6th Avenue - detail

The row continues in the next two buildings:

611-613 6th Avenue - unprotected

The original permit was for the four buildings shown above. However, continuing down the block, it is clear that the entire block all the way to 3rd Street was developed by Bonert in the same style. The building facades are nearly identical with those above, with slight differences in the detailing of the windows and doorways:

615-617 6th Avenue - unprotected

319 6th Avenue - unprotected

With this new style of apartment house, Bonert dispenses with the inset Romanesque clustered columns employed beside the doorway in his earlier apartments, striking instead a more purely classical note:

317 6th Avenue - detail

The Brooklyn Eagle records that Bonert sold one of these apartment houses in 1899:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 27, 1899, p. 14 ("Real Estate Market")

This more formal, stone-faced "flat house" will become Bonert's new standard housing style in the next few years in Park Slope.

Louis Bonert: 6th Avenue and 3rd Street, Northwest Corner, 1895

The unfolding story of Park Slope builder Louis Bonert next resumes in late 1894, when the following notice appeared in the New York Times, documenting the sale (by John Pullman, broker) of a large parcel of lots from Edward H. Litchfield to Louis Bonert at the northwest corner of 6th Avenue and 3rd Street. The article notes that the parcel was over 254 feet long. Since the combined distance from 3rd Street to 2nd Street is only 200 feet (a typical lot in brownstone Brooklyn is 100' deep), we can assume that the parcel ran westerly from the corner. And indeed, when we view the 3rd Street buildings in our comprehensive Park Slope photo archive, we can immediately detect the work of Louis Bonert.

New York Times, December 1, 1894, p. 15 ("Brooklyn Realty Matters")

Bonert's original plans for ten "detached" buildings seem not to have been realized. The buildings we see today form a continuous row of twelve apartment houses in several styles. We shall walk through the row from west to east.

The first two buildings are in his classic "Green Man"-style with which we have become quite familiar from recent posts, here executed in very light brick:

407-409 3rd Street - unprotected

A slight innovation here is the use of a rounded window bay at #409, instead of the more usual 3-sided or "octagonal" bay at #407. But otherwise these are classic Bonerts, similar to many others he erected in Park Slope around 1894. Next to these is a matching pair at #411-413, in darker brick and stone trim but otherwise identical to the first pair:

411-413-415 3rd Street - unprotected

Next come four buildings in a stylistic departure for Bonert. The first one, #415 (on the right in the picture above), is followed by three more shown below.

417-419-421 3rd Street - unprotected

The fully stone-faced facades would most likely have been considered more fashionable than a mixed brick and stone front. Bonert here retains the arched windows at the top floor, and decorative spandrel panels below the windows. There is no projecting window bay.

417-419 3rd Street - detail

Next come three more of the more traditional "Green Man"-style apartments, like so many that we have seen before:

423-425-427 3rd Street - unprotected

The final building in the row, at the corner of 6th Avenue and 3rd Street, represents a complete break from everything Bonert had done up to this time:

429 3rd Street, at 6th Avenue, northwest corner - unprotected

It is a very handsome apartment house, with a full-height, rounded window bay. The facade is clad entirely in limestone while the 6th Avenue side is in "fancy brick" with limestone detailing. It presents a striking contrast to its brick neighbors to the west, especially considering that they must have been built at the same time:

423-425-427-429 3rd Street - unprotected

Perhaps Bonert was testing the market for this new style of apartment house. The innovative style was apparently a success; the Brooklyn Eagle reports the sale (again with Pullman as broker) of 429 Third Street, the corner building, almost exactly one year later:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 4, 1895, p. 12 ("Real Estate Market")

The "fancy brick" side elevation retains the familiar arched top-floor Bonert windows and other highly pleasing architectural details:

429 3rd Street - detail

Don't forget to notice the original iron fence in the front, incorporating both cast- and wrought-iron elements:

429 3rd Street - detail

Louis Bonert: Union Street, 1894

Today we present yet another row of classic four-story, four-family single flat houses by Louis Bonert, this time on the north side of Union Street east of 6th Avenue.

A New York Times article previously posted on this blog records Bonert's purchase of these lots in early 1894 ("a plot of lots on the north side of Union Street"):

New York Times, February 14, 1894, p. 12 ("Brooklyn Realty Matters")

A subsequent article in December 1894 records the sale, brokered by John Pullman, of the buildings that Bonert constructed on these lots:

New York Times, December 1, 1894, p. 15 ("Brooklyn Realty Matters")

A glance at our comprehensive Park Slope photograph database reveals that Bonert constructed precisely the kind of four-story, four-family flats that he was building all over Park Slope in 1894:

799-803 Union Street - unprotected

803-809 Union Street - unprotected

807 Union Street - detail

807 Union Street - detail

If the six lots cost $18,000, then each lot cost $3,000. The construction cost was $6,500 each, based on these nearly identical buildings in 6th Avenue. Thus the total unit cost was $9,500. As recorded above, Bonert sold each building for $12,000, for a profit of $2,500 each, for a return of about 26% in less than a year if our math is correct.

New Perspectives on Familiar Bonerts

Below are details from some of the 6th Avenue Bonert apartment houses that we've been exploring recently.

A closeup of the Romanesque capitals on the clustered columns beside the doorway, east side of 6th Avenue north of 2nd Street:


Classical doorway with original wooden door and frame, 353 6th Avenue between 4th & 5th Streets:

353 6th Avenue

Note the sort of beaded pattern on the edge of the wooden frame around the door:


The stone doorway on the next building, 355 6th Avenue, is quite different from the adjacent classical doorway. Yet it has exactly the same wooden door frame:

355 6th Avenue

The doorway of 355 6th Avenue also matches those in the long row across the street, on the west side of 6th Avenue between 4th & 5th Streets:

348 6th Avenue

Look up to find precisely the same beadlike pattern employed along the bottom of the cornice on many of these same buildings:


A miniature version of the beadlike detail is even incorporated in the egg-and-dart molding that connects the top-floor windows:


Finally, the mysterious clasped hands from the cornice at 346-348 6th Avenue. Some kind of Freemasonic symbol, perhaps?

346-348 6th Avenue

Louis Bonert, 6th Avenue & 2nd Street, 1894

Our next group of documented buildings by prolific Park Slope builder Louis Bonert is found at the northeast corner of 6th Avenue and 2nd Street. The group of buildings is nearly identical to other similar rows constructed by Bonert around the same time:

6th Avenue & 2nd Street, northeast corner - unprotected

299 6th Avenue - unprotected

The documentation for the row of four apartment houses just off the corner appears in the New York Times of September, 1894:

New York Times, September 4, 1894, p. 12 ("Brooklyn Realty Matters")

The building permit does not include the corner building itself. But the details of the corner building leave little doubt that it too was constructed by Bonert:

303-305 6th Avenue - detail

Interestingly, the row departs in several ways from Bonert's previous rows that extended to a corner lot. Bonert previously often offset a brownstone-faced, mixed use (residential over commercial first floor) corner building with adjacent all-residential, brick-over-brownstone buildings. Here the corner building boasts a wonderful rounded window bay, but is otherwise very similar to the adjacent buildings, and shows no sign of ever having incorporated a commercial component on the first floor:

On the side elevation of the corner building, Bonert introduces an unusual spandrel panel featuring a Native American in feathered headdress:

305 6th Avenue - spandrel panel detail

Louis Bonert: 2nd Street, 1894

Next up in our seemingly endless series about Park Slope builder Louis Bonert is this series of five "single flats", from the south side of 2nd Street, just below 6th Avenue:

426-418 2nd Street - unprotected

Our attribution for these buildings comes from the August, 1894 New York Times:

New York Times, August 1, 1894, p. 12 ("Brooklyn Realty Matters")

This row of course exhibits all the classic characteristics of Bonert's flat houses, including the brick-arched top-floor windows, the "Green Man" terra cotta facade panels placed beneath the windows, and the brownstone-faced first floor with inset clustered columns flanking the doorway:

Bonert once controlled property on this side of the street extending all the way to 6th Avenue. A New York Times article in early 1895 notes that Bonert sold property at the southwest corner of 6th Avenue and 2nd Street to the Trustees of St. Matthews English Lutheran Church, which was relocating from Clinton and Amity Streets in what's now known as Cobble Hill:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 14, 1895, p. 9 ("Real Estate Market")

One suspects that Louis Bonert was a member of the congregation, since the article notes his sizeable subscription of $1,000 toward the $13,000 purchase price.

St. Matthew's Church, previously noted on this blog, was soon erected on the site. The Times article notes that Charles A. Schieren, Mayor of the independent City of Brooklyn in 1894-95, was a Trustee of St. Matthew's Church. Schieren had lost a daughter in childhood and donated a stained-glass window in her memory which was installed in the church building.

Our Bonerts are peeking out from behind the right-hand side of the church in the photograph below:

St. Matthew's English Lutheran Church - unprotected

Finally, the Times article notes that Bonert's broker, John Pullman, maintained his office at 741 Union Street. The address is approximately where "Uncle Louis G's" ice cream emporium appears in the photograph below (blue and white stripes):

5th Avenue & Union Street, northeast corner - unprotected