This corner was the location of the Folly Theater which opened on the afternoon of October 14, 1901. The Folly was owned by Richard Hyde who -- according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle -- held a competition to determine the theater’s design. He selected the architectural firm Dodge & Morrison’s design which depicted a building with “numerous and direct exits.” Hyde’s decision might have been influenced by the recent Theater Building Laws that required new theatres to be built with multiple exits and fireproof materials. The Folly Theater was the first theater constructed under the new building laws and included twenty-six exits onto Graham Avenue and Debevoise Street along with four fire escapes. This story can be viewed in its original format here.

My Archive Spring 2019 "This was my grandfather's factory in Brooklyn. The factory made steel medical furniture. It is one of those family photos that I have known forever. I guess they assembled all the workers for a photo shoot. My grandfather is towards the center, wearing a suit, behind the second man from the left who is kneeling." —Paul Tascarella

Park Street, toward Broadway, after streetcar tracks have been removed. October 21, 1935. The row houses on the northwestern side of the block date to at least 1886, and were built as frame structures with brick foundations. These houses were likely built for workers from Bushwick’s breweries, including the massive Liebmann & Sons complex nearby. At left, the tracks of the BMT Broadway elevated are nearby. The construction of the Broadway, Lexington Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue elevated lines contributed to 1880s development in Bushwick.

My Archive Spring 2019

P.S. 52, June 25, 1931. P.S. 52, a modified Italianate school building designed by James W. Naughton, was constructed in 1883 as an extension for nearby P.S. 24. Naughton was the City of Brooklyn’s Superintendent of Buildings from 1878-98 — his career overlapped with celebrated New York Superintendent of School Buildings C.B.J. Snyder — during which time he designed over 100 Brooklyn schools. The school held its final classes in 1945, before the building was sold for factory conversion. In 1981, a third-floor classroom was removed for exhibition as a 1920s-era period room in the New York State Museum in Albany. Since 1996, “The Schoolhouse” has been home to a community of resident artists.

In the early 1900s, about 70% of children who attended public schools on the Lower East Side were immigrants or children of immigrants. These students had needs that were different from those of students who attended New York City schools in, say, the mid-1800s. They were coming from homes where English was not the primary language and from families with their own cultures and traditions. So Lower East Side schools became a kind of laboratory for ideas about how to welcome immigrant children into American life. Schools taught the so-called three Rs – reading, writing, and arithmetic – but also what some educators believed were lessons in “Americanization.” Part of the curriculum? The pledge of allegiance, how to celebrate patriotic holidays, and even Christian hymns. It was a curriculum influenced by then-common views of the benefits of assimilation. But schools were more than a place for immigrant kids to learn about America. They also became a laboratory of ideas about how immigrant kids could one day make it in America. And that meant a whole slew of classes that would have been unfamiliar to students only a generation earlier.

Demolition of the Rheingold offices on Stanwix Street, 1981. The rise of national brewery conglomerates like Anheuser-Busch spelled the end for Rheingold. The Bushwick brewery complex ceased operations in 1976.

L\&F Groceries at the corner of Sumner (Marcus Garvey Boulevard) and Park Avenues, October 19, 1958. The NYCHA Sumner Houses are visible at right. The thirteen-building housing development opened in April of that year.

Italian-American restaurant and lunch room at 796 Flushing Avenue, 1923. The restaurant building, a wood-frame structure with a brick foundation, is still standing, though it’s clapboards and pediment detail have been stripped and covered with vinyl siding.

William Ulmer Brewery, ca. 1920. The first building of this brewery complex was completed in 1872 by Theobald Engelhardt, a German-American architect for the German-American brewers William Ulmer and Anton Vigelius. Ulmer came from a brewing family and had worked in the brewhouses of his uncles (both of whom has apprenticed with the Yuengling Brewery). By 1879, Ulmer was the sole proprietor of this business. Engelhardt designed the main brewhouse (and its ca. 1881 addition) in the Rundbogenstil (or round-arch) Romanesque revival style. He also completed the office building at 31 Belvidere and a number of nearby outbuildings. The German Eastern District of Brooklyn (Bushwick, Ridgewood, etc.) had a long history of brewing dating back to the mid 19th century. Ulmer was wildly successful selling his lager, and by 1896 he was reported as being a millionaire. While many other New York brewers included adjacent beer gardens in their complexes, there is no evidence that Ulmer sold his product in bottles or cans. To increase his bottom line he invested in real estate in both Brooklyn and Queens. He retired from the business in 1900, passing it on to his children. Brooklyn beer production reached its peak in 1907, and the Ulmer Brewery produced their highest yield the next year. By the time Prohibition was enacted in 1920 there were still at least 24 breweries in this area. But like the Ulmer Brewery (seen here with a "for sale/to let" sign, most breweries closed with the new legislation. Later the building was used for light manufacturing. Today the building (sans the mansard tower seen here) is home to artists and their workspaces. The entire complex was landmarked in 2010.