Category Archives: Uncategorized

Oh, McKenny Street! What a tiny little street that no one talks about anymore. Until a few years ago, you wouldn’t even find it on any street sign. But it has lived on official city maps for over 200 years.

McKenny Street is (mostly) parallel to, and one block to the west of, Hicks Street, in the oldest part of Brooklyn Heights that grew out of the Fulton Ferry Landing area. McKenny originally ran 2 short blocks from Doughty to Poplar Streets. Since the 1950s when the BQE obliterated several blocks around Squibb Hill in the far northwestern corner of the Heights, McKenny has run only from Doughty to Vine Streets.

Ephemeral New York wrote an intriguing post about a 1941 painting by Brooklyn Heights resident Miklos Suba. This is the artwork, titled “York Street/Flint Street Corner (House in Shadow)” –

York Street is easy to find on a DUMBO map, but you can’t find Flint Street today. So the query was: What happened to Flint Street?

(Original post March 6, 2017; updated 2020)

These two houses, 38 Hicks Street and 40 Hicks Street, built very close in time together around 1810, are the oldest houses still standing on Brooklyn Heights.

The full range of available source data I’ve researched all point to the 1810 date, which is backed up with earlier, partial research done by the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Brooklyn Historical Society. The case for 1810 is as convincing as you’ll ever see for a 200-year-old-plus Brooklyn home. While Clay Lancaster’s belief that the houses dated to 1830 has been widely cited, it turns out that he didn’t review all of the data. (And as a result, his “Joseph Bennett House” moniker for 38 Hicks Street is arbitrary…the “Van Cleef House” name would be more accurate, if you’re the type who thinks a vernacular clapboard house needs a name!)

Continue reading →

(adapted from the 2019 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse journal, published by the Brooklyn Heights Association)

Without question, the house dates to the neighborhood’s early days, when only the North Heights was developed and this location would have been at its southern outskirts. The exact date, however, is less certain. Many old houses like this one have an origin story – 13 Pineapple Street is blessed to have three.

(with M. M. Cooper – adapted from the 2017 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse journal, published by the Brooklyn Heights Association)

This area of Brooklyn Heights was once part of the forty-acre country estate of Philip Livingston, a New York delegate to the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. In 1804, a portion of the land was purchased by Teunis Joralemon, a local judge. Livingston Street first appears on the village map of Brooklyn in 1819, but it isn’t until after Joralemon’s death in 1840, when the property was subdivided, that this southern part of Brooklyn Heights began to be developed.

Pineapple finial at corner of Willow and Pierrepont Streets. One of many, many examples of the traditional symbol of welcoming and hospitality located in the neighborhood.

79 Poplar Street. Greek Revival house circa 1830s. Gas lamp is modern reproduction.

Front yard church bell at Danske Sømandskirke. 102 Willow Street. If Brooklyn was known as the City of Churches, then the density of houses of worship in Brooklyn Heights makes the neighborhood first among equals.

Victorian canvas shade awnings @ 75 Willow Street. Once ubiquitous across Brooklyn Heights and brownstone Brooklyn in the late 19th century, now mostly vanished.

Extremely rare example of sgraffito etching in New York City, located on the ground story of 177-179 Columbia Heights