Colony Inn, ca.1910. The buildings that housed the Colony Inn during the first few decades of the 20th century were originally constructed in the early 19th century as farm houses when the area was still rural. After the Civil War, Flatbush Avenue became a commercial thoroughfare, as well as a fashionable location for new large homes, interspersed with the older wood-frame structures. The Colony Inn was opened in 1910 by Charles F. Heineman. Heineman was a dry goods dealer and an investor in many ventures including horse racing, car racing, and real estate. The popular Colony Inn was a hotel and restaurant. Heineman was very involved in fundraising efforts during and after World War I, hosting events that generated money for the war relief, the Salvation Army, and veteran's services. The end of the Colony Inn is shrouded in some mystery. References to the place end in 1924. (Most of these newspaper references are advertisements for African American service workers; the Colony only hired African American maids, porters, cooks, and waiters.) During the 1920s this stretch of Flatbush Avenue was lined with the construction of five and six-story apartment houses with ground floor retail spaces. The Colony Inn was likely closed and demolished to make way for one of these buildings.

582-590 Flatbush Avenue, 1922. No. 582, at right, was a late 19th century two and a half-story wood-frame home. According to the photograph notes, the home was demolished in 1928 for the construction of the Patio Theatre. The theatre was the grandest of the Century Theaters circuit. Designed by the architect-designer team of R.Thomas Short and William Rau, the auditorium was ornately designed with gilding and chandeliers. The style was "Old World Spanish." The theatre opened in 1928 and had early competition from the nearby Flatbush Theatre, Kenmore Theatre and Albemarle Theatre. The opening of the King's Theatre in 1929 put the Patio at a serious disadvantage. Despite the movie house surge after World War II and a renovation in 1948, the Patio was sold and demolished by the early 1960s.

590 Flatbush Avenue, known as the Thatcher House; July, 1928. John Thatcher was born in northwest England and immigrated to New York in about 1863, at the age of 10. In 1875, he founded the eponymous construction firm that would go on to become John Thatcher & Son (with son Edwin H. Thatcher). Thatcher & Son won several high profile contracts in Brooklyn, including the Polhemus Memorial Clinic, Erasmus Hall High School, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Edwin Thatcher's obituary headline read "Edwin Thatcher Dies; Built Academy of Music). The elder Thatcher became the Superintendent of the Bureau of Buildings for Brooklyn, but met his early demise in 1912, in the line of duty: he was inspecting new buildings on New Lots Avenue with a colleague (identified as an "Italian apprentice"), when the scaffolding collapsed and he plunged 40 feet to the pavement below. He died shortly thereafter, of a spinal fracture and brain hemorrhage. Edwin Thatcher served as Commissioner of Buildings from 1934-38, and continued to oversee the family firm's operations until shortly before his death in 1953. The high-rise currently occupying this site on the west side of Flatbush Avenue was completed in 1962.

Wood-frame house at 598 Flatbush Avenue, opposite Rutland Road; 1922. In 1908, this was the residence of Charlotte Vanderbilt, daughter of John. J Vanderbilt and Margaret Stryker Vanderbilt. According to photographer Eugene L. Armbruster, the house was razed between 1922 and 1936. Charlotte Vanderbilt died in 1924, at the age of 89; she is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery. In 1882, the Charlotte Vanderbilt, a steam ferry, sank on the Hudson River, south of Kingston and Rondout. This ferry was named after a different Charlotte Vanderbilt (likely a relative), the sister of ferry and rail magnate Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt.

(George L. Morse, 1893) This congregation traces its origins to 1856, when a Sunday school for African American children “was started in a small building in the woods” in what is now Prospect Park. Two years later, in 1858, it was formally incorporated as the Society for the Amelioration of the Colored Population in Flatbush. The school—which also hosted occasional prayer meetings, funerals and temperance events—was given in 1871 to the Dutch Reformed Church, which began regular church services. After moving several times, the church settled at its current location in 1893 on land donated by the Lefferts family. A decade later, in 1903, Grace Chapel was organized as the independent Grace Reformed Church. Its graceful building features Tiffany stainedglass windows, also donated by the Lefferts family. The Sunday school (1903-04) facing Bedford Avenue was also designed by Morse.

163-165 Midwood Street, 1924. Nos. 163 and 165 are two in a series of ten homes designed by George Lawton of the firm of Lawton & Field for William A.A. Brown in 1899. Brown was banker, real estate developer, avid horticulturist, and powerful in the local political community. He was also the head of the (Brooklyn-based) Budweiser Brewing Company. This series of homes is similar to a grouping down the block at 117-151, but has Romanesque Revival detail at the basement level, while the others are more neo-Renaissance .

The Old Flatbush Toll Gate, unknown date. Originally located along the old Flatbush Turnpike, this Old Flatbush Toll Gate dates to an era when travelers were obliged to pay a small fare when they passed from the Village of Flatbush into the City of Brooklyn. While the 19th century turnpike no longer exists, the route generally followed what is known as today’s Flatbush Avenue. It stood along the Turnpike until 1925, when the toll gate was relocated to Prospect Park’s Willink Entrance. Residents who sought to avoid the toll were known to reroute to Port Road, also called Shinpike Road, which was a narrow and stony street that led to Gowanus and Red Hook Lane (now Court Street).

Flatbush Avenue toll gate, ca. 1880. Before 1894, when the various towns of Kings County were consolidated into the City of Brooklyn, the Village of Flatbush (roughly coextensive with the contemporary neighborhood) and Town of Flatbush (covering a larger swath of southeastern Brooklyn) were distinct political entities. This toll booth, situated on the west side of Flatbush Avenue — long a route between Brooklyn, proper, and points south — between Fenimore and Hawthorne Streets, marked the border of the Village of Flatbush.

Music school at Flatbush Avenue and Parkside Avenue (formerly Ocean Parkway, Franklin Avenue); ca. 1908. According to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt's 1909 "Social History of Flabush," this house was built by Mrs. Jane Rhodes (sometimes spelled 'Rhoades'). In Eugene L. Armbruster's photo, ca. 1908, the late Mrs. Rhodes' home has been converted to the "School of Accompanying," described in a 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle advertisement as a resource for pianists to "largerly increase" their income.

North side of Rutland Road between Rogers Avenue and Nostrand Avenue, 271 Rutland Road at center, 1962.

Garret L. Martense mansion, Flatbush Avenue; 1922. This Greek Revival mansion was the home of Judge Garret L. Martense for a portion of the mid 19th century. He was an early landowner in Flatbush. According to the photographic notes the home was razed in 1923. The building which now occupies the northwest corner of Flatbush Avenue and Westbury Court looks to have been built within the decade after the home was taken down, considering its architectural style.

The home of Dr. Homer L. Bartlett, No. 88 Fenimore Street; 1910. Bartlett, described in his 1904 New York Times as "one of the most prominent physicians in Brooklyn," was born in Vermont in 1830, and came to New York to complete his medical training in the 1850s. His trade brought him to Kings County in 1856, where he treated an outbreak of yellow fever in the town of New Utrecht before settling in Flatbush. In Flatbush, Bartlett was involved in a wide array of civic institutions, including the Health Board, of which he was founder and commissioner; the Police Department, where he became president of the the board; and the gas and water utilities; in addition to a stint as schools commissioner. In his medical practice, Bartlett enjoyed a long association with the Kings County Hospital and the Kings County Penitentiary, as well as affiliations with trade associations like the American Medical Association. In what spare time he had left, Bartlett was an active member of his local Masonic Lodge and wrote fiction based "on the Indian legends of Long Island." Bartlett's wife, Margaret Scott Bartlett, asserted a different sort of influence on the town's development: at her suggestion the street adjacent to her home was named for the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, a family friend.

View west along Fenimore Street, from Bedford Avenue; 1914. The large house at center is No. 115 Fenimore Street. According to the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Historic District designation report, No. 115 was completed in 1896, and is one of the first two houses constructed in Lefferts Manor, the development established in 1893 by James Lefferts on the grounds of his family's farm. The wood-frame house is still standing today, albeit in rough shape following a 2010 fire.

Patio Theatre, 1929.

Farmhouse on Flatbush Avenue, opposite Fenimore Street; ca. 1920. The house is said to have been built by Samuel Gerritsen in about 1796. The Gerritsen family were early Dutch settlers of Kings County, and operated a mill on the creek separating the towns of Gravesend and Flatlands as early as the 1690s. The mill burned in 1935, and today its former site is included in Marine Park, just east of the Gerritsen Beach neighborhood. The farmhouse on Flatbush Avenue passed through many owners during the 19th century, and was at one point "famous for its ivy and garden." The house was demolished in 1926.

Greenhouse of William Brown, father-in-law of photographer Adrian Vanderveer Martense, in the aftermath of the blizzard of 1888. Brown was a player in the Brooklyn brewing business. In 1884 he led a group of investors in the purchase of the Bedford Brewery in present-day Crown Heights, and proceeded to upgrade its equipment and practices. Following a research and development trip to Europe, Brown returned to Kings County with the perfect recipe for lager beer, and the perfect name for his new brew: Budweiser. Unfortunately, the Anheuser-Busch corporation had already trademarked the name, following their own delegation's trip to the brewing city of Budweis in Bohemia. (Brown backed down, and the business was renamed Nassau Brewery.) An avid horticulturist, Brown commissioned the Lord & Burnham architectural firm to design a pair of heated greenhouses straddling the planned right of way for Robinson Road (now Parkside Avenue), east of Flatbush Avenue.

75 Maple Street, ca. 1924. Designed by Albert Morton Grey in 1922, this simple neo-Georgian home was built for Jeanne M. Reynolds. The facade is English-bond brick and the projected bay entrance (which is unusually on the side of the house) remains.

Engine Company 249, August 7, 1962. Engine Company 249 was originally Brooklyn Fire Department Engine 49. It was established on January 20, 1896. After the consolidation New York City, to minimize confusion with the Manhattan firehouses, the Brooklyn and Queens engines had 100 numbers added to the names. So BFD 49 became FDNY 149. During a second reorganization in 1913 the engines were renumbered again, this time to with 200 numbers, making this one Engine 249. The firehouse on Rogers Avenue was the Engine's original building. The land was purchased for $1700 in 1895. The two-story, two bay, brick firehouse was designed by J. T. Lauretzen. A Romanesque Revival style structure of red brick and Indiana limestone, the dominating exterior feature is the rounded tower at tight. The back of the building originally featured six stalls for the horses that powered the trucks. The building underwent renovations in 1926 to modernize the space. In 1996, after 100 years of service, the building was once again renovated. This time the renovations included largely demolishing the structure (leaving only the front wall). A new three-story firehouse was constructed and attached to the original front wall.

135-139 Maple Street, 1925. Check out the address on the steps on no. 135 at left. It is still visible more than 90 years later!

Gas station at Flatbush Avenue and Chester Court; April, 1923. This 1842 farm house was the home of Cornelius Jeremiah "Corneel" Vanderbilt, son of the shipping and transportation magnate Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, during the late 19th century. Corneel, who was said to suffer from epilepsy, was held in ill-regard by his wealthy father, an opinion compounded by his repeated business errors. The junior Vanderbilt, then living in Connecticut, died by suicide in 1882. According to photographer Eugene L. Armbruster, the house was converted into a gas station with an attached storefront in 1922 and razed in 1926.

This firehouse is almost the mirror image, although built with different materials, to the landmark Engine Company 40, Hook & Ladder Company 21 (1895) in Windsor Terrace. Lauritzen designed at least eight firehouses in the years just before the then-independent City of Brooklyn merged into Greater New York. This building originally had space for a steam fire engine, a hose truck, a ladder truck and six horse stalls. The projecting tower above the right corner was presumably for drying hoses. Architectural inspiration came from medieval and Jacobean England, particularly the ornate window surrounds and the ogee pediment above the left bay. In 1996 the building was essentially rebuilt, and a third story added, behind the historic façade.

Adrian Vanderveer Martese house and front gate, after the Blizzard of 1888; March 14, 1888. Martense, the photographer of this collection, was a descendant of well-heeled Flatbush families and a prominent member of the village community. As clearly marked by the "A.V. MARTENSE, AMATEUR," photography was a leisure pursuit for Martense. A graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Law, Martense maintained a Montague Street practice throughout his professional life, while dedicating time to social pursuits, including the Knickerbocker Field Club, of which he was a founder; the Midwood and Crescent Clubs; and the Reformed Dutch Church, where he served as a deacon. Martense's photographs, which cover, roughly, the years 1872-1889, depict scenes of daily life in Flatbush, and document the residences of his contemporaries and neighbors on Diamond Street (now Lenox Road). Martense died on January 3 1898, succumbing to Bright's disease (the historical name for a variety of kidney diseases) at the young age of 45. The funeral was held at the family's Flatbush Avenue home (at the corner of, fittingly, Martense Street), where he had relocated in later years. He is today interred at Green-Wood Cemetery.