Neighbors felt cut down Caption: "Neighbors felt cut down--Argyle Road residents were stunned when workmen \[in foreground] yesterday cut down four huge shade trees alongside site of addition to Public School 139 \[located at 330 Rugby Road] at corner of Cortelyou Road. They insist city promised a year ago the trees would remain. One, a consulting engineer, figured cost of removal at $800. 'A ridiculous waste of taxpayers money and a handsome, tree-lined street is ruined in the bargain,' he said;" several wood-frame private houses in background.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century brought rapid changes to many parts of Brooklyn, not least to the town of Flatbush and its environs. Flatbush (from the Dutch vlacke bos, flat forest or wooded plain) was one of the original 6 towns making up the city of Brooklyn, and became part of that city in 1894. Four years later Brooklyn would become part of the consolidation of Greater New York City. This story is by Deborah Tint, Special Collections Cataloger, Brooklyn Public Library

"539 (535) E. 19th Street, east side, south of Dorchester Road, showing the home of J. Frazee. H. Grattern was the builder."

This view of of Public School 139 is the side view from Cortelyou Road. The school opened in September of 1903 and served a student population of 898. Less than five years later the school had 1684 pupils and a was very well considered, both for student achievement and teacher reputation. The school had ample greenspace with a front lawn and a large playground in the rear.

403 East 19th Street, August 7, 1962. This two-story Colonial Revival home was constructed in in 1909-1910 by Benjamin Driesler for William H. Silk. The large curved porch is an iconic feature of the 1981- landmark designated Ditmas Park Historic District. Today the porch and the home is obscured by large trees.

Suydam-Ditmas House was built about 1700 and torn down in 1911. Hendrick Suydam, born in 1731, purchased the farm in 1759 from the heirs of Jacobus Lott. The house was owned by the Ditmas family until 1909.

The Vanderveer Windmill, east of Flatbush Avenue, ca. 1875. Fittingly, Kings County's foremost windmill was located on the farm of a prominent Dutch family in the Dutch-settled town of Flatbush. Likely built in the first decade of the 19th century (sources vary on the exact yet; some suggest decades earlier), farmer John C. Vanderveer's windmill was originally equipped with 26-foot "sails." Around the early 1830s, the sails were removed and the mill was converted for simple grain storage. Vanderveer's windmill played an unlikely role in the Draft Riots of 1863. Concerned that violence directed at African-Americans would spread from riots in Manhattan to Brooklyn and beyond, black residents of Flatbush took shelter in the windmill as a precautionary measure. Sixteen years later, on March 4, 1879, the windmill caught fire in the early morning hours in a blaze visible from Brooklyn City Hall (now known as Borough Hall).

This large Colonial Revival building was constructed in 1899 as the home for Thomas Brush, a Brooklyn builder. The architects were a Connecticut architectural firm of brothers George and Charles Palliser. They designed this home to compliment the one at 1000 Ocean Avenue next door, the home of Thomas Brush's son-in-law. The home was so lauded when built that it was written up in the magazine Scientific American, which detailed the sculptures by famed Boston sculptor Charles Emmel and the silver plated exposed pipes in the bathrooms. The original owner lost the home in 1913 when it when into foreclosure, and then it went through a series of owners until 1929 when it was bought by a Jewish congregation. Temple Beth Ohr owned and used the building until the mid 1990s when it was sold again, this time to a Pentecostal church. During their ownership the building deteriorated greatly. But since 2008 it has been restored and it houses a number of doctors offices.