Landmarking Bed-Stuy: A Historical Context

“Bedford-Stuyvesant I call the antiques road show, but only with houses,” said Morgan Munsey, architectural historian and researcher for the Bedford Stuyvesant Society for Historical Preservation. “It’s like having a Van Gogh in your attic and not know about it.”

Bedford-Stuyvesant’s architectural history is rich and layered. But understanding the neighborhood’s development from a historical standpoint is an important part of arousing appreciation and support for landmarking.

In the 1600s and 1700s, Bedford-Stuyvesant was a little Dutch village, a rural area with just a few country houses. But by the early 1800s, after the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, homes began to populate the area. And by the mid 1800s, housing construction in Bed-Stuy was booming.

According to Munsey, the list of famous architects that influenced Bedford-Stuyvesant’s housing development could fill a book. But he narrowed the architects with the greatest influence down to four: Amzi Hill, Isaac D. Reynolds, the architecutral team of Frederick B Langston and Magnus Dahlander, and of course, Montrose Morris.

Amzi Hill, Architect

Amzi Hill and his son, Henry, specialized in the Neo-Grec style typical of brownstone architectures constructed between 1860 and 1890. Hill also was very excellent in designing with brick. Mr. Hill designed most of the buildings landmarked on MacDonough Street.

Hill’s style grew out of the Italian style of the first, very basic brownstone townhomes. But his designs included flat brownstones carved with two-dimensional designs – usually flowers or swirls.

“Amzi and his son were very prolific, and I don’t think it’s a mistake to say they have at least one house on every block of Bed-Stuy,” said Suzanne Spellen, architectural historian and a board member of Crown Heights North, a landmarking organization in Crown Heights. “The Neo-Grec style was relatively simple, because by then, they had invented the pneumatic drill. So it was cheap and easy to churn these things out. Plus they were attractive, and that’s why there’s a lot of them”

Isaac D. Reynolds, Architect

Isaac Reynolds also designed in the Neo-Grec style but added French elements to his buildings. Reynolds’s architectural development took place between the 1860s until the early 1900s. Reynolds designed more than 77 houses in the proposed Bedford Corners Historic district alone and countless others buildings in Stuvyesant Heights. 

Like Hill, Reynolds worked with his son Herbert. His later homes in the neighborhood evolved into the Romanesque Revival style characterized by arched doorways and windows that harken back to castles.

“If you think of a timeline in clothing when you go from hoop skirts to bustles to hobble skirts to flapper dresses, as you progress through the styles, you keep some of one, but add some of the new. That’s what happened in architecture,” said Spellen.

Langston and Dahlander, Architects

Fredrick B Langston, a wealthy young architect, and Magnus Dahlander, a Swedish architect who had just immigrated to America, worked on many fine building in Bedford Stuyvesant from 1889-1892. 

Langston and Dahlander also specialized in the Romanesque Revival style and then later evolved their work into the Queen Anne style – a construction model that later would be used in the development of Crown Heights.

Many Langston and Dahlander homes can be found on Hancock and Bambridge Streets, between Stuyvesant and Lewis Avenues on the North side, where house after house has varying front facades.

 “Queen Ann style is like the catchall for when you really don’t know where it is from – a wonderful mixture of everything, including Mediterranean roofing tiles, turrets and stained glass,” said Spellen. “You see some have flats, some have bows, bays, copper towers. Their designs were really imaginative and cool.”
 

Montrose W. Morris, Architect

Montrose W. Morris is, perhaps, the most well known architect of Brooklyn. Morris was a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident born in the mid 1800s during the “real estate boom.” So he was highly influenced by some of the greatest developers in the area at that time.

However, ironically, Morris did not dabble in brownstone townhouses, but instead, some of the first multi-unit apartment buildings in New York City. And he only designed for the upper class, unlike Reynolds and Hill who designed for everybody. 

He opened his office in 1883 in his early 20's. His advertising technique was to design and build his own residence on Hancock and open it to the public. One of the visitors was developer Louis F. Seitz who commissioned an apartment on Nostrand Avenue.

The completed new building, called “The Alhambra,” so pleased Seitz that he commissioned Morris to design other great apartment houses, such as the Renaissance and the Imperial. These three apartment buildings remain among the most prestigious and most impressive multiple-family residences in Brooklyn.  Many of Morris’s most famous buildings were built between 1888 and 1890.

The White Cities Movement 

Beginning in 1893, in the years following the World’s Fair in Chicago, a new movement was born to imitate a classical architectural style: It was called the “White Cities Movement.”

Following the White Cities Movement, architects switched from building Brownstones to using White stones. The Beaux Arts townhomes in Bed-Stuy made of white limestone with swags, bows and wreaths are a reflection of that movement.

“That’s what people wanted, especially wealthy people,” said Spellen. “All of a sudden, it was no longer cool to go nuts with Queen Anne or use brownstone. Everybody wanted everything white and delicate and ordered. All the buildings you see in Park Slope, those are all after 1893.”  

Landmarking

Brooklyn, during its development boom in the 1800s, was considered an architectural mecca, where many of the country’s most esteemed architects fought to design in and around the area. Other really famous architects that designed in Bed-Stuy include R.L. Daus, George Chappell, Robert Dixon, the Parfitt Brothers and many more.

As another development boom begins to sweep through Bed-Stuy and its neighborhing areas, committees have formed to protect the architectural integrity of the century-old structures through landmarking and historic designation.

"The architecture here in New York is very distinctive. That's why landmarking legislation was born," said Munsey. "The buildings in Bed-Stuy are very rare gems; we should protect it. Because once they're gone, they're gone. And for some reason, we never seem to appreciate what we have until it's gone."

This is the fourth installment in a 5-part series that looks at the process of land marking, from community organizing, to what to look for in a designation, to how to navigate within the various agencies.