USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 33
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A social event of some importance, although limited to a rather nar- row circle, was the organization of the " Ihpetonga." It was the aim of this association to reproduce for Brooklyn something of what New York society knows as the Patriarchs. Let us regard the effort, or rather its results, also, as furnishing evidence that Brooklyn can show something in the way of metropolitan distinction, and is not any Jonger altogether and hopelessly provincial. The peculiar name se- lected is an Indian word, and those-learned in that lore say that it means " the heights." Thus it may equally apply to the top-knot of society or to the locality in Brooklyn where most of that resides. We believe it was only the latter circumstance that Ihpetonga was intended to refer to. The organization is a purely social one, the chief aim of its existence, upon which it concentrates thought and energy all through the rest of the year, being an annual ball. The membership is intended to be composed exclusively of the representa- tives of culture and fashion in the city. It is restricted, therefore, to people of social prominence, descendants from old families whose members were active and influential in Brooklyn's early days. There were fifty original subscribers, and the number has not gone much be- yond sixty since (it was that in 1893). Each subscriber is expected to invite two ladies and two gentlemen to the annual ball, and, there- fore, with sixty members, this would make three hundred partici- pants in the ball. The balls are held at the Assembly Rooms of the Academy of Music, which are elaborately decorated for the occasion.
The erection of Havemeyer & Elder's great sugar refineries, in 1883, calls attention to the fact that one of the most important indus- tries of Brooklyn for many years has been the refining of sugar and the manufacture of molasses and syrup. This concern started their business in Brooklyn in 1857. Some of the refineries preceded theirs, and others have been planted there since, so that in all there were thirteen refineries in the city, in the old Williamsburgh section, or Eastern District, in 1883. One familiar with Brooklyn need not be told their location, being found all along Kent Avenue from near Division Avenue, or the vicinity of the Wallabout, well on toward Bushwick Creek. Latest of all a splendid refinery has recently been building on the point of land made by Newtown Creek and the East River, in what was formerly Long Island City. On January 9, 1882,
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Havemeyer & Elder's refinery, on Kent Avenne, was destroyed by fire, entailing a loss of one million and a half, and throwing a thou- sand men out of work. But such a concern was not easily daunted, and it soon rose to greater things from even such a calamity as this. In the summer of 1883 they had their business in operation again on a larger scale than ever. They had erected two immense buildings, one the refinery proper, the other a filtering house, the former ten stories high, the latter thirteen stories, and covering the entire block from Kent Avenue to the river and from South Second to South Third streets. On the next block, between South Third and South Fourth, where the old refinery stood, a building six stories high was erected, for a warehouse. Again, on the east side of Kent Avenue, midway between South Third and South Fourth streets, is the boiler house, eleven stories high, and connected with the warehouse by a covered iron bridge. The new refinery has the capacity of producing 1,250,000 pounds of sugar daily. Putting all these great concerns together (and many of them have been lately put together with a vengeance, into a gigantic combination, or trust, called the American Refinery Company, which has provoked an investigation on the part of Congress), the sugar refineries of Brooklyn are estimated to be able to produce annually nearly a million and a half tons of sugar, and a correspondingly large quantity of syrup. This represents a sum of one hundred millions of dollars. Indeed, Brooklyn manufac- tures five-eighths of the entire production of sugars and syrups in the United States. The Erie Railroad has a freight depot near the refiner- ies on Kent Avenue, which, by reason of this immense industry, ranks fourth in the amount of business handled of all the depots along their road. Large floats are continually passing between Jersey City and this depot, transporting trains.
Until this period Brooklyn had embraced only the historic towns of Breuckelen and Boschwyck. In 1886 she began the process of ab- sorbing the outlying towns of the original Kings County. And the first of these towns to undergo the process was the eastern portion of Flatbush, that which had been assigned to the settlers by a later allotment and therefore designated the New Lots. As has been noticed, this section of Flatbush had been erected into a separate township in 1852, which action was superinduced by the access of population brought into it by the prosperity of the village of East New York, laid out for a city in the northwest corner of it in 1837. In 1880 the township of New Lots was put down in the census as having a population of 13,681. These thousands were subject only to the imperfect control of a town government, and yet the elements accu- mulating in this purlieu of a great city, or two great cities, needed something much more highly organized. It was also a tempting field for those who were apt scholars in the schools of municipal adminis- tration established by the Tweeds and McLanghlins of the vicinity.
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A struggle for good government, the suppression of vice, the euforce- ment of liquor and Sunday laws became necessary in 1882, gallantly led by some of the best people in the town. and drawing -- together men of all parties. The details of the causes lead- ing up to this battle of re- form are not savory, and are too much like those of larger - SCENE NEAR ARROCHAR, STATEN ISLAND. places to need repetition for the sake of edi- fication or in- struction. But in 1882. encour- aged by the tri- umph of re- form in Brook- lyn. the battle resulted in a victory for the good and pure here also. and the leader of the forces was placed at the head of the town govern- ment as Super- visor, Mr. Dit- mas Jewell being elected to that posi- tion. The re- form party was not so firmly seated, how - ever, but that in 1884 it was to some degree overthrown again. At least the enemy gained a point by electing in the place of Mr. Jewell, a
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man of strong intelligence and eminent in the business interests of the place, a very inferior person, harmless indeed, but weak and eas- ily manipulated, the keeper of a small candy shop. There was, therefore, no remedy but the destruction of the baneful town gov- ernment by annexation to Brooklyn. East New York had been feeling the effects of the bridge, and the addition of the elevated roads, completed in 1885, to the facilities of reaching this section, soon produced a leap forward in population, and was dangerously enlarging the opportunities for corruption. The subject of annexa- tion had been broached before. In 1872 a vote on it had been taken at East New York, and the vote stood three to one in favor of it. But Brooklyn was not at all anxious for this accession of territory then, and nothing came of the project. There was some effort required now to get a vote for it in East New York, the corruptionists seeing the danger of it for themselves. The measure had to go before the Legis- lature, and committees went to Albany again and again to see the Governor, both for and against. The requisite permission for the submission of the question to a vote of the people was finally secured, and when submitted the majority were found to be in favor. On May 13, 1886, the annexation bill was signed by the Governor and be- came law, going into effect on August 1, 1886, when New Lots town- ship became the Twenty-sixth Ward of Brooklyn-the first consoli- dation since Williamsburgh and Brooklyn became one thirty-two years before. The development of the place has been very rapid since, the improved political or municipal conditions inducing people to seek residences, and the increasing rapid transit facilities (real now, and not merely nominal) rendering a residence here as convenient, and indeed more convenient, than in some parts of Brooklyn. But business also grew apace. Real estate operations on a large scale naturally followed. Farms of fifty, sixty, a hundred, and even two hundred acres, were sold at the rate of two thousand dollars per acre, and transformed into streets and lots and rows of dwelling-houses. Among the lands thus disposed of was the historic farm of Major Daniel Rapalje, of Revolutionary fame. This was now divided in ownership among three of his great-grandsons, Simonson, Henry, and Williamson Rapalje. The two former soon yielded to the pres- sure and sold their parcels, getting a good round sum. The third, the late Mr. Williamson Rapalje (all three are now dead), was of a more enterprising and long-headed nature. He had been known for years as " the prince of Long Island farmers," by reason of his bold and successful strokes of business in the line of market gardening. He was the first, for instance, to introduce cauliflower seed direct from Germany, paying $200 a pound for it, and by skillful and seien- tific cultivation he raised the finest cauliflowers on the island, the heads being as white as snow and never less than from eight to ten inches in diameter at the top. For a long time the Boston market
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men were the only ones that could supply the winter markets with squashes, as they possessed the secret of how to preserve them. So. at one time, Mr. Rapalje and another farmer paid a visit to the truck- farms near Boston, and by that single visit learned the one or two conditions necessary to secure the sweetness and perfection of the squash all through the winter. He and his friend at once built a " squash-house " at the cost of a thousand dollars, and the next winter New York did not have to look to Boston for its supply of squashes and pumpkin pies. In the present instance, Mr. Williamson Rapalje knew how to grasp the situation. He did not sell when his brothers did. He waited and meanwhile made improvements. One bold un- dertaking was the paving of Pennsylvania Avenue, the widest street in East New York (which ran through his farm from the village line to the New Lots Road), with Belgian blocks, curbing and side- walking it throughout its entire length. When he was ready to sell he received a sum in excess of that obtained by his brothers for about the same extent of property, five times greater than this paving had cost him. The Rapalje brothers all retained enough of their land to form extensive grounds about their homes, and Mr. Williamson Ra- palje's reservation embraced the original Rapalje homestead, which we have mentioned as having been the house where Colonel Ethan Allen was billeted when a paroled prisoner of the British.
One convincing evidence of the stimulus that business as well as residence and building trades received, was the organization of the Twenty-sixth Ward Bank, in the antnmn of 1888. This was organized at a meeting held at the Hon. Ditmas Jewell's office, the capital determined on being $100,000. At first quarters were rented, but the business warranting the undertaking, a handsome building was erected on the corner of Atlantic and Georgia avenues, in which the bank opened business in March, 1892. It added to the section what it sadly lacked, a really fine piece of architecture, although its scale is not a very large one. Its style is the French renaissance; the cost of the land was $15,000, and of the building $35,000. The principal vaults weigh 50,000 pounds, and are constructed of welded layers of steel and iron. Although Mr. Jewell, after creating from almost noth- ing a very prosperous business, had sought surcease from its cares in the mercantile line by leaving the concern in the hands of his son, the directors insisted that he must accept the Presidency of this bank. He consented, being seconded very efficiently in its management by the Vice-President, his son, John V. Jewell. The results are apparent in the prosperity of the enterprise as recorded.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE HIGHER LIFE OF BROOKLYN.
E like to think of Brooklyn rather as the city of home-being, or home-coming, than as the City of Churches. The latter is no longer a very distinctive title for any city, town, or village in the land. They are all oversupplied with church- es, three or four struggling ones in one small village, each gasping for existence and yawning with empty pews for attendance, where one good strong church would be filled and vigorous, and give far more evidence of Christian earnestness, as well as far more oppor- tunity for Christian effort. There is no reason now why New York or Boston or Philadelphia should not be called a city of churches, any more than Brooklyn. But Brooklyn always was and is now the city where people have a chance to enjoy home-life. Call it New York's bedroom if you will-its abundant business energy and individual commerce are sufficient to mark it as more than a sleeping-place. Yet the phrase has in it the expression of a pleasing fact, that for thousands of people, who make New York the scene of their money- getting, Brooklyn is associated only with home and its dear compan- ionships. And this has made Brooklyn people more sociable, more cognizant of other people, more neighborly, in short. In New York every man looks upon his next door neighbor as per se a man to be shunned, ignored, passed by, as if he were not, at best; and perhaps to be catalogued as an enemy, intruder, plotter against your peace, everything reprehensible and repellent, so that acquaintance is not to be thought of, and the quality of stranger must be strictly main- tained. In Brooklyn the possibility of a different state of things is recognized. Advances may be slowly or coyly made, but they are made, and people on the same block, or in the same flat-house, do get acquainted, and become neighborly and mutually cordial and help- ful, till friendship is at last frequently allowed to cement those who had been strangers before, upon the bare basis of contiguity of habi- tation. But, besides, Brooklyn, as the city of home-coming, of the return from business for so many myriads, should afford a very favor- able field for the cultivation of all that belongs to the higher life, as we delineated the features of it in New York in a chapter in our previous volume. The rest from business to which men come hither in the evening, means surcease from material cares. Here, gladdened
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and stimulated by the ministrations of home's intercourse, the mere bread-and-butter side of life retires into the background. Men are ready now to think of other things-books, pictures, wholesome amusements, music, conversation, discussion, eloquence, the lecture, the theater, the opera. We shall not be surprised therefore to find evidences of the higher life of a city here as we did on Manhattan Island.
In the course of our narrative it has clearly appeared that much attention was paid by the citizens of Brooklyn, in various periods of the progress of the place, to the improvement of the mind. Aside from schools, of which more presently, there were numerous and com- mendable efforts on the part of men and women already shouldering the burdens and avocations of mature life, to promote intellectual culture. In November, 1830, a number of young professional and business men met to consider the forming of a literary society. It resulted in the establishment of " The Young Men's Literary Asso- ciation of Brooklyn." The next year its title was changed so as to read " The Hamilton Literary Association." Out of this sprang the Brooklyn Lyceum, instituted October 10, 1833, of which Thompson writes : " The objects of this institution are intellectual and moral improvement, by means of certain specified committees, and by gra- tuitous public lectures." Thus the next month there was begun " a course of lectures by gentlemen of the City of New York," running through the winter, the initial lecture being given on November 7, 1833. These exercises were delightfully interlarded by what is some- what surprising to us at this date, when weimagine woman is only just coming to the fore. Occasionally the course of lectures by gentlemen was interrupted by one of a series of essays, " principally from the pens of ladies." Out of this Lyceum again grew the Brooklyn Insti- tute, of which later. Again we read that on October 19, 1841, a meet- ing was held for the establishment of a Brooklyn Athenæum, embrac- ing a library and reading-room. We have to wait till January 31, 1852, however, before we learn that anything very definite came of that earlier movement. Then the organization was effected, " de- signed to promote the moral and intellectual interests of the youth of the city, more especially of that portion known as South Brooklyn." The name adopted as an incorporation was the " Brooklyn Athenæum and Reading-room." That same year their building was erected on the corner of Atlantic and Clinton streets. The library eventually was merged into what is now the Brooklyn Library, and many of the other departments are now equivalent to those identified with the Brooklyn Institute.
This eager and widespread desire among the people of Brooklyn to maintain and advance the pleasures and profits of knowledge and study, was no doubt due to the general diffusion of a love of learning produced by the excellent educational advantages for which the city
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has always been noted. In our account of early days we have come repeatedly upon the establishment of this or that school. At the Ferry, in Bedford, in Gowanus, schools were provided for. Advertise- ments in the newspapers are continually announcing that in either of those places, or farther out at Flatbush, youth will be instructed in various useful branches-the ordinary elements-and also in the more liberal branches of Greek, Latin, and other such ambitious stud- ies. When it comes to public schools we find no section without one- the Ferry, Gowanus, Bedford, Wallabout, and later, Williamsburgh and Greenpoint, become so many school districts, which it was only necessary to number and not to organize, when the city began to as- sume considerable proportions. By act of Legislature, the Board of Education was established in 1843. At that time the various districts mentioned numbered about eight, with one school within each. In 1852 there were fifteen schools. From that time they kept on increasing rapidly in number, and, what is better, in efficiency. If there is anything of which Brooklyn may well be proud, it is of her common-school system. It is administered with great care, and with no begrudging economy. The salaries paid to teachers are on the average much larger than those awarded to the teachers of the former New York City. The Board of Education was more than twice as large as that of New York, which may as easily be regarded as a dis- advantage as the opposite, but was secured against that calamity by reason of the care in the selection of the men. As a result, in the present situation, with a central Board of Education and Borough School Boards, we find the Brooklyn Board composed of forty-five members, and that of the two boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx of only twenty-one. Another significant circumstance called forth by the consolidation bears witness to the degree of efficiency to which the school system of Brooklyn must have been carried. When it was necessary to select a Superintendent of Schools for the whole con- solidated city, the scope of the vastly extended and now greatly com- plicated work, as well as the dignity of such a position and the remu- neration it could command in so wealthy a municipality, made it something to which the foremost educators in the land could look as a desirable place, the invitation to which was truly a compliment of the highest order. The Board of Education of the greater city had now been organized, constituted by eleven delegates from Man- hattan and Bronx, five from the Brooklyn Board, and one each from the Boards of the other three boroughs. Presidents of colleges, and especially the former State Superintendent of Education, were ap- proached; and the latter, now the president of a college, was actually elected. As he was so situated there that he could not honorably leave he recommended one whom he deemed most fit for the position. This gentleman had been mentioned before, but it had been thought impossible to unite a sufficient number of votes on him, because of
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an antagonism due to rivalry between neighboring boroughs, But when now it came to a vote, in spite of any such unworthy op- position, he was elected to the place. The point in this rather round- about account of a very simple transaction is that this gentleman had been for several years the Superintendent of Schools in Brooklyn. Much of the excellence of the work done in her schools must have been due to a person qualified for this larger work, and recommended thereto by the highest educational authorities. But at his disposal for making good teachers were various agencies. After the excellent training of the primary and grammar schools, the pupil was free to go on to higher branches of learning for the training of the mind and the enlarging of information, in either of two finely appointed and ably equipped institutions. These were, for boys, the Boys' High School, occupying a handsome building on the corner of Marcy and Putnam avenues, and for girls, the Girls' High School, with even larger buildings on Nostrand Avenue, running far back along both Halsey and Macon streets. To secure more special aptitude for the profession of teacher, guarded with such jealous care, but rewarded so generously, the aspirants for that work are required to attend for one year a training school, where their powers are tested in this particular line, after which they are given a provisional appointment of a year or more. When all these tests have been endured, the place of teacher is an assured one, not to be lightly taken away from an incumbent. In all this provision there is nothing essentially differ- ent from the processes adopted in the city across the East River, yet it is a fact that however excellent the reputation of the schools of New York, those of Brooklyn were generally held to be somewhat superior. Now to both are open the advantages and opportunities of the Col- lege of the City of New York and of the Normal College, forming the climax of the common school system, which set out originally to equip the youth of the city only with the plainest elements of educa- tion-reading, writing, arithmetic,-and proposes now to give to the poorest citizen's boys and girls the opportunities afforded to the rich- est for placing his children in the proudest positions in professional or civil life.
Aside from her common or public schools, Brooklyn has won a name for herself by the superior quality of some of her other educa- tional institutions. Of these Packer Institute and the Polytechnic stand side by side, and are ever associated in the mind in a discussion of this subject. Their history, too, may be traced to a common source. As far back as 1829 the " Brooklyn Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies " was incorporated. A goodly sum was raised for a building, and a handsome substantial one put up. But that effort seems to have exhausted the enterprise, and in a few years there was no school, but the " Mansion House" remained to become familiar to later Brooklynites as a family hotel or large boarding-house. Not dis-
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couraged by this failure, in 1844, a number of citizens again addressed themselves to the task of founding an institution which should afford a higher education to women. A more firm and lasting basis was se- cured for this, and in 1845 the association was incorporated under the simpler title of " Brooklyn Female Academy." This proved a great success. In 1852 its income from tuition alone was $20,000, and six hundred young ladies attended daily. Then came a disaster which only led to greater things. The Academy occupied two build- ings, one measuring seventy-five by one hundred feet, and four stories high, the other fifty feet square, and of an equal height. Here were classrooms, library, laboratories, cabinets of specimens, and dormi- tories for the many pupils from abroad. On January 1, 1853, this en- tire property was destroyed by fire. The school work was not inter- rupted, the classes being at once transferred to the Brooklyn Institute Building on Washington Street, and three days after the fire a note came from Mrs. Harriet L. Packer, stating that it had always been the intention of her deceased husband, William S. Packer, to give a sum of money for founding some institution of learning. By the event of the last few days she was now determined to carry out that purpose in the way suggested thereby. "What I contemplate in this," so she wrote, " is to apply $65,000, of Mr. Packer's property, to the erection of an institution for the education of my own sex in the higher branches of literature in lieu of that now known as the Brooklyn Female Academy." The gift, of course, was accepted with alacrity, and it at once indneed the trustees to expand their work. As a corporation the Female Academy was dissolved, and a newly incor- porated institution formed under the name of the Packer Collegiate Institute. Gratified by this recognition of her husband's or her own generosity, Mrs. Packard made an additional donation of $20,000. A building was at once begun, and was ready for occupancy November 9, 1854. It is a familiar object to all Brooklyn citizens, standing, as it does, on Joralemon Street, between Court and Clinton, and reach- ing back to Livingston. In 1886 an addition was built measuring twenty-eight feet front on Joralemon, and one hundred feet deep, devoted to laboratories, and having a gymnasium on the first floor. The privilege of appointing trustees was extended to Mrs. Packer, which she continued to do up to the time of her death, at a date so recent as 1892. Dr. Alonzo Crittenden was chosen the first director or principal, in which capacity he served until 1883; in that year, Dr. Truman J. Backus, Professor of English at Vassar College, was elected to the office, which is now called president. Packer Institute for a long time occupied a unique position among educational insti- tutions in America. It was without a peer until 1865, when Vassar began its career; after that the students were mainly confined to those resident in Brooklyn. But while this and other similar colleges for young women have risen to higher ranks, still so excellent is
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