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Isaac Cornel Schenck House
Isaac Cornel Schenck House
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Isaac Cornel Schenck homestead

Facade of small, three-story stucco and shingle house with shuttered windows on first floor; wood fence (and gate) along front and several large trees. Caption: "The Isaac Cornel Schenck homestead, erected about 1760, still standing, although remodeled several times, on Jamaica Ave. near Cleveland St., in the Highland park development."

1946

Isaac Cornel Schenck House

Isaac Cornel Schenck homestead

Facade of small, three-story stucco and shingle house with shuttered windows on first floor; wood fence (and gate) along front and several large trees. Caption: "The Isaac Cornel Schenck homestead, erected about 1760, still standing, although remodeled several times, on Jamaica Ave. near Cleveland St., in the Highland park development."

IMAGE DATE1946
FromBrooklyn Public Library logoBrooklyn Public Library

Isaac Cornel Schenck Homestead, 1946.

In 1771, Isaac Cornel Schenck's father Johannes purchased a farm in New Lots and ten years later gave it to his son. The farmland included a house of unknown age. Supposedly in 1791 while Isaac was expanding the home, he discovered musket and a rapier blade marked "1649" in the wall and cannon balls buried in its yard. The farm and farmhouse remained with Isaac Cornel's descendants through 1891 when it was sold to the city of Brooklyn and became part of the newly developed Highland Park. The Parks Department used the structure for park functions for some time. In 1945, Maud Esther Dillard in her book The Dutch Houses of Brooklyn wrote, "Now it stands vacant and desolate and will probably be torn down unless some responsible organization takes it under its wing and furnishes it as a museum."

Still standing in 1951 when it was again captured for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the home was likely demolished soon after.

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