Flatbush Town Hall ARCHITECT: John Y. Cuyler DATE: c. 1875 STYLE: High Victorian Gothic Constructed on historic ground – near the site of the 1776 Battle of Long Island – Flatbush Town Hall is a red brick Victorian building with buff stone trim accentuated by a series of pointed window arches with carved drip moldings ornamented with bosses. A rear addition, consisting of a simple, brown-brick exterior with large, round-arched Georgian Revival windows, was built to house the Homicide Court in 1929-30.

Chapel and Sunday School of the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church; May, 1923. The large Victorian Gothic chapel was erected in 1871 in order to provide more space for the congregation's Sunday School. It was razed and replaced by the present Church House in 1922.

Jacob Duryea house, Flatbush Avenue, 1892. This wood-frame farmhouse once stood about 100 feet south of the entrance to the Kings Theatre. In the late 18th century, it was the homestead of Dr. James J. van Beuren, a descendent of a family of Dutch doctors active in Flatbush and New York. According the Brooklyn Medical Journal, van Beuren died in 1802. The house later passed to the family of Jacob Duryea, for whom nearby Duryea Place is named. By the late 19th century, the property was surrounded by tracks and structures associated with the Brooklyn City Railroad's Vernon Avenue car barn. The homestead was razed between 1898-1906.

The Beverley Road Station House is the sole entrance to the open-cut BMT Line station below. The house was built in 1907 and completely renovated in the 1990s. Quirky Subway Fact: The distance between this station and the next station, Cortelyou Road is the shortest distance between two stations in the entire NYC subway system. At only 600 feet, if a full length train had only the first car platform at the start of one station, the end of the train would still be at the end of the other station's platform.

"Group posing on J. Lott's piazza, centered around woman in rocking chair; Labor Day 1887." - A.V. Martense The scene for this Labor Day photo appears to be the front porch of the Judge John A. Lott House, facing Flatbush Avenue across from Erasmus High School (then Erasmus Hall Academy). The Lotts were one of several prominent families in Flatbush descended from the town's early Dutch settlers. John Abraham Lott, born in Flatbush in 1806, was a lawyer and partner in the prominent Lott, Murphy & Vanderbilt firm, before his appointment to the Kings County Court bench in 1838. Lott was elected to the State Assembly in 1842, and served in the New York State from 1843 - 1846. Following his stint as a legislator, Judge Lott returned to the bench in 1858 as an elected justice of the State Supreme Court, where he served until 1869. Following his retirement from political office and jurisprudence, Lott served as president of the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway. After Judge Lott's 1878 death, the house appears to have passed to his son, Jeremiah Lott. (The Lott family was well represented in Flatbush society — Robinson's 1890 atlas of Kings County shows no less than four Lott estates on this block of Flatbush Avenue, not to mention other properties further afield.) During World War I, "very practical war work \[was] being carried on at the Lott Mansion," including the administration of food conservation programs, according to a June 1918 Brooklyn Daily Eagle report. The house sustained damage in a 1923 fire, and was demolished shortly thereafter.

Parsonage of the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church, 900 Flatbush Avenue; ca. January, 1917. While the congregation dates to 1654, and the current church to 1793, the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church's parsonage was added in 1853. The parsonage, which included both Greek Revival and Italianate architectural elements, was moved about 200 feet to the southwest in 1918, and now sits at the corner of Kenmore Terrace and East 21st Street.

William and Lulu Norwood House, September 1, 1958. This nearly 5,000 square foot home was constructed in 1906 for real estate broker William Norwood and his wife. A number of architectural features present a Northern Italian Villa style, including the porch, tower, and the deep eaves (or part of the roof that overhangs the edge of the building). The rest of the home is a solid Colonial Revival. Despite the large home, the oddly- shaped lot has almost no backyard space as the subway (today's Q train) runs directly behind it and the rail infrastructure was present prior to the home's construction.

Ebinger Baking Plant, 1951. In 1898 George and Catherine Ebinger opened their Ebinger's Bakery on Flatbush Avenue near Cortelyou Road. Specializing in German sweets and pastries, their best-known confection was the Brooklyn Blackout Cake, a chocolate layer cake with chocolate fudge layers, and chocolate frosting covered with chocolate cake crumbs. Though likely produced in the early 20th century, the cake got its famous name during World War II when the city experienced blackout drills. Brooklyn became obsessed with Ebinger Bakery and the business expanded to more than 50 outlets. This large factory space in Flatbush was a complex constructed over 20 years. The first building, which fronts Snyder Avenue was completed in 1912 with an addition a year later. This building, at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Albemarle Road, was completed in the circa 1930. The business thrived through the early mid-century but came under fire for discriminatory hiring practices. The company declared bankruptcy and closed in 1972. Today this building is a storage facility.

🍰🍪🍰🍪 In 1898 George and Catherine Ebinger opened their Ebinger's Bakery on Flatbush Avenue near Cortelyou Street. Specializing in German sweets and pastries, their best-known confection was the Brooklyn Blackout Cake, a chocolate layer cake with chocolate fudge layers, and chocolate frosting covered with chocolate cake crumbs. Though likely produced in the early 20th century, the cake got its famous name during World War II when the city experienced blackout drills. Brooklyn became obsessed with Ebinger's Bakery, and the business expanded to more than 50 outlets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau County. The business thrived through the early mid-century but came under fire for discriminatory hiring practices in the 1960s, and in the same decade, many of their longtime customers moved out of the city. The company declared bankruptcy and closed in 1972, though rumor has it that Entenmann's purchased their recipes.

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

Adjacent to the Q train tracks, you might spy a clearing in the woods. The Knickerbocker Field Club was established in 1889 in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. Its original structure was a two story Colonial Revival Style building clad in clapboard and shingles, with a deep porch supported by Doric order columns. A fire in 1988 destroyed a portion of the building. The Field Club was the last standing portion of the area's Tennis Court development, yet was not considered worthy of landmark status. The remains of the original structure were demolished in 1992, replaced by a new clubhouse, still operating under the name "Knickerbocker Field Club."

Third Church of Christ Scientist, November 23, 1930. The Third Church of Christ, Scientist of Brooklyn was established around the turn of the century. Their 1927 church building was designed by Cherry & Matz in a Greek Revival style. The building was sold in 1982 to the Flatbush Seventh-day Adventist Church, which still occupies the structure today.

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).

BMT Brighton Line tracks, viewed from the Albemarle Road pedestrian bridge, July 2, 1962.

William Fox Albemarle Theatre, ca.1920. Designed in a modest French Renaissance Revival style, the building was created by Arthur Carlson and Harrison Wiseman, experienced theatre architects. Wiseman designed at least 22 theatres in New York City including a number of Yiddish venues on Second Avenue. A vaudeville and motion picture house, it was managed, initially, by producer William Fox. The movie house remained a single screen venue until a fire in 1984 heavily damaged the building. The theatre closed, was purchased by Jehovah’s Witnesses, and soon reopened as an Assembly Hall, which it remains today.