Happy Birthday, Stephen Whitney

The mausoleum of Stephen Whitney (1776-1860) in Green-Wood Cemetery. Today is his birthday. I didn’t know his birthday was coming up when I drew this a week ago. I just happened to come across the fact the other day.

Whitney was a merchant, cotton speculator, and real estate investor. He helped to build the Merchants’ Exchange Building, the first home of the New York Stock Exchange. He was also an investor in the Red Star Line and had a sailing ship named after him. That Stephen Whitney wrecked off the coast of Ireland in 1847, costing 92 of the 110 passengers and crew their lives.

He was the second wealthiest citizen of New York City in the early 19th century, second only to John Jacob Astor. But he was not given to any sort of philanthropy or public service, so his name is not remembered the way others are. There is no Whitney Street, Whitney Park, Whitney Station, Whitney Plaza, Whitney Hospital, Whitney Library, etc.

Whitney died in 1860, and his wife soon after, leaving an estate estimated at $15 million (About $400 million today). The mausoleum was built circa 1875. It has a desk and bench inside for a priest or devotee. One can imagine the sort of guy he was, whose biggest accomplishments included funding a building for the stock market and naming a ship after himself, while donating zero dollars to the public good, but still thought there’d be someone manning a desk in his mausoleum for eternity.

Dodge D5

A 1937 Dodge D5 coupe, parked on a street in Brooklyn Heights.

Prospect Place

 

This Queen Anne-style house is on Prospect Place in Park Slope. Built in 1887, it was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert. Gilbert was known for designing mansions for the elites of Manhattan, but his first New York projects were residences in Park Slope. I drawn a few of his houses before, here and here.

Jabara

 

This grave in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery is a copy of a neo-classical sculpture known as the Monteverde Angel of the Resurrection Angel. Most of the angel statues you see in cemeteries are copies of other sculptures. There are many copies of this angel in cemeteries around the globe. The original marble version of this statue was carved in 1882 by the Italian artist Giulio Monteverde for the Oneto family tomb at Staglieno Cemetery in Genova, Italy. There's at least one other Monteverde Angel in Green-Wood. Moneverde even made a copy for his own family's tomb in Rome.

The people buried here are Frederick Massound and Katherine Milkie Jabara. They were immigrants from Syria. Frederick founded F.M. Jabara & Sons, a successful linen import business, in 1908. Frederick died in 1949. Katherine lived until 1982, passing away in California at the age of 96.

15 Greene Ave

 

A row house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It was built in 1860, along with its two neighbors. Designed by Nicholas Rhodes, they followed the Italianate style typical of brownstones of the time, but featured peaked roofs which distinguished them from the usual flat-roofed buildings around them.

Yu Interiors, on the first floor, has been there for a long time. I used to live in this neighborhood in the early 2000s, and it has been there at least that long.

Coignet Stone Company Building

The Coignet Stone Company Building in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Built in 1872-73, this is the last remaining structure of the Coignet Stone Company complex, which occupied five acres of land along the Gowanus Canal. The company manufactured a type of pre-cast cement material patented by Frenchman François Coignet. This material was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Metropolitan Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as an alternative to brownstone in residential buildings. The company boasted that it could produce the facade of a building in a single day. This building looks like a mansion, but it actually served as a showcase for the product, and is the oldest remaining concrete structure of its type in New York.

The Coignet Company went out of business in 1882. The building was used by the Brooklyn Improvement Company until 1957. In the mid-1960s, it was covered in imitation red brick and had various occupants, but by the 1980s it was abandoned and left to deteriorate. Nonetheless, in 2006 it was designated a New York City Landmark.

The previous year, Whole Foods had bought the Coignet factory site, though not including this building. Whole Foods agreed to pay for its restoration, I guess as part of a deal to secure permits and zoning for the rest of the property, or maybe just because they didn't want a dilapidated eyesore next to their fancy new supermarket. Whole Foods built their store, and after a few lawsuits and fines were levied, made good on their promise to fund the building's restoration, even being awarded the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award for "excellence in restoration" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

The building was then put on the market for $5 million, and then again in 2019 for $6.5 million. However, there were no buyers, because despite the excellence in restoration to the exterior, the interior is still dilapidated. It's currently back on the market with an asking price of $2.99 million.

Auction Winner!

I donated a house portrait commission for my kids' school fundraiser, and this was the highest bidder! I think they liked it.

Two Buildings on South Elliott St.

 

This distinctive Queen Anne house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn has quite a history.

Originally built as a one-story, wood-frame house in the 1870s, it was bought and enlarged by a lawyer named Anthony Barrett. It was then purchase by Salvatore Cantoni, a wealthy Wall Steet banker, who expanded it even further, adding the towers and oriels and distinctive fish scale shingles on the facade. Cantoni rented the house out for years. Eventually, ownership passed to others, and by the 1980s, the house was deteriorating and going into foreclosure. The city wanted to demolish the building, but it had been landmarked as part of the Fort Greene Historic District in 1978. In 1993, in the middle of a building inspection, the house collapsed, leaving only the front facade standing.

The property continued to auction and sold for $45,100. However, the bidder thought he was buying a fixer-upper, not a single wall! And so he backed out of the deal. Eventually, another buyer was found, who rebuilt the house utilizing the remaining facade.

A few years later, the address made news for tragic reasons. In 2003, it was the residence of a man named Othniel Boaz Askew. Askew wanted to run for City Council, and had some sort of fixation on the current councilman, James E. Davis. He convinced Davis to allow him to accompany him to City Hall, thereby bypassing the metal detectors, Askey shot and killed Davis in the middle of the chamber, himself then being shot by police.

Next door is this two-family brick and stone house. It doesn't seem to have an infamous history to it. It was built sometime in the late 1800s, and has an adjoining twin, painted brown and red.

Cobble Hill Carriage House

 Converted carriage house in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

176-178 St. Johns Place

 

This pair of Queen Anne-style row houses in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were built in 1886 for two doctors, Edward Bunker and William H. Thallon. Their profession is symbolized by the caduceus in the gable of No. 178, on the left. The buildings were designed by Rudolph L. Daus, a Mexican-born German  Catholic who trained in Berlin and Paris. They were among his first commission after setting up shop in Brooklyn in 1884. He designed multiple buildings in Brooklyn, and was known for his eclecticism, drawing on multiple styles and traditions. They were landmarked in 1973.

Biographical Info on Rudolph L. Daus

152 Berkeley Place

 

This Neo-Tudor building in Park Slope was originally a garage. Alfred E. Clegg, vice-president of the Kerr Steamship Line, had bought a mansion nearby on 8th Avenue. He had this building constructed to house his car, with an apartment upstairs for his chauffer. Built in 1925, it was designed by Murphy & Lehman, an architecture team who mostly did projects for the Catholic Church. This was one of their few secular projects. The Eighth Avenue mansion was demolished in the 1940s, but the garage survived and is now a residence. It was landmarked in 1973.

Historical info from: Brownstoner: Building Of The Day

Coffey Street

 

A garage-turned-residence in Red Hook, Brooklyn

Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded in 1855 to serve the needs of the burgeoning Irish and German Catholic population of Red Hook, Brooklyn, The name of the parish refers to a story in the Gospel of Luke in which the pregnant Virgin Mary visits with her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, with the future John the Baptist. According to the story, Fetus John the Baptist sense Fetus Jesus within Mary, and starts to leap around Betsy's womb.

Anyway . . . This is the third building for the parish. The congregation quickly outgrew the original building, and the second, larger church was destroyed by fire. The third church, this one, was consecrated in 1898. The Romanesque and Gothic Revival stone church is constructed of Manhattan schist, the native bedrock stone of New York City. The architect is not identified in any church history, but is possibly the work of Thomas Houghton.

Red Hook Pentecostal

Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church at 110 Wolcott St. in Red Hook, Brooklyn. This building was originally built in 1900 by the Episcopalian Christ Church for its Red Hook Mission. It was designed by Scottish architect brothers William James Audsley and George Ashdown Audsley. In the 1970s, the building was sold to the Pentecostal Church.

The Mary A Whalen

The Mary A Whalen is a decommissioned oil tanker docked at Pier 11 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Built in 1938, she was originally called the S.T. Kiddoo, after Solomon Thomas Kiddoo, the Vice President of the company that manufacturing its engines. The ship was built for Ira S. Bushey & Sons, a Red Hook business that operated a combination shipyard and fuel terminal. She is 172' (52m) long and 31.5' (9.6m) wide, with a gross tonnage of 613 and a capacity of 8.019 barrels of fuel.

The ship delivered fuel up and down the east coast between 1938 and 1968. In 1962, she was purchased by the Eklof Marine Corporation of Staten Island and re-christend the Mary A. Whalen. I'm not entirely sure who that is. She went out of service in 1994, due to a damaged engine crankshaft.

The ship is the last of its kind. It's an early example of lap-welding, a technique in which one steel plate overlaps the other, and is also one of the few surviving examples of a bell boat. On a bell boat, the captain or mate steering has no control over the throttle or direction of the boat, and uses a manual system of bells to signal instructions to an engineer in the lower levels to determine speed and direction. She is also significant for being the subject of the 1975 Supreme Court case U.S. v Reliable Transfer Co., and important maritime law case.

Currently, she is owned by PortSide NewYork, a non-profit advocacy group for waterfront development, and serves as their headquarters and museum. In 2012, she was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mary A Whalen History at PortSide NewYork

344 Ninth Street

This brownstone on Ninth Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is one of a row of four houses designed by architect Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert in 1887. The four houses all measure 17.83 feet (5.4m) wide by 45 feet (13.7m) long, but all are different. No. 344 is the only one to retain its original details, and is still a one-family home. It was originally owned by a gravel and sand merchant named Michael Fitzsimmons. Between 1902 and 1913, it was occupied by the European Conservatory of Music, later called the Manhattan Conservatory.

C.P.H. Gilbert was born in 1861. Little is known of his early life or training, but eventually he wound up designing mining towns in Arizona and Colorado, where he also learned trick riding and shooting. He returned to New York City in 1883. These four houses were his first Brooklyn commissions. He later designed numerous mansions and townhouses in Park Slope, especially on Carroll St. and Montgomery Place. He also had many clients among Manhattan's elite, including F.W. Woolworth.

His Brooklyn buildings were eclectic in design, as opposed to his Manhattan projects. This New York Times feature says, "Whereas Gilbert's Manhattan mansions are all about good taste and sober politesse, his Brooklyn work tends toward a rugby scrum: the houses tangle and tussle with one another like cats and dogs in a burlap bag. He left no diary, no notes, no thoughts on design, no hint as to whether he later regretted his Brooklyn work, or looked on it with affection."

The drawing in process, pencil drawing and inked. . .

Info on this house and C.P.H. Gilbert:

NY Times: Brooklyn Streetscapes C.P.H. Gilbert-The Wild Years

Brownstoner: Building of the Day: 340-344 9th Street, a Study in Change in Park Slope

Before It's Gone: Kellogg's Diner

 

Another NY icon disappearing. Probably. The Kellogg's Diner is a Williamsburg landmark, anchoring the corner of Metropolitan Ave. and Union Ave., right by the Metropolitan subway entrance. It operated 24/7, and so was a particular fixture for the late-night Williamsburg crowd. 

It's been there since the 1940s. It's uncertain exactly when it was founded, and by whom, but it the initial business had shuttered by the 1970s, when it was purchased by a trio of Greek immigrant brothers who renovated and expanded it to the current restaurant. They sold the business to fellow immigrants in 2013.

Unfortunately, it's now in bankruptcy. The owner died suddenly in 2018, and his widow took over. However, it struggled to make ends meet, especially during the pandemic, and is now being operated by a bankruptcy trustee while a buyer is sought. The asking price is $2.5 million. So, maybe someone will buy it and continue its operations as it was.

Initial pencil sketch

Intermediate ink stage

Here's an interesting history of Greek diners in New York, including Kellogg's: Bedford and Bowery.com

Moribund Churches

 New York is a city of constant change, and every week brings news of another historic building being torn down. But there's one category of building that's in particular danger: churches. There are lots of these old, very big buildings sitting on prime real estate all over the five boroughs, and the fact of the matter is that many have shrinking congregations, and/or are not wealthy enough to maintain those buildings.

One such church is West Park Presbyterian on West 86th St. and Amsterdam Ave. The church has a long history of socially-progressive activism as far back as the 1880s, when it invited in Chinese immigrants at the peak of anti-Asian hysteria, and later was active in the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, the anti-nuclear arms movement, homeless services, and relief during the AIDS epidemic.

The initial building was built in 1854, which was then incorporated into a larger structure in 1890. Built in the Romanesque Revival style and faced in deep red sandstone, it was landmarked in 2010. You might think that its landmark status would protect this building from demolition, and usually it would. But in a twist, it is the church itself that is asking for its landmark status to be revoked so it can be sold to a developer.

Some members of the congregation, including the pastor at the time, had opposed the building being landmarked in the first place. Landmark status doesn't just prevent a structure from being demolished, it also places responsibility on the owner to preserve and maintain it, which can become a significant burden. The West Park congregation has dwindled to about a dozen, and it simply can't afford to maintain the large building, which has significant deterioration. Of course, there's a lot of local opposition to having the church torn down to be replaced by what's sure to be an ugly and soulless (and unaffordable) glass tower, but those persons don't have to come up with the money to restore it. A non-profit arts organization which currently rents space in the church is trying to raise money to purchase it, but that seems like a stretch.

Another church whose demise seems imminent is this one in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was originally founded as St. Matthews Lutheran by German immigrants. Built in 1895, it was designed by Laurence B. Valk and son Arthur, who were responsible for several other Brooklyn churches. Over the years, the building changed bands several times, becoming St Matthew-Emmanuel Lutheran, then the non-denominational Marantha Temple, and then sold in 1985 to the Mission for Today Holy Tabernacle Church.

Originally the steeple was topped by a pitched roof with a metal cornice featuring gargoyles, with shutters on the steeple windows, and natural buff-color bricks. At some point, the metal cornice, gargoyles, and steeple roof were removed, and the building was painted deep red. I'd guess those changes would have prevented it from ever being landmarked, and now it is pretty run down. It's unclear to me if it houses any congregation now. It looks like there's a pre-school in operation there, and some other community-based organizations. While it's not know what is being planned for the site, demolition plans are already on file.

The Church in 1944, with original cornice and roof. (Source: Brooklyn Public Library)

More info:

Landmarks Commission History of West Park Presbyterian

Gothamist: West Park Presbyterian Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side Faces a Mortal Threat: The Wrecking Ball

Brownstoner.com: Building of the day: 306 Sixth Avenue

Patch: Demolition Permits Filed For 126-Year-Old Park Slope Church

Jacob Dangler Mansion

I heard about this mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that was about to be torn down. I found some free time to travel out there and draw it for my "Before It's Gone" collection. Scaffolding already surrounded the building, and reportedly the interior had already been gutted. It was a beautiful day for sketching. A passer-by saw me drawing and said, "Beautiful, right? It's about to come down!" 

It was the usual story of the property being bought by a developer who was going to build some ugly, expensive glass apartments on the lot. And, as usual, there was a group of people protesting and trying to get the Landmarks Commission to declare it an historic site and thus save it from demolition. The big twist is that this time it worked! In literally the last minutes of the commission meeting, days before demolition was to start, they voted to consider landmark status for this building. It's not a done deal that the building will be landmarked, or what becomes of it if it is, but there's a possibility that it'll be saved.

Jacob Dangler emigrated to the U.S. as a young man from Germany in the 1860s. He began working in the grocery business in Brooklyn, eventually opening his own meat and provisions shop on Myrtle Ave. in Williamsburg in 1880. He had become prominent in the field as well as the real estate business by the turn of the 20th century. He married Louise Dangler, who kept the books for his businesses, and they had three sons.

Theobald Engelhardt, a fellow German immigrant, was a prolific architect who had a heavy hand in determining the architectural look of Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Bedford Stuyvesant. He designed Dangler's factory and other properties, and then this mansion, located near Dangler's businesses. Built in 1897, it was designed in a striking French Gothic style and cost $50,000 to construct. The huge home measures 58' X 85' (17.6m X 26m), with over 12,000 square feet (1115 sq m) of floor space, and included a bowling alley in the basement. 

Dangler died in 1939, at the age of 87. He'd never retired, working until the end of his life. His son inherited the mansion, but put it on the market in 1940. In 1943, Willow Temple, a lodge of the Knights of Pythias, purchased the building, and in 1967, it was sold to the Oriental Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star, an African-American, female-oriented masonic organization. The interior rooms were expanded, and additions were built, for use by Masonic lodges and other organizations, and for local community gatherings and events like weddings, baby showers, dances, and the like.

Links

Brownstoner History of the Dangler Mansion

Buckingham Road

Colonial Revival house on Buckingham Road, in the Prospect Park South section of Brooklyn.

Prospect Park South is a neighborhood created by developer Dean Alvord in the early 20th century out of parcels of land in Flatbush purchased from the estate of Luther Voorhies and the Dutch Reformed Church. In planning the community, Alvord had the foresight to bury utility lines underground and paved the streets at a time when many were still dirt roads or lined with Belgian bricks. Unlike today's planned communities, each house had a distinctive, individual design in a variety of architectural styles. The streets were given British-derived names to sound classy. It is one of the eleven neighborhoods that now comprise the area known as Victorian Flatbush.

This house was built in 1901. It was designed by Carroll H. Pratt in the Colonial Revival Style. Its original owner was Russell Benedict, who was a NY State Supreme Court judge and lived here until 1923. A NY Times real estate article says that it has 16 rooms, with five fireplaces, seven bedrooms, four and a half baths, and a two-car garage. Pros cited are "a parlor floor befitting an embassy," and Cons are "The enormous kitchen and bathrooms could use an update."

Some process pix. Initial drawing was done while attending a neighborhood block party. The capital on the right column is actually missing; I gave it a sketchbook-repair.

Reference:

Brownstoner: Building of the day - 104 Buckingham Road

Forgotten NY: Buckingham Road, Prospect Park South