Clinton Hill - Bonus

A sort of architectural tour of the neighborhood

Since I am not sending my regular newsletter on Thanksgiving day, I am making the bonus newsletter I send out to paying subscribers every Monday available to everyone. The bonus typically features an extra edit of photos from the previous week's neighborhood and an occasional anecdote or map that didn't make it into the main write-up.

In a way, that's kind of how I envisioned this project at the beginning— a neighborhood name, a map, and some pictures. Then I started finding stories about the "Houdini Commandos" of Glendale, the fortune cookie factories and fat renderers of Blissville, and the collection of Buddha's bones in the Bronx, and, for better or worse, that all went out the window.

That said, today's "bonus" is a little different than usual. I went a little overboard in Google Earth and turned this into a sort of A/V architectural tour of Clinton Hill. In case you are wondering, this is not emblematic of a typical Monday post.

First, the photographs:

From a 2016 commission from the Center for Architecture

In 2024

2016

2024

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Today, I am revisiting several of the locations I wrote about last week. There is a video at the end that gives you an idea of the walkable scale of Clinton Hill. This is by no means an exhaustive survey!

The AIA Guide to NYC has a great tour of the neighborhood, full of quoins, columns, and oriels if that is your kind of thing.

I also learned a ton from the Landmark Preservation Commission’s report on the Clinton Hill Historic District.

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160 HALL

The apartment that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe shared beginning in 1967.

We had the entire second floor, with windows facing east and west, but its aggressively seedy condition was out of range of experience.”

467 MYRTLE

2 doors down from Kum Kau

The apartment where William Gedney lived while teaching at Pratt. He took a series of photographs from his 2nd story window between 1969 and 1972, documenting the dismantling of the Myrtle Avenue Elevated train.

180 CLINTON

Henry Miller lived here in the 1920s before moving to Paris in 1929.

CHARLES MILLARD PRATT HOUSE

Maybe the nicest of the Pratt family houses, this Romanesque Revival home at 241 Clinton was built for Pratt’s oldest son, Charles Millard Pratt, who became President of the Pratt Institute when his father died in 1891. Today, it is the residence of the Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn.

PRATT INSTITUTE SCULPTURE PARK

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed several slices of Luigi’s in Pratt’s Sculpture Park, one of the largest in New York City. I never sat in this chair while enjoying them though.

313 AND 315 CLINTON

313 Clinton is “one of the finest neo-Grec residences in New York City.” Prominent Brooklyn architect George Morse designed it for lace manufacturer A.G. Jennings. Who knew lace gloves could be so lucrative?

The white paint job really raises the hackles of the Clinton Hill Historic District report writers who say it “destroys the romantic intensity of the original deep red hues.”

Right next door is 315 Clinton, built in 1888 by famed architect Montrose Morris for John "Mr. Coffee” Arbuckle. The coffee merchant’s big breakthrough was figuring out a way to keep roasted beans fresh by coating them with a sugar and egg glaze to close the pores of the bean. Though it sounds pretty gross, coupled with technology Arbuckle pioneered in automatically packing and sealing bags, it made shipping beans across the country possible.

Arbuckle’s real genius, though, was in marketing. Every bag of coffee contained a peppermint stick, a collectible card, and a coupon. The coupons were redeemable for everything from handkerchiefs and straight razors to wedding rings. Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee was particularly popular with cowboys who referred to their campfire-brewed beverage as “a cup of Arbuckles.”

What exactly is going on here?

It looks like the Ariosa brand has been relaunched (minus the egg glaze) if you are curious to try a cup for yourself.

284 CLINTON

This is one of the few wooden villas that predate the Pratt takeover of Clinton Hill. Built for William W. Cranein 1854, it is an example of the type of suburban home that was being built in the mid-19th century.

JOSEPH STEELE HOUSE

The house at 200 Lafayette Avenue is another surviving wooden house, one that the landmarks commission calls “the largest and best remaining example, of a wooden suburban mansion in the transitional Greek Revival/Italianate style now standing in any of the five boroughs of New York City.” Throughout its 179-year history, the house has only had three owners. The Skinner family, who currently own the home, have owned it since 1903.

CLINTON HILL COOPS

These ten buildings, designed by Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz, were built during World War II as housing for Navy personnel at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard. The north complex housed enlisted men, while the south was primarily for officers. Several of the large mansions on Clinton Avenue were torn down during construction of the towers. After the war, the buildings became a private development.

The availability of affordable housing in the Clinton Hill Coops, and later the St. James Towers, as well as the solidifying presence of large institutions like Pratt and St. Joseph's University, are the reason Clinton Hill was able to stave off much of the urban blight that plagued other Brooklyn neighborhoods in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

In 2017, residents of the St. James Towers voted to remain in the Mitchell-Lama program.

THE GRAHAM HOME FOR OLD LADIES

Some might say that the name, The Graham Home for Old Ladies, is an improvement on its predecessor, the Brooklyn Society for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females. It’s certainly more to the point. When the building at 320 Washington opened in 1851, it housed 90 women from Brooklyn who were over 60 and could “bring satisfactory testimonials of the propriety of her conduct and the respectability of her character.”

Eventually, the home ran out of money and sat vacant until it was turned into the Bull Shippers Plaza Motor Inn, an establishment where conduct and respectability, not to mention AARP membership, were no longer a prerequisite. The Inn operated as a brothel by "ladies by the hour who brought only scanty-panty testimonials of propriety.” This scanty panty line comes courtesy of the now defunct Fort Greene Newsletter.

In 2001, the building was bought and turned into condos.

EMMANUEL BAPTIST CHURCH

The Emmanuel Baptist Church was built in 1886 by Charles Pratt who had left his previous church after the minister there (a prolific novelist) wrote an antimonopoly satire. Pratt commissioned architect Francis H. Kimbal to design this masterpiece of neo-French Gothic design just two blocks away from his former congregation.

The church, with a congregation of over 2,00 people, is considered the “largest and most luxurious Baptist church in Brooklyn.” It’s also a great place to watch the marathon.

THE VENDOME

The Vendome is Brooklyn’s oldest surviving multi-unit apartment building. When it opened in 1887, the building’s 17 apartments were serviced by an elevator and had access to the billiard room, a caterer, and a shoeshine.

Eventually, the building fell into decline, and after being abandoned for several years, it was taken by the city for failure to pay taxes. In 1980 a fire gutted the building and its demolition was imminent. At the last minute, thanks to local efforts, state and city grants were secured for rebuilding the apartment.

THE CHURCH OF ST LUKE AND ST MATTHEW

The Church of St Luke and St Matthew is what the AIA Guide calls “Eclecticism gone berserk,” while the Guide to New York City Landmarks calls it "one of the grandest ecclesiastical buildings in Brooklyn."

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A BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF NEIGHBORHOOD SITES.

Here’s a Google Map

Thanks as always for following along, and have a great Thanksgiving!