This extraordinary photograph shows a group of working class, mostly immigrant women who lived in Willowtown. The private photo was later published in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1949. Most women whose photos made the paper in 1916 (and certainly women from Brooklyn Heights) were debutantes, brides-to-be or social activists, but in almost all cases: well-off. This image is remarkable for showing a completely different side of the neighborhood.
We can’t directly identify most of the 1916 photo’s Kindergarten Mothers Club women, but thanks to census records, we have a good idea of who they were. There were about 150 mothers of kindergarten-aged kids living in Willowtown then. Over half were born outside the US. Their most common countries of origin were Ireland and Italy, followed by “Syria” (today’s Lebanon), Germany, Sweden, Spain and Russia. They lived on Columbia and Willow Places and State, Joralemon and Furman Streets. Some of their names were Nellie Cunningham, Maria Pellegrino, Mary Khouri, Louisa Schoenster, Hilda Lindh, Petra Bilbao and Ida Kuperwith.
The photo itself is a humorous snapshot of the Kindergarten Mothers Club. They were staging a production of “Friday Afternoon at the Village School” – 20 cents admission to raise money for the settlement house. A contemporary account described the scene: “Married women, some of them mothers of as many as seven children, were dressed as school girls and completely fooled those in the audience who did not know them.”
One of the women in the photo is almost certainly Margareta Ronning, who lived in the tenement at 40 Columbia Place. She sent in the photo to the Brooklyn Eagle more than 30 years later. She said “the whole neighborhood turned out – the crowd was so large, that it became necessary to lock the doors to Chapel House, where the performance was being given.” Margareta’s kindergartner in 1916 was Dorothy.
The Willow Place Settlement started in 1865 as a Sunday school run by First Unitarian Church in the old Wall Street Ferry house at the foot of Atlantic Avenue. It served the children of what was then one of Brooklyn’s most densely packed slums, the blocks around what today we call Willowtown. The church built the Mission Chapel on Willow Place in 1876 and added the Columbia House community building on Columbia Place in 1905. The settlement was closely connected to Alfred T. White, who led the mission since the first days of the Chapel. White’s work in this community is what inspired him to organize the first revitalization of Willowtown in the 1880s, clearing out many of the dilapidated tenements. White culminated his project by building the “Riverside Buildings” complex in 1890 at the corner of Columbia Place and Joralemon Street. White designed his limited-profit tenements as a model for providing ample light, air, outdoor space and sanitary living conditions for the working poor in this corner of Brooklyn Heights.
Many members of the Kindergarten Mothers Club lived in one of White’s Riverside Buildings on Columbia Place, Joralemon Street and Furman Street.
Old Brooklyn Heights 