USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 36
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57
Twenty-five years ago this subject of annexing the outlying towns was earnestly discussed in the Brooklyn papers, and in those of the various localities. In 1873 the matter was placed in the shape of a bill before the Legislature at Albany, and in June an annexation bill was passed. By its provisions the Supervisors were to meet and ap- point commissioners, one from each of the towns, who with six ap- pointed by the Mayor of Brooklyn were to constitute a Board of Com- missioners of Annexation. This board met on August 11, 1873, and elected John A. Lott President. The county towns forthwith de- manded equal rights with the city. It was found that although city and county were to be made one, there must still be a county govern- ment with its own officers. These and other embarrassing particu- lars confronted the Commission. It made an attempt to smooth the way for all, and on election day, 1873, the question was submitted to a vote. Brooklyn cast a majority of 20,000 in favor, but the people of the county towns overcame this majority by a vote of 21,568 against the annexation, and it was heard of no more for an exact score of
325
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
years. Then, in the Legislature of the State meeting in January, 1894, bills for the annexation of the towns were introduced, a sepa- rate one for each. By reason of the coexistence of county and city without identity. the debt had greatly increased. A more potent ar- gument, however, was that political corruption had become rampant in the towns, low politicians having managed to get themselves into power as their population grew, as we shall see presently in one or two conspienons instances. The Governor signed the bill for the annexa- tion of Flatbush on April 28, 1894, and that for New Utrecht and Gravesend on May 3, 1894, the acts going into effect on July 1, 1894. Flatlands could not be finally taken in until January 1, 1896; on account of some financial complications it was necessary to main- tain the county or town goverment there for a while longer. When this was done, the whole of Kings County had become identical with the City of Brooklyn. This made Brooklyn territorially even larger than New York, covering now. as it did, 66 square miles; as its area was 28 square miles before this event. it was more than doubled. The population was increased from 957,959, to far above the million mark. We ceased to follow the annals of the various towns in 1855, when Brooklyn went through its first ex- perience in the consolidating line. We shall, therefore, resine their separate stories now, from that period to the present decade, as briefly as possible,-brevity not being a difficult achievement in the case of most of them, as little of general interest took place, and those who had least of a history will be deemed worthy of congratulation, when it is seen what kind of things make up the longer narratives of others.
Flatbush, in its separate town existence, had been gradually assum- ing, even under that government, many of the functions of a munici- pality, its administration being divided into departments and boards, much like that of a city. Its Fire Department was in a flourishing state. In 1861 the number of firemen was fixed by law at twenty-five, who, after a service of eight years, were to be free from jury and mili- tary duty. In October, 1863, $2,100 was raised to buy a steam fire en- gine, and the next year the town was permitted to issue bonds to the amount of six thousand dollars to purchase a new engine and erect a house for it. When the project had been carried out it was found that the grant had been exceeded by only $11.75. In 1872 a bell tower was built back of the engine house, but it was easily accessible here to practical jokers, and in 1881 the alarm bell was removed to the Town Hall. Flatbush had also its own waterworks. In 1853 a plan to supply the town was discussed, but nothing came of it. In 1881, however, the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railroad Com- pany having taken steps to build waterworks at Sheepshead Bay, Messrs. John Lefferts, Treasurer of the railroad, JJohn Matthews, and John Z. Lott and others, formed a company to supply water to the
326
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
townspeople also. Twelve wells were dug at " Little Flats," along Paerdegat Creek, and ten miles of mains were laid. A reservoir tower one hundred feet high and twenty feet in diameter was built, and the capacity of the whole system was estimated at two millions of gal- lons per day. A Department of Streets or Public Works was organ- ized under the form of a Board of Improvement in 1871. Through the instrumentality of Hon. John A. Lott, a bill was prepared, which became law, entitled " An act providing for the opening and improve- ment of new roads and avenues, and closing old highways in the town of Flatbush." Seven members were to compose the Board charged with these duties, who were to serve five years without salary.
BREAK IN WATERMAIN, CAUSING LANDSLIDE.
Of this first Board John A. Lott was made President. Besides nu- merous avenues constructed, in continuation of those in Brooklyn, thus preparing effectively for the future annexation, the Board also were intrusted with the erection of a Town Hall, which is, as has been well said, " a lasting monument of the faithfulness with which these gentlemen discharged their duties." On February 7, 1876, the Hall
327
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
was formally opened. A record more remarkable than that of the Brooklyn Municipal Building was brought ont by President Lott's address at the final presentation of the Town Hall to the town au- thorities. The expenditures had exceeded the authorized sum of $40,- 000 by $98; thereupon the seven members of the Board of Improve- ment put their hands in their pockets, and equally dividing that ex- cess among them, paid each their share into the treasury. The Board of Health is quite an ancient institution in Flatbush, dating from 1832. and having been organized that year by Dr. John B. Zabriskie. But Flatbush boasts of a reputation for extreme healthfulness, has never had any epidemies, and points to its figures on the gravestones in the churchyard to substantiate the claim that " eighty years is a good average lifetime for her sons and daughters," as a newspaper re- porter once declared after a study of these stone tablets. But good health is largely dependent upon good morals, and how can these be maintained where the invasion of intemperance and the predominance of the saloon is allowed? Like other suburbs of New York and Brook- lyn, Flatbush was made a prey of the saloon and Sabbath revelry. The former was placed under some kind of control by the creation of a Board of Excise Commissioners in 1874, who were to have the special responsibility of issuing or withholding saloon licenses. Still mat- ters did not much improve, for, in 1880, while there were fifty-two licensed saloons, the number of unlicensed places was very great ; and houses of ill-fame were also accumulating. Hence it was necessary to take vigorous measures, and a Law and Order Association was or- ganized in May, 1880. Of this the pastor of the Reformed Church. the Rev. Cornelius L. Wells, D.D., was chosen President. In one year the number of licenses granted was reduced from fifty-two to thirty- eight, all the houses of ill-fame were closed, and eleven convictions for violation of the excise law were seenred. But, nevertheless, the people felt the need of regular police protection, and in 1878 a bill was passed creating a Police Board. The funds at their disposal were not large, and only seven men, with a sergeant, could be employed at first. Flatbush would not have been approximating the advantages of city life without lights upon the streets, or gas in the honses. In 1860 lamp-posts were erected, and large kerosene lamps placed in their frames. But this primitive arrangement could not long satisfy, and, hence, in 1864, a gas company was formed. Eight years later twenty- two street lamps, at $47 per year, lighted the umbrageons thorough- fares of Flatbush, a mere bagatelle compared to the exploit in that line which New Utrecht annals will presently furnish us. Ten years later there were two hundred street lamps, and even then this town was 1900 per cent. behind its sister when first affecting gas. Flat- bush also had its newspaper, the Kings County Rural Gazette, begun in 1872, and printed in Brooklyn; but later the success of the enter- prise gathered the printing and publishing departments under one
328
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
roof in the village. Flatbush, too, was in a Imrry to be in communi- cation with the outside world, and could not wait for the slow horse car, or even the swifter steam car, to bring the news. A tele- graph company was organized in 1872, the Western Union contract- ing to construct and operate their line. The first message was sent to Hon. John A. Lott, at Albany; the second was that sent by the editor of the village paper to the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, read- ing : " Flatbush, the banner town of the county, is annexed by tele- graph." Amid these changes, and the evidences of a modern age, stood serene and stable the old Dutch Church erected before the close of the eighteenth century. In 1863, after the lengthy pastorate of Dr. Strong, the Rev. Cornelius L. Wells was called, and remains the pastor at this time, thirty-five years after his call, in the full vigor of bodily and mental powers. The life of modern times caused a re- markable development in connection with this staid church, stand- ing solid for the same old faith of 1654, or 1618. A very prosperous Sunday-school demanded room for itself, and Sunday-schools were not in contemplation when the now " century-old " edifice was put up. Hence the officers looked for grounds near their building, and on the corner of Union and Grant streets, is seen to-day a beautiful Gothic brownstone structure, costing, with the land, nearly sixty- nine thousand dollars. In 1874 the St. Paul's Episcopal Church erected a new building. The Methodists were already on the ground in 1844, but the Baptists had no society here till 1872, and in 1874 they dedicated a church. Ripening for cityhood, as we have seen Flatbush to be, the transition into the larger life of Brooklyn was both easy and natural. When what had been long desired by its best towns- people had at last taken place, it is no wonder that they proceeded to celebrate the event in a becoming manner. On Saturday, May 19, 1894, the Mayor of Brooklyn, with the heads of the departments, were invited to a reception and banquet given by the Midwood Club, at their house, the old Clarkson mansion. An open air concert had been arranged for, and there was also to have been a civic parade, but bad weather sadly interfered with this part of the demonstration. Noth- ing could dampen the event prepared for within doors, however. Covers were laid for one Inindred and thirty guests, of whom the Brooklyn officials constituted thirty. The menn was handsomely il- histrated with views of ancient and modern Flatbush. Dr. Homer L. Bartlett presided. In a felicitous and graceful speech, he spoke of the marriage of the town and the city, reminding the hearers that the town was a pretty old bride, and very much older than the city act- ing the part of groom. Mayor Schieren and Judge Gaynor and some of the editors of Brooklyn papers responded in happy and appreciative vein.
Flatlands, during this period as during others, has the happiness of having little or no annals. As the stream of population overflowed
329
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
the nearby cities, the effect upon Flatlands on the whole was not very apparent, for while the decades of the nineteenth century advanced, still the great plains were cultivated, and especially did that staple vegetable, the potato, find assiduous attention paid to it. Acres upon acres may even now be seen by the thousands eagerly hastening to enjoy the sea breezes at the beaches on Coney Island, presenting the pleasant spectacle of long lines of dark green foliage, low by the ground in mathematically straight rows of hills. Yet other things now also intrude. The trolley has come and made quick and frequent travel from Flatlands to Brooklyn Bridge possible. Anticipating the people who will appreciate this convenience, great fields both in Flat- bush and in Flatlands, contiguons to each other, have been out up into thoroughfares regularly laid out. crossing at right angles, with little white boards telling the street names, and here and there a cot- tage to hint how nice it would be to fill up the streets with a continu- ous row of them. Another effect of the approach of city life in Flat- lands is the multiplication of resorts. For a number of years Canarsie village has been a Mecca for the fishermen who wished to exploit Jamaica Bay, or it has been a half-way house for the crowds going to Rockaway Beach, with which it has connection by means of a little steam ferryboat. Later still Flatlands township has furnished to a certain class of pleasure seekers a " beach " of its own, called Bergen Beach, after Bergen Island, upon which it is located. Here come those who want such delights as West Brighton, on Coney Island. South Beach, on Staten Island, and North Beach, in Queens Borough, can afford, shutes and Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds galore. The old church still is the center of life as in Flatlands of the olden times and the other denominations have not done much to detract from its prosperity. A Methodist Church ventured to enter Flatlands in 1851, and it went so well with it that in 1868 the society was enabled to build a parsonage. The Roman Catholics also have erected a large building within a short distance of the Dutch Church. An unsavory bit of Flatlands territory is Barren Island, the great producer of unsurpassable smells, which the playful wanton winds sometimes carry far into the heart of Brooklyn, making even the cooling breezes on a hot day odious to the extent of exclusion by hastily shut win- dows. One hardly has patience enough to consider it, but these hor- ribly smelling industries are industries after all, and useful, too. There is the bone-boiling industry, which converts dead animals into stimulators of the soil; such a factory started in 1845, and blown down in a tempest, was renewed on a larger scale in 1866. A " Rendering and Fertilizer Factory " was added by another firm in 1868. Again, the fish-oil factories are an important part of Barren Island's mal- odorous institutions. There are no less than five of them, the first being established in 1860, and the last in 1869. This industry alone employs three hundred and fifty men and a fleet of ten steamboats.
330
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK,
The whole number of people manufacturing these disagreeable but useful products is five hundred, making, with their families, quite a populous village. Accordingly, there are school facilities, a ferry to Canarsie, and telephones connecting with New York offices. The more savory part of Flatlands benetits largely by the fertilizers made on Barren Island, rendering her vast extent of plains so fruitful and abundant for the supply of the New York markets. It has already been stated that Flatlands was the last of the towns to come into Brooklyn, for the reason that her accounts needed a longer time to disentangle. But on January 1, 1896, Flatlands ceased to exist as a
3 RD DISTRICT JOHN Y ME KANE ASIV PASTER BOOTH.
-
ـبه بين مـ
---
--
-----
GRAVESEND ELECTION BOOTH.
town, after two hundred and fifty or sixty years, steadily, of that kind of existence, and became, in most prosaic parlance, the Thirty-second Ward of Brooklyn.
The first event of note to happen in New Utrecht after our last ac- count of it took place in 1856. In the old historic cemetery on Six- teenth Avenue and the King's Highway (here a very wide avenne), in the midst of which stood the old church, may be seen a handsome yet simple monument to Drs. DuBois and Crane. These men lost their lives in their devotion to duty during an epidemic of the yellow fever which visited New Utrecht in 1856. In April the first case oc-
331
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
cured at the Quarantine Hospital on Staten Island, the man having been removed from an incoming ship. No other case occurred until the arrival of a ship from Santiago de Cuba, on June 18, with three yellow fever sufferers on board. She was detained in the Upper Bay. as usual. On June 21 a ship came in from Havana with five cases on board. From this time to the end of July vessel after vessel was added to the quarantined fleet, till as many as one hundred and fifty of them lay at anchor in the Bay. It was impossible to keep the contagion from the neighboring shores. The first case on the Long Island shore developed on July 13 near Forty-ninth Street. The next vietim was Judge William Rockwell, residing halfway between Forty-ninth Street and Fort Hamilton. Bedding and other articles from the in- fected vessels floated ashore and spread the fever. There was an exodus of the residents along the shore and back of it, so that of five hundred scarce one Inindred and fifty remained. Brooklyn suffered also, but the brunt of the epidemic was endured by the town of New Utrecht. After September 1, 1856, frost set in and the disease was soon eradicated.
Among those who selected the beautiful shores of the Bay, between Brooklyn and Fort Hamilton, for summer residences, New Utrecht may count with especial pride the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, whom we have had occasion to mention so often. His country seat was called "Owl's Head," and here was held, as we saw, that meeting of three men, ont of which finally was realized the Brooklyn Bridge. A near neighbor of Mr. Murphy's, himself quite as much of a publie man, was the Hon. Teunis G. Bergen, " farmer, statesman, and antiquary." He was almost the last of the New Utrecht people to keep up a knowl- edge of the ancestral Dutch language, which he cultivated not only as a spoken but as a written tongue. He started in life as a land sur- veyor, and this led him into the historical local studies of which he was so fond, and to which also he made such numerous and valuable contributions. He was Supervisor of New Utrecht for twenty-three years in succession. In 1864 he was elected a Member of Congress. After these exacting duties of an active career were laid aside, he gave himself entirely to historical and antiquarian research, which led to many valuable publications. He was one of the founders of the Long Island Historical Society. He died in 1881 at the age of seventy- five, a man whose " chief pride was that his neighbors had unqualified confidence in his integrity." He left in manuscript a " History of New Utrecht."
As the wave of "modernity " struck New Utrecht, it took some forms peculiar to this neighborhood. Steam travel through its fields to Coney Island made its quiet solitudes ring with the whistles of engines. Then the land speculator came along and enticed people who had hitherto only rushed through, to stop and buy lots for little homes, so much better than flats in New York or Brooklyn. This
332
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
caused invention to bestir itself and find for neighborhoods names of the most picturesque kind, so that beginning nearest to Brooklyn we discover a West Brooklyn and a Blythebourne. What was once plain New Utrecht, in the vicinity of the church, was turned into streets and lots by a company who bought the land of the Van Pelt family, and so for a while there was a postoffice and a settlement called Van Pelt Manor. Next we come upon the old-fashioned Bath; but immediately after it, upon the most ambitious and enterprising iand scheme of all, locating at Bensonhurst. The latest develop- ment of all is Homewood, where clusters of houses have already gone up.
But before any houses were up, or even the neighborhoods were named, all this region was provided with an important feature of city life, that is usually long in coming after people and houses accumulate. Far as the eye could roam over these interminable plains, with noth- ing but grass or potato plants to obstruct the view, one would see thousands of twinkling lights as the darkness of night descended. They were not fire-flies. They were gas lamps. And thereby hangs a tale. Once there was a man by the name of Cornelius Fergueson, whose native isle was Ireland. That island birth may have caused him to flourish so finely on Long Island, for, while at first he was fain to work as a common laborer in the roads and streets of Brooklyn, near the New Utrecht line, and lived in a style becoming to that humble but honest condition, not many years later saw him housed in an exceedingly handsome and commodious structure of wood in New Utrecht. Whence his wealth no one could rightly tell, but he owned and profitably farmed the politics of New Utrecht. It was to him that New Utrecht owed the inestimable blessing of the multitudinous gas lamps in her fields. It was not considered quite so great a blessing by the population of the town outside of Cornelius Fer- gueson, and a few others. A lawsuit was brought by a Mr. Wal- ter E. Parfitt against the Board of Improvement of the town for having made a contract with the Kings County Gas and Illumi- nating Company-a company which, strangely enough, sprang into being after the contract,-a post hor or a propter hoc? The his- tory of proceedings recited was this: in 1888 the Board of Improve- ment received power to district the town and award contracts for lighting it; in 1889 the award was given to the company for ten years; in 1891 the contract was extended to run fifteen years. Having that exacting duty upon them, the company organized, laid pipes and erected lampposts, but there were only country lanes and vege- table gardens to place them on. Such a little thing as that did not daunt them, however, and up went the posts and lamps, and every night three thousand nine hundred lights were burning, to assist the cabbage and potatoes and lettuce in their laudable attempts to emerge above the soil and become marketable goods. There was one
333
HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
lamp for every three persons in the town, and sometimes ten for each house; and the company received $28 per lamp every year, mims what went to somebody else. It was shown at the trial that 3,900 gas lamps sufficed for a city like Buffalo or Cleveland; that there were only 11.000 in all Brooklyn; but at the rate of New Utrecht's supply there should be 300,000. This job was a very loud argument for the wiping out of town boards of improvement, and helped along amaz- ingly the vote for annexation to Brooklyn. A community so exces- sively " enlightened " could hardly have voted any other way.
But there were louder arguments in Gravesend. This only " Eng- lish " town of Kings County. within the period now named became both noted and notorions. It was notable for the development of Coney Island into a splendid sea-resort. The beach there was an attraction for generations back, and since the war several fine roads were laid out through the township, in order to facilitate travel thither. Such were Gravesend Avenue, widened to one hundred feet in 1875; the Coney Island Plank Road, made the same width in 1869; the Neck Road, widened into an avenne from a narrow lane in 1865; Ocean Avenue, located by legislative act in 1871; and Ocean Park- way, perhaps the finest drive in America, begun in 1874. Gravesend also became a center for the lovers of horse racing, several celebrated " tracks " being found in the vicinity of Coney Island. The develop- ment of the latter into what we know it to be to-day began after 1868. Before this people used to find a few rough shanties around the corner of Norton's Point, facing Gravesend Bay rather than the ocean. In 1868, William A. Engeman acquired property extending, in thirty- nine lots owned by as many individuals, along the beach eastward from Norton's Point. In 1878 an iron pier was built and steamers made frequent trips. Railways were laid out by the half score, and Engeman's property was eagerly bonght up, and various attractions built upon it. At what is now called West Brighton, a railroad company erected, as its station and an amusement hall combined. the enormous building used by the United States Goverment at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and which is now known as the Sea Beach Palace; while the lofty observatory was also transferred from the grounds at Philadelphia, and erected here. From a great distance conld also be seen the huge " Elephant," whose interior was fitted up as a hotel, a curiosity which has lately been destroyed by fire. Further to the eastward soon arose the Hotel Brighton, and from it this part of the island became known as Brighton Beach. The Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railroad made immediate connection with this beach, and to-day the latter runs its trains over the Kings County " L" road to the bridge. No part of the island has suffered more from the wintry storms than Brighton. A dozen years ago it was necessary to move the huge hotel some five hundred feet further inland. It was a sight worth seeing. Fourteen
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.