Now the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission is designating a section of the neighborhood as an official historic landmark, the Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District.
Landmark designation is always a subject of debates, and talking about race in any context is touchy. Landmarks officials seem to be particularly wary of combining the two.
Once the commission finally began carving out the new district in an area almost consecrated in black lore, the debates became more complicated: Should a historic district be created based on its architectural merits or on its cultural history?
This question is not unique to New York. In other cities where “heritage tourism” is encouraged in historic areas like Bronzeville in Chicago’s South Side and Beale Street in Memphis, preservationists have also encountered difficulty in convincing officials to define these areas as “black historic districts.’’
Most of the historic row houses on the hill were designed for rich white families at the beginning of the 20th century. It was not until the end of the 1920’s—late in the Harlem Renaissance—that blacks were allowed to buy and rent the palatial homes.
“Whatever the commission calls it, there’s no question that we’re into a celebration of revolutionary terrain,” said Carolyn Kent, a chairwoman of the landmarks committee for Community Board 9 in West Harlem, “because this is the central launching pad for black leadership in postwar America.”
Mothering Brooklyn
By SUSAN DOMINUS | December 31, 2006
IT REQUIRES A FEAT OF MEMORY TO PICTURE gentrified Brooklyn as it was a mere 40 years ago: Manhattan’s poor, troubled relation. Consider, then, the near-hallucinatory vision it took at the time to imagine the Brooklyn of today. In the mid-’60s, when many of Brooklyn’s brownstones had been carved into decrepit rooming houses, when cabs in Manhattan wouldn’t cross the Manhattan Bridge, an interior designer named Evelyn Ortner not only had that vision but also believed that by sheer force of will, she and her husband could conjure it into existence.
Ortner wanted to live someplace beautiful and culturally alive, surrounded by people who felt the same way. After moving to the neighborhood of Park Slope when she was 39, she saw potential everywhere. “She was proud of Brooklyn when no one else was,” says Alan Fishman, chairman of the board of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
While other middle-class residents fled urban blight in the 1960’s, Ortner set about transforming her community, one family at a time. She wooed young couples she met outside the borough, inviting them back to her exquisitely maintained Victorian brownstone for dinner with her husband and an assortment of other guests—all Brooklynites. After cocktails or dinner with the Ortners, dozens of young couples opted for life in the outer boroughs.
Ortner’s agenda was always Brooklyn. And with that devotion came a tireless diligence to rummage through papers at the Department of Buildings until she had catalogued the history and architecture of some 1,800 buildings in the neighborhood, procuring landmark status for Park Slope. It was a shrewd tactical move and with it she secured what every mother wants for her child: protection in perpetuity.
Clean and Spare, or True to History?
By JOYCE WADLER | February 22, 2007
SOON AFTER RENOVATING THEIR BROWNSTONE in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in blow-out modern style two years ago—with a concrete floor, a back wall of glass and not one scrap of period trim—Kirsa Phillips and Doug Cardoni opened it up to a local house tour. Later, Ms. Phillips went to brownstoner.com, a blog devoted to historic Brooklyn brownstones, to find out what her visitors had really thought.
The reviews were mixed.
“A lot of people were interested in the floor,” Ms. Phillips says, but “then there were comments like, ‘These people should keep their mitts off Brooklyn brownstones!’”
Several blocks away, in Clinton Hill, is another Brooklyn town house—one that has been returned to its original grandeur since its owners bought it 21 years ago.
The gleaming walnut floors date to the turn of the last century and the old library wallpaper has been cleaned of grime with the care usually reserved for an old painting. The owners are Jim Barnes and Sharon Barnes. They have done much of the restoration themselves, with Ms. Barnes standing on scaffolding to clean the plasterwork with dental tools.
There was a time when renovation always equaled restoration when it came to a Brooklyn brownstone, and tossing out original pocket doors was the architectural equivalent of shooting Bambi. But more people are choosing to go modern, and finding ways to do it within the landmark regulations of the borough’s historic neighborhoods.
Not that they always set out to buck convention. Ms. Phillips and Mr. Cardoni, both 35, originally hoped to find a traditional brownstone when they discovered Fort Greene in 2000. But when they decided to make some changes, they hired Edwin Zawadzki and Mason Wickham, husband-and-wife architects whose firm, In Situ Design, leans heavily toward modern design.
“It became pretty clear that the way Doug and Kirsa lived—and their attitude in general—was much more modern than we had suspected,” Ms. Wickham says. “They were clearing out walls faster than we could draw them and gravitating heavily toward our most extreme ideas. They weren’t afraid of big spaces or big gestures.”
It was not an inexpensive renovation. The couple had budgeted $200,000; they estimate that they spent over $400,000. The rest of the brownstone, including the entrance hall with its green painted stairway, has yet to be touched. At the moment, Ms. Phillips says, she doesn’t have the energy for another big renovation.
Brooklyn’s Best and Brightest
By PAUL GOLDBERGER | November 14, 1986
WHILE IT IS HOUSES THAT REALLY MAKE Brooklyn—row after row of town houses, in every style the 19th century dreamed of, stretching on in a way that seems implausible to a Manhattanite—Brooklyn also possesses some splendid public architecture, some of it unique in the City of New York. What follows is a look at 10 places, all of which are Brooklyn’s own—buildings, or places, that offer some kind of architectural experience that neither Manhattan nor any other borough can equal.
AN ESPLANADE WITH A VIEW
The Esplanade, the promenade behind Columbia Heights that overlooks New York Harbor, has arguably the greatest view in all New York; it is all of lower Manhattan, looking far more spectacular from here than it ever can from Manhattan itself. It is as if Brooklyn Heights were all one great building and the Esplanade were its veranda.
FIRST-RATE FIREHOUSE
There are firehouses all over New York, and many of them are first-rate works of architecture, but none is quite like the old City of Brooklyn fire headquarters in downtown Brooklyn at 365 Jay Street, finished in 1892. It is strong and sensual, and too derivative to be called truly original. But it is no less wonderful for that: this noble building seems to reach out and give us a bear hug, reminding us that public architecture can be both monumental and friendly.
BEAUX-ARTS BANK
Not far away, at the intersection of Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue, stands another essay in civic grandeur, the Dime Savings Bank. No other grandiose bank teaches us so fine a lesson in urban design. The block it occupies is three-sided. It is not easy to build a triangular classical temple, but the architects did it, with such ease that one would have assumed it was done this way in Rome. And there are few interiors in New York as monumental yet as welcoming and uninhibiting.
THE DARK WONDER OF WAREHOUSES
After the Brooklyn Bridge itself, the most important work of architecture in the neighborhood is the Empire Stores, the blocks of somber brick warehouses on Water Street between Dock and Main Streets, built in 1870 and 1885 by Thomas Stone. Here is brooding monumentality. To ponder them is less to think about architecture than it is to have an experience similar to looking at the dark paintings of Mark Rothko.
MODEL HOUSING
The apartments in the Tower Buildings—a complex in Cobble Hill built around a central rear open space—represente
d a spectacular advance. They predated public housing by two generations: this was a case of a private philanthropist deciding to build not for maximum profit, but for the public good.
A GREAT LAYOUT
Carroll Gardens in the Red Hook area of South Brooklyn in 1846 is a set of brownstone streets as they ought to be—in neat, even rows, placed way back from the street behind gracious, well-planted front yards. The idea was that it was possible to merge urban density with landscaped streets, and this Carroll Gardens does better, surely, than any other place in New York.
SUMPTUOUS BROWNSTONES
So far as row houses are concerned, the block of South Portland Street, between Lafayette and DeKalb Avenues in the heart of Fort Greene, is nearly as special. The layout is not innovative this time, but the houses are far better—truly grand-scale Italianate brownstones, larger and more sumptuous not only than most of their Brooklyn neighbors, but than most of their Manhattan counterparts as well.
A LANDMARK CEMETERY
Green-Wood Cemetery is itself one of New York City’s most impressive public open spaces, and in Brooklyn only Prospect Park is arguably better. But even Prospect Park, which the designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvin Vaux believed superior to their own Central Park in Manhattan, does not have an entrance like Richard Upjohn’s Gothic gateway at Green-Wood. Upjohn is perhaps more famous for Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street in lower Manhattan. But he gave Green-Wood a monumental arch, a garden gate, and a means of passage to a very separate world, all in one.
“Moonstruck House” Is Sold for $4 Million
By J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN | August 31, 2008
THE LOCALS KNOW THE FOUR-STORY Federal-style brownstone at Cranberry and Willow Streets in Brooklyn Heights as the “‘Moonstruck’ house” because it was the setting for the 1987 movie starring Cher and Nicolas Cage.
Neighborhood history buffs know the 1829 home for quite another reason: It was owned for nearly 50 years by Edwards Rullman, who was instrumental in persuading the city to declare Brooklyn Heights the first historic district in New York more than four decades ago.
Mr. Rullman and his wife have just sold the house for nearly $4 million. The reason was a familiar one: their children had long moved away and the house felt too big for just the two of them.
“We got 100 times what we paid for it back in 1961,” said Mr. Rullman, a retired architect whose wife, Francesca, is a former opera singer. They now live on Cape Cod.
When the Rullmans bought the house, the neighborhood was gritty: it had fallen into disrepair in the 1940’s and ’50s, and the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway had eliminated a number of architectural treasures, including the literary group house whose residents included W. H. Auden and Carson McCullers.
As early as 1958, some families began meeting to discuss ways to preserve their neighborhood. They called themselves the Historic Preservation Committee of the Brooklyn Heights Association. Mr. Rullman became chairman of the committee’s Design Advisory Council, which offered free advice to homeowners on proper preservation methods.
Finally, in November 1965, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted the Brooklyn Heights Historic District protected status. Other neighborhoods like Greenwich Village followed.
That same year, Mr. Rullman quit his job at a Manhattan architectural firm to open a small shop devoted to restoration in Brooklyn Heights. All told, he restored more than 50 local buildings, including St. Ann’s School.
Mr. Rullman said that moving to Cape Cod made sense for him and his wife, except for one problem. “After two weeks away,” he said, “I already miss Brooklyn Heights.”
CITY PARKS
Map and Description of the Plan for the Central Park
May 1, 1858
WE HAVE ALREADY MENTIONED THE FACT that the Commissioners of the Central Park have awarded the first prize, of $2,000, to the plan which was numbered 33, and which proved to be the joint work of Messrs. F. L. Olmsted and C. Vaux. The Plan was accompanied by the following description, which, for the sake of convenience, we have slightly abridged:
The ground allotted to the park is very distinctly divided into two tolerably equal portions, which, for convenience sake, may be called the upper and lower parks.
THE UPPER PARK
The horizon lines of the upper park are bold and sweeping, and the slopes have great breadth in almost every aspect. As this character is the highest ideal of a park under any circumstances, and as it is in decided contrast to the confined formal lines of the city, it is desirable to interfere with it as little as possible. Formal planting and architectural effects, unless on a very grand scale, must be avoided.
THE LOWER PARK
The lower park is far more heterogeneous in its character, and will require more varied treatment. The most important feature in its landscape is the long rocky and wooded hillside lying south of the Reservoir. Inasmuch as beyond this point there do not appear to be any leading natural characteristics of similar consequence in the scenery, it will be important to draw as much attention as possible to this hillside, to afford facilities for rest and leisurely contemplation upon the rising ground opposite, and to render the lateral boundaries of the Park in its vicinity as inconspicuous as possible.
THE TRANSVERSE ROADS
Our instructions call for four transverse roads. Each of these will be the single line of communication between one side of the town and the other, for a distance equal to that between Chambers Street and Canal Street. They will be crowded thoroughfares, having nothing in common with the park proper. They must be constantly open to all the legitimate traffic of the city, to coal carts and butchers’ carts, dust carts and dung carts; engine companies will use them, those on one side the park rushing their machines across it, with frantic zeal at every alarm from the other; ladies and invalids will need special police escort for crossing them, as they do in lower Broadway.
Enjoying Nature’s Magic Act
By DOUGLAS MARTIN | July 19, 2002
ONE NOON IN LATE SPRING I WENT TO THE Lake in Central Park and rented a boat. I glided leisurely on the water. Mallards swam in pairs. Often little fish would jump. My oars made tiny whirlpools. The woods around me seemed 10,000 shades of green; wisps of clouds floated on a perfectly blue sky. Almost hidden in the rushes, I saw a pair of swans: the female purposefully gathered twigs for a nest, even as the male behind her appeared to be trying to mate.
Was this the ultimate in multitasking? Was their relationship in trouble? Did I have an overactive imagination? Perplexing, for sure. Fascinating.
I rowed near a cormorant, its ebony feathers glistening in the dancing sunlight. It began to follow me! As I rowed here, there and everywhere, the beautiful bird followed me like a dog. It periodically dived underwater, surfaced and continued to follow. Somewhere near the blossoming lily pads, it left without saying why.
When I returned the boat, I told the man who helped me land that I had just had one of the finest experiences in the city.
To the west are the great apartment houses of Central Park West: the San Remo, the Dakota, the Century. To the south the jagged skyscrapers sprout like scraggly weeds. On the road visible from the Lake is a whole panoply of purposeful motion: runners, skaters, bikers, horse-drawn carriages. The noise of distant sirens can be heard.
But the 22-acre body of water somehow feels like nothing so much as a lake in the Adirondacks. With its man-made coves and peninsulas and the towering natural cliffs and rock formations, there is an illusion of much greater size and complexity. This is the genius of Central Park: as trails twist and turn, over bridges and under arches, through hills and valleys, one feels enmeshed in the mystery and expanse of nature.
A Garden for All as a Private Eden
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP | May 23, 2003
The Bow Bridge over the Lake in Central Park.
CENTRAL PARK LOOKS GREENER THIS SPRING than it has in recent memory. Is this my imagination or the result of scientifically verifiable caus
es, like rain? I prefer to think that nature is making a bigger effort than usual this year to celebrate a very special occasion: the 150th anniversary of Central Park’s birth.
Where else on earth has nature’s floral bounty been appreciated by so many? Where else, this side of Eden, has animal, vegetable and mineral variety been more densely combined to such voluptuous effect?
Nowhere that I know of. This is worth a rousing cheer. Though perhaps a contemplative moment is more in keeping with the spirit of our great urban oasis. How about a round of applause for contemplative moments, then? Let’s meditate until we’re blue in the face, our lungs give out and our hands are raw from clapping. We’ve got all eternity to hold our peace.
I suspect that when good New Yorkers die, they go to Central Park. We, the living, go there to rehearse. Or perhaps to become more worthy of life in paradise. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the park along with Calvert Vaux in 1857, would not have quarreled with this hopeful interpretation.
The idea had been under discussion for some years. Public support reached a high point in 1853, when New York City staged its version of the Crystal Palace, the great imperial fair held in London two years earlier. In July of that year, the State Legislature approved the project, setting aside more than 750 acres as the site.
A Day in the Life of Central Park
By BRUCE WEBER | July 2, 1995
The Great Lawn in Central Park on a spring day in 2007.
ON THE FIRST SATURDAY OF CITY SUMMER—a week early by the calendar, but tell that to the unseasonably warm weather—Central Park, as public as an ocean, became, in effect, the city’s rumpus room. There was a groggy wakening, a flurry of morning activity, a lassitude at noon, a kaleidoscopic frenzy in the late afternoon, a gradual relaxation into evening and, in the end, a descent into an eerie night.
The New York Times Book of New York Page 19
