Bushwick Avenue mansions, including Catherina Lipsius House (a.k.a. Frederick Cook House, at right) and William Ulmer Mansion (center), January, 1925. Bushwick was a hub of Brooklyn’s 19th century brewing industry with dozens of beer producers operating in and around the neighborhood. Bushwick Avenue, then nicknamed “Brewer’s Row,” was the district’s show street, home to large single-family mansions built for brewery owners, often by prolific architect Theobald Engelhardt. In 1889, Catherina Lipsius, owner of the Claus Lipsius Brewery (named for her two husbands, both deceased), hired Engelhardt to design her Brewer’s Row mansion, which he executed in the American Round-Arched style. In 1902, Lipsius sold her mansion to Dr. Frederick A. Cook. Beyond his medical practice, Cook was a seasoned Arctic explorer whose dubious claim to have reached the North Pole in 1908 set off controversy. Fellow explorer Robert Peary claimed to have reached the pole a year later, in April 1909, and accused Cook of fabricating his account. Of the two explorers, Peary was better connected, and therefore better equipped to mount a public relations campaign to discredit Cook’s claim. The expense of defending his reputation cost Cook dearly; bankrupt, he lost the Bushwick Avenue mansion to foreclosure. One of a handful of Brewer’s Row mansions to survive the wave of arson and property damage that plagued Bushwick during the 1970s, the Lipsius House was designated a New York City Landmark in June, 2013.

From mansions to tenements, when it comes to housing, New York has it all. This New York Public Library collection examines housing in New York since the mid-19th century, with a particular focus on vernacular and wood-frame structures across the five boroughs.