Monuments to Sarah Van Brunt Cashman, William Augustus Conklin, and Martha and Mary Titus, ca. 1890. (Lots 799 and 800, Sec. 64)

Growing plants in the Northeast year-round is no mean feat! Here is a look at greenhouses of all stripes throughout the city.

At the center of the photograph is Betania Baptist Kirke (Church), a Scandinavian church which was not an uncommon sight in Sunset Park in the early and middle of the 20th century. Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians made up a large population of the neighborhood, with a section of 8th Avenue from Sunset Park to Bay Bridge called Lapskaus Boulevard, after the Nordic beef stew. The building, though somewhat drastically altered, does retain some of its original features, most notably the slanted peak of the roof seen behind the new second floor facade. The building is still used for religious purposes as Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Alpha y Omega.

Weir's Greenhouse ARCHITECT: G. Curtis Gillespie DATE: 1895 The Weir Greenhouse is among the rarest of nineteenth-century survivors; it is the only Victorian commercial greenhouse known to be extant in New York City. Although the forms and massing of the greenhouse are bold and impressive, the detailing is simple and straightforward. The greenhouse is a wood- frame structure enclosing glass panes, and has glass and galvanized-iron roof surfaces. The double-entry doors are flanked by wide window expanses with transoms. A frieze and cornice separate the transoms from a narrow clerestory. The sloping roof is capped by an octagonal cupola with a ball finial.

Bergen House, ca. 1880. Known as the DeHart or Bergen House, this structure once stood on a plot west of Third Avenue near 37th and 38th Streets. The home was supposedly constructed in the mid to late 1600s for Symon (Simon) Aertszen DeHart. A record of the visit of two Labadists (a 17th-century Protestant religious community) missionaries to the home in 1679-80 notes: "They spent one night at the house of Simon DeHart, where they supped on raw and roasted oysters, a roasted haunch of venison, a wild turkey, and a goose, and sat before a hickory fire blazing half-way up the chimney." Passed through generations of Simon's descendants during the 1700s, the home was sold away from the DeHart/Bergen clan around the end of the 18th or early 19th century. Captured here circa 1880, the home was demolished before the turn of the 20th century. (Sources differ on the exact location of the house. All agree it was near Third Avenue —which was on the waterfront at that point— but some say 33rd Street, others, 37th, and still others between 38th and 39th.)

View of Valley Water in The Green-Wood Cemetery, ca. 1880.

"Portion of Weir's Greenhouse at southwest corner of 25th Street and Fifth Avenue, 1960." Weir's Greenhouse is the only 19th century commercial greenhouse structure to survive in New York City. It was in 1895 by James Weir Jr., whose family was in the local horticultural business. The original greenhouse on this site was built in 1880 by a prominent architect named Mercein Thomas, who is better known for his Romanesque Revival Brooklyn homes. The current structure was an 1895 alteration of the original building, though it is believed that very little of the original structure was retained during the construction. This wood, glass, and iron structure served visitors to Green-Wood Cemetery for nearly a century, and likely survived, while other nearby greenhouses disappeared, because of its location directly across the street from the cemetery's main entrance. In February 2012 the cemetery acquired the greenhouse and with a grant from New York State’s Regional Economic Development Council, they plan to restore the structure and use it as a visitors center and exhibition gallery.

Monuments to Cornelia Polhemus and Jane D. Creed, ca. 1880. (Lots 182 and 1543, Sec. 61)