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designated: Wallabout
~Designation
Report~
Wallabout, a neighborhood
in Northwestern Brooklyn near the former Brooklyn Naval Yards, is
noted for having the largest concentration of pre-Civil War frame
houses in the city. In addition to Greek and Gothic Revival wood
homes with original or early porches, cornices and other details,
brick and stone row houses in Italianate and Neo-Grec styles along
with masonry tenements line the streets between Myrtle and Park
Avenues. James Marston Fitch, founder of Columbia University’s
Historic Preservation Program, described the buildings in 1973 as
an “outdoor architectural museum in themselves.” The
homes were built as working-class and middle-class housing, and
designation of this area would complement the Fort Greene and Clinton
Historic Districts to the south built primarily for more affluent
households.
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Dutch settlers named
this area Waal-bogt, meaning a bend in the harbor. Walloons (French-speaking
Protestants from what is now Belgium) settled here as early as 1624.
Through the 18th century, the area remained rural. During the Revolution,
dozens of infamous British prison ships docked in the nearby Wallabout
Bay. An estimated 11,000 American soldiers died there and were buried
in shallow graves along the waterfront. In 1801 the federal government
opened the Brooklyn Naval Yard nearby. The yards operated for more
than a century and a half until its 1966 decommission. Over the
decades, many of the homes in the district were built for employees
of the yards.
Residential development
of the area in the 1830’s, 40’s, and 50’s coincided
with the rapid population increase in the city of Brooklyn. Being
part of the flatlands along the East River, Wallabout was not looked
upon with the prestige allotted to neighboring Fort Greene or Clinton
Hill. As the century progressed, industrialism spread through the
East River waterfront including DUMBO, Williamsburg, Greenpoint,
and Wallabout. Neighborhood industries included Consumers’
Biscuit and Manufacturing Company, the Drake Brothers Bakery, Rockwood
Chocolate Company (whose factory is now listed on the State and
National Registers of Historic Places), Giddings & Enos (manufacturers
of gas fixtures), and the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. The Wallabout
produce market operated from 1890 until World War II.
In a neighborhood
full of wonderful homes, there are a few residences deserving special
note. Some of the area’s earliest homes dating back to the
1830’s can be found on Vanderbilt Avenue. In 1878 the wealthy
Pratt family built five neo-Grec style brownstones on this block,
the first of their many speculative ventures. No. 99 Ryerson Street
is believed to be the only surviving New York City home of poet
Walt Whitman. Rudophe L. Daus, one of Brooklyn’s leading late
19th-century architects, designed the Queen Anne style red brick
tenement at 93 Clermont. The building retains its ornamental terracotta
trim as well as its entrance hood and iron railings. Only one structure
in the district is presently designated a New York City Landmark,
the Lefferts-Laidlaw House at 136 Clinton Avenue. This impressive,
temple-fronted Greek Revival Style house was built c.1836-1840.
In the 1970’s
the area was twice proposed as a historic district, by the Fort
Greene Landmarks Committee as part of the Fort Greene HD and by
the Landmark Commission’s staff as part of a Brooklyn survey.
Like much of western Brooklyn, the general low-rise density of Wallabout
has recently begun to feel the brunt of new, over-scaled development.
In addition, decades of poor maintenance have resulted in the loss
of character in some of the buildings, as well as enticingly open
lots prime for development. The Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project
has, with funding from the Preservation League of New York State,
sponsored a cultural resources survey and has helped establish a
residents’ association – the Historic Wallabout Association
– with the goal of preserving this neighborhood. The first
step, re-zoning the area to better fit the existing built fabric
and encourage appropriately scaled development, is currently moving
forward. The next step to preserving this special neighborhood would
be to designate part of the area as a historic district.
For more information, visit:
Return to Neighborhoods at
Risk
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