Icky in Brooklyn

Cultural items of note from 6 November 1902, as reported by the Brooklyn Eagle.

(In rather small type), an announcement appears concerning a play that will be opening the following week - a 24 year-old George. M. Cohan (still performing with the family act), will be at the Grand Opera House. As Cohan's fame grew (shortly after this ad), although always providing for his parents and family, he became notoriously difficult. Sort of a Yankee Doodle Egomaniac.





The Brooklyn Institute at 174 Montague was a concert and lecture venue sponsored by the organization that once encompassed the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. (Now THAT is a cultural group!) The site of the venue on Montague is now occupied by an Irish pub and a Hallmark Store. In 1902, the old digs got a posh makeover.



Abraham & Strauss stores (that little mall at Herald Square in Manhattan used to be called A&S Plaza) provided ready-to-wear fashion (as opposed to couture or custom-tailored). Many of the department stores maintained small Buyers' offices in Paris and London. By the 1920s, top designers had jumped on board and were selling designs to these guys in the ready-to-wear market for large scale production ... making fashion affordable for the middle-class masses, and hugely increasing the number sweat-shops.



And finally, the more things change, the more they stay the same - Construction drama in the Fulton Street business district. 105 years ago, a meeting was organized to minimize the inconvenience of the excavation of our main business district, Fulton Street. Looks like Mr. A of "A&S" was in attendance.






brooklyn eagle clippings courtesy
of the brooklyn public library, brooklyn collection

from The Brooklyn Eagle, October 23, 1902
images courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection

The Brooklyn Eagle, 3 October, 1902.

This great ad hails from just about the time our neighborhood was being developed (although it features the neighborhood down the road - quite literally, Victorian Flatbush). Great prices, quality materials, and one year parts and service!



Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library

Turns out Mr. Dean Alvord was quite a land barron, and the development of the Prospect Park South neighborhood was his baby. The development was started with a purchase of fifty acres in 1899, on which Alvord layed out what he called a "residential park," modeled on communities such as Westchester's Bronxville. Alvord's own house was at 1522 Albemarle Road.

He later developed the community of Laurelton, Queens, but in 1903, he was busy with the 1300 acre members-only "exclusive residential park," Belle Terre, at Port Jefferson on the North shore of Long Island. According to a 1908 NY Times article, the club "admits to membership only those who are socially eligible to the best organizations of its type elsewhere."

Already out of fashion by the 1920s, parcels of Belle Terre were given over to sand mining. The clubhouse burned down in 1934, and the pergolas were washed away in a 1938 hurricane. Only few of the original Belle Terre mansions remain, while Alvord's Prospect Park South development stands largely in tact.

The Brooklyn Eagle, 26 September, 1902.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.




Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library