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.