145 Hancock Street

145 Hancock Street

 Photographed by: Christopher Bride

This house was developed and built in 1893 by one of Brooklyn most fascinating people name William H. Reynolds. Forgotten today Reynolds the youngest ever New York State Senator (24 years old) from Bedford was also major New York builder developer. William Reynolds had just finished his first project a row of 19 townhouses a block away on nearby Halsey Street when he hired the same architectural team of Magnus E. Dahlander and Frederick B. Langston to design this group of four houses plus the corner building in the Romanesque Revival with elements of Renaissance Revival-style. Dahlander from Sweden received his first Brooklyn architectural commission from Reynolds with the Halsey street buildings which Dahlander designed in one night. Reynolds wanted all his buildings to look different from the façade.  Dahlander and Langston would go on to do many buildings in Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Crown Heights and Park Slope. Dahlander would later team up with Axel Hedman a fellow Swede and design much of William Reynolds Prospect Heights developments on Park and Sterling place.  

  

William Reynolds

145 Hancock was in the very aristocratic section of Brooklyn called Bedford and sold very quickly. The first owner was the well-respected John T and Ann Huner.  The Huner family had four children and all are living in this house in 1900 along with two German servants.  John Huner made his fortune in the matches business. Huner matches were called Our Darling Parlor Matches.  He sold the cheapest matches on the east coast which made him a lot of money. John Huner match plant was on Myrtle Avenue in the Evergreens section of Queens.  He was one of the largest matches makers in the country at the turn of the century. John died in 1912 and sometime during the late 1910’s the house traded hands.  In the 1920s Henry and Isabella Barnard are living in the house. Henry was a wholesale salesman. In 1930 Isabella is a widow living in the home with her sister Florence McDonald and German maid. 

 

Arvhitect F. B. Langston

 

Architect Magnus Dahlander

1940 is the first time I see the place as multiple dwelling with four families living in the house.  The renters in the house work as truck drivers, drug and grocery salesman and teacher. Also by 1940s this area is now called Bedford-Stuyvesant due to Brooklyn Union Gas. After WWII this once all European American neighborhood area would turn into one of the largest African American neighborhoods in the country.

More of Reynolds projects here From Suzanne Spellen ((https://www.flickr.com/photos/31129802@N03/sets/72157623863816513/detail/).

Take me out to the Ball Park the story of Capitoline Grounds!

Today at 1499 Fulton Street you will find a great coffee shop name Capitoline Grounds. This is a name that goes back over 150 plus years in Bedford Stuyvesant.

 

The Capitoline Grounds, also known as Capitoline Skating Lake and Base Ball Ground, was a baseball park located in Brooklyn, New York from 1864 to 1880. It was built to rival nearby Union Grounds, also in Brooklyn. The park hosted local amateur teams in its early history, but later hosted professional and semi-professional games. The park's only season as the home field for an all-professional team occurred in 1872 when the Brooklyn Atlantics joined the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The park was flooded during the winter and used as an ice skating park. The grounds were used by local high schools and colleges as well, to play American football games, and ice rink football matches.

Many of organized baseball's earliest historical events took place at the park throughout the 1860s and early 1870s. The most notable event came on June 14, 1870, when the Atlantics defeated the Cincinnati Red Stockings to end their historic 84-game winning streak. Fred Goldsmith successfully demonstrated his curve ball at the Grounds in 1870, a pitch previously thought to have been only an optical illusion. In an 1865 game, Ned Cuthbert is credited with inventing the slide when he tried avoiding a tag when attempting to steal a base against the Athletic of Philadelphia. In addition to baseball, The Grounds hosted various events and exhibitions; most notably in 1873, when Washington Donaldson and two reporters attempted to fly a hot-air balloon across the Atlantic Ocean. The attempt turned tragic when the balloon crashed in Connecticut killing one of the reporters.

Reuben S. Decker inherited a portion of his grandfather's farm land and along with Hamilton A. Weed initially opened the Capitoline Skating pond, named in reverence to Capitoline Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome.  The location of the grounds were in the Bedford Section of Brooklyn, New York, an area now known as the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The Grounds encompassed a city block bounded by Halsey Street, Marcy Street, Putnam Avenue, and Nostrand Avenue. The pond area was first conceived as an ice skate park, which began in the Winter of 1862-1863. Designed to be a competitor to the nearby Union Grounds, where the first enclosed baseball field opened earlier in 1862. With the success that the Union Grounds experienced by charging admission, Decker and Weed chose to enclose the Capitoline Grounds as well.

The Capitoline Grounds opened for baseball in 1864, now consisting of two sets of bleachers that were backed by Nostrand Avenue and Halsey Street, and had an approximate capacity of 5,000 people] In right field stood a circular brick outhouse, and if any player hit a ball over the structure, they were presented with a bottle of Champagne. Along Putnam Avenue, two rows of stables were established for the patrons' horses. Other amenities included a bandstand, clubhouses, and sitting rooms for the female patrons. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle regarded the new park as "the finest, most extensive, and complete ball grounds in the country." The business ran year around; flooding the area during the Winter season for skating, then draining the park in the spring for baseball matches.  Hamilton A Weed a builder would go on to build many houses that are stating in the Bedford Section today. All of H. A. Weed buildings are not protected.

In September 1873, Washington Donaldson, a professional balloonist who had formerly worked for P.T. Barnum as a circus performer, along with fellow balloonist John Wise, collaborated on an attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon. Sponsored by the Daily Graphic, the launch was to take place from the Capitoline Grounds, with Wise planning to use a balloon 49 meters (160 feet) tall with a two-compartment enclosed car, but decided to end his involvement with the project. Donaldson persisted, acquiring a smaller balloon with an open boat for the car.

Donaldson's Atlantic attempt, launched from the Capitoline Grounds accompanied by reporters Alfred Ford and George Lunt, ended up being forced down by a rainstorm, to land on a Connecticut farm. Donaldson and Ford successfully abandoned the runaway balloon, but Lunt stayed with the balloon for a distance until he finally jumped into a tree, sustaining serious injuries from which he died six months later. Donaldson later disappeared in 1875 when he tried to fly across Lake Michigan in a balloon, accompanied by a reporter named Newton Grimwood. The balloon never made it to the far shore; Grimwood's body washed up on shore weeks later, but Donaldson was never seen again.