Long before Park Slope became the desirable and prohibitively expensive neighborhood that it is today, it consisted largely of farmland. In 1854, William B. Cronyn, a successful Wall Street merchant, purchased four of the lots and began building his imposing home two years later. The three-story home is a classic example of the Second French Empire style and features a slanted mansard roof, ornamental iron cresting, and a central half-story cupola. The home remained in the Cronyn family until it was sold in 1862. By that time, the neighborhood now known as Park Slope was becoming more developed and a number of successful businessmen were moving into the area. In 1898, Charles Higgins purchased the Cronyn home and made it the headquarters of the Higgins American India Ink factory. The factory occupied the building until the mid-twentieth century.In 1981, Charles and Vita Sibirsky purchased the home. The Sibirskys were simply looking for an affordable place to raise their children, and Park Slope was not yet overpriced. Both musicians, the Sibirskys began teaching music lessons in the home, and currently operate Slope Music, a Brooklyn institution, in the home. The home, distinctive not only because of its architectural style but its baby blue exterior, is easily recognizable in Park Slope. The home is a New York City Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Well before brownstones took over Brooklyn, William B. Cronyn built a free-standing French Second Empire home in what would become Park Slope. The home was built between 1856 and 1857. A unique structure in Park Slope, the Cronyn House is a three-story building with a mansard roof. The home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

William B. Cronyn House (Slope Music)

Start at a former public bathhouse (now a gym) on Union Ave. and walk through the Gowanus and Park Slope neighborhoods to historical industrial & residential buildings, a Revolutionary War museum & site, a political activism archive, and a 19th-century school building.

Public bathhouses came about in New York City because tenement housing often had no running water or minimal water coming from rusty pipes. The first opened on Mott Street in 1851. Temporary bathhouses were open during the summers beginning in the 1870s. The city opened year-round public bathhouses in the 1880s, to encourage cleanliness and reduce disease outbreaks. Progressive reformers aimed to increase the social status of the poor and encourage upward mobility. The Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor recommended building bathhouses styled after ancient Roman architecture.City of New York Mayor William Strong authorized a Subcommittee on Baths and Lavatories in 1895. In that same year, New York State passed regulations requiring the establishment of public baths in first and second-class cities. Public Bath No. 7 was the last of seven public baths built in Brooklyn. Buildings of two others in Brooklyn have survived :1752 Pitkin Ave. (closed in 1960) and Cowood Gliders on Huron St. (closed in 1949). When Public Bath No. 7 opened in 1910 it was the largest and most ornate of the seven bathhouses. The building was designed by Raymond F. Almirall (1869-1939); Almirall designed four Carnegie library buildings in Brooklyn (Bushwick, Eastern Parkway, Prospect, and Pacific).Public Bath No. 7 featured separate entrances for men and women; you can still see the "MEN" and "WOMEN" inscriptions above the doorways. The outside is decorated with terra cotta dolphins, urns, and Triton (the father of the sea god Poseidon). The interior was laid out with a swimming pool and laundry in the basement; an atrium on the first floor overlooked the pool. First-floor offices had waiting rooms for men and women flanking them. Also on the main floor were 41 showers for men, 30 showers for women, and 9 tubs. The location of Public Bath No. 7 was chosen to be near the tenements of the Gowanus area, where many factory and dock workers and their families lived. It took four years to build. Tenement laws in New York City were enacted while this building was still being constructed, requiring installation of bathroom facilities in every new flat.A Depression-era federal work project, the Works Progress Administration, completed some renovations of Brooklyn's public baths. The original soapstone stalls were replaced with marble enclosures, nonslip ceramic tile flooring was installed, and terra cotta and block partitions, shelves, and granite steps were built. Public Bath No. 7 closed in 1937. Some bathhouses later were converted into public swimming pools, like the Asser Levy Public Bath building in Kips Bay, which is now part of the Asser Levy Recreation Center.The Brooklyn Lyceum, the occupant of the structure from the 1990s to 2012, hosted concerts and theater performances, and had a cafe. The building was lost to foreclosure and was auctioned off in February 2013.

The white brick building at 237-241 Fourth Avenue was constructed as a public bathhouse and was finished in 1910. It was the last of seven public baths established in Brooklyn. The Neo-Renaissance style building was converted into a gymnasium in 1937. Public Bath No. 7 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The building became a municipal gymnasium in the 1940s and closed in the 1970s. A transmission repair business next used the structure, and it was abandoned for some time. It housed The Lyceum or Brooklyn Lyceum, an events venue and cafe, from the 1990s until 2012. The building now is a private gym, the Park Slope branch of Blink Fitness.

Public Bathhouse No. 7

The Somers Brothers - Daniel (1841-1912), Guy (1842-1909), and Joseph (1844-1914) - were in the tin-making business by 1862 and leased space in a succession of Brooklyn locations. They perfected a method of printing images on tinplate sheets using lithography. By 1878, they were using custom equipment to cut and shape the printed sheets into containers. The brothers were long-time Brooklyn residents and chose a location near the Fifth Street basin of the Gowanus Canal to build the Somers Brothers Tinware Factory. Their company was one of the first in America to make the tin containers with integrated decorative surfaces; before this, paper labels were the norm. By the late 1880s, they were one of only three tin lithography companies in America. The factory employed 850 workers by 1892. Somers Brothers was acquired by the American Can Company in 1901, who had recently acquired 102 other American companies making tin cans. The American Can Company was the country's 31st largest business by 1917, when it manufactured gas masks with metal canisters for absorptive chemicals for World War I. The company sold the former Somers Brothers factory building in 1950; it was leased beginning in 1952 to Corrugated Container Corporation.Daniel Somers, a civil engineer, patented a number of inventions, including a machine to make sheet metal boxes in 1878 and a rolling mechanism in 1904. Daniel also is credited with designing the factory building, plus a later addition on a separate lot. He served as a director of the Brooklyn Public Library. Daniel designed his own mausoleum in Green-wood Cemetery, where he was interred in 1912.The new Somers Brothers factory was described by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper in 1884 as the greatest decorated tin box company in the country. Artists designed the lithographic images, and the pigments were transferred to tinplate imported from England; tinplate is a sheet of iron or steel plated in tin while flat. Steam kilns fixed the image to the tin, and enamel and gloss finishes were applied. Machine operators then bent the sheets into the shapes of containers, also called tinware. The company also manufactured tin signs and tin tobacco tags.The factory building is American Round Arch style with a prominent corner pavilion and two wings - one along the north side of Third St. and the other on the west side of Third Ave. The building is three stories tall plus a basement and is made of polychromatic brick in red, red-orange, Black, and white, with bluestone sills. A fancy red brick cornice tops the building, above diamond-shaped window openings. A tower with a pyramidal roof was removed from the corner pavilion after 1940, as was a decorative iron balustrade that edged its roof. An alternate address for the former can factory is 369 Third Ave. The building became popular for space for artists beginning in the 1970s. A design firm, XO Projects, leased space in the former factory in 1990 and rehabbed the structure for the owners since 1983, LMS Realty Associates. XO Projects has organized farmers markets, exhibitions, and other events held in the building.

The massive red brick building on the southeast corner of Third St. and Third Ave. in the Gowanus neighborhood was built as the Somers Brothers Tinware Factory in 1884. The business later became the American Can Company. The factory was one of the largest decorated tinware manufacturing complexes in the country and operated here until 1950.The former factory building is a contributing part of the Gowanus Canal National Register Historic District. The rehabilitated building is now called the Old American Can Factory and is a mecca for artists, filmmakers, publishers, and craftspeople. It is the venue for the annual Rooftop Films series.

American Can Company Factory (Somers Brothers Tinware)

The Coignet Agglomerate Company of the United States was established in 1869 by an engineer (Quincy Adams Gilmore), a doctor from Brooklyn Heights (John C. Goodridge Jr.), and two other men. William Field and Son designed an office and showroom for the company, which was built in cast stone (concrete) cladding over brick walls, on the corner of Third St. and Third Ave. beginning in 1872. The business was renamed the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company. Soon, the business was in bankruptcy and the company sold their patents. Dr. Goodridge reorganized the firm in 1877 and renamed it the New York Stone Contracting Company. The business closed for good in 1882 and the office/ showroom was vacated. The Brooklyn Improvement Company owned the building for the next 75 years until it closed; they sold the building in 1957. A succession of small businesses occupied the building beginning in the 1960s, including the Pippin Radiator Company. The structure was briefly abandoned in the 1990s.Impending construction of a Whole Foods Market just feet away from the historic building caused concern for its physical integrity and survival. In 2006, Whole Foods promised to restore the building's exterior at an estimated cost of $1.3 million. In 2012, the size of the Coignet building's lot was reduced from 125 by 55 feet to 55 by 40 feet; this was done so that the neighboring owner, Whole Foods, could have more space for its new market. Unfortunately, Whole Foods allowed the Coignet building to continue to deteriorate for years while it built their market; after paying fines, Whole Foods finally undertook the restoration.The building at the Third St./ Third Ave. corner has two entrances and two alternate addresses: 360 Third Ave. and 230 Third St. The Coignet building features three facades and a central entrance along both the Third Street and Third Avenue sides of the building; the Third St. side has narrower bays. The exterior is covered in concrete cast to look like stone, the company's signature product. The original, fancy roof with finials and a parapet wall inscribed "COIGNET STONE COMPANY," as seen in early sketches of the structure, has not survived.The building's exterior was "renovated" in the 1960s by adding red brick cladding; the interior continued to deteriorate in the following decades and was beyond saving. An LLC bought the building in 2005 for nearly $5 million. A new roof was put on in 2011. The brick cladding was removed, and the cast stone exterior was renovated from 2014 to 2016. Analysis of the building materials found that the cement used to create the building's veneer was a pre-rotary kiln cement with a chemical composition of European Portland cement. The cast stone was repaired with Portland cement with a similar composition and texture; some faux stone elements had to be replaced. A protective limewash over the surface was the finishing touch to give the facades a uniform appearance. In 2016, the restoration won a prize in historic preservation from the New York Landmarks Conservancy. A documentary film on the building ("At the Corner of Third and Third") was made by Max Kutner.

The two-story building with a raised basement at the corner of Third Avenue and Third Street, next to Whole Foods Market in the Gowanus neighborhood, was built from 1872 to 1873. The building was constructed for the Coignet Agglomerate Company, the first U.S. company to produce a type of concrete patented by Frenchman Francois Coignet in the 1850s. Using molds filled with cement to form building parts was much cheaper than carving them from stone by hand with a chisel. This is the last remaining building from the company's factory that once covered 5 acres along the Gowanus Canal; the company closed in 1882. The building became a New York City landmark in 2006 and is a contributing building in the National Register Gowanus Canal Historic District. The building was restored from 2014 to 2016, in conjunction with construction of the adjacent Whole Foods supermarket and was offered for sale in 2021. The building may be the only surviving early cast concrete building in New York City, and perhaps the only surviving example of the use of European Portland cement in America.

Coignet Stone Company Building

Batlle of Brooklyn On August &nbsp;27, 1776,&nbsp;during the Battle of Brooklyn, the house became a strategic stronghold, housing around 2000 British and Hessian&nbsp;soldiers. From the house, they fired large amounts of artillery at the Americans. The Americans, who suffered huge losses, retreated to the nearby American stronghold, across&nbsp;Gowanus Creek. 400 of the&nbsp;Maryland Brigade threw themselves in six attacks against the stronghold. They managed to regain the house twice but were eventually driven out, causing&nbsp;nearly three-quarters of the brigade to die.&nbsp; House Ownership During the Revolutionary War, Nicholas Vechte, who was the&nbsp;grandson of Claes - the original owners, still lived in the Old House. Similar to other local farmers, he faced harsh conditions under British rule. When he died in 1799, the farm, including the house, was&nbsp;given&nbsp;to his grandson, Nicholas R. Cowenhoven. He, however, did not live in the house and eventually sold the house in 1779. The house's new owner,&nbsp;Jacques Cortelyou, purchased the house for his newly married son, Peter. Which was passed down to&nbsp;&nbsp;Peter’s son Jacque in 1815. After the death of his wife in 1852, Jacque sold the Old Stone House to&nbsp;Edwin Litchfield, a railroad developer. Within the last forty years before the house's destruction,&nbsp;it was occupied by an African-American caretaker. Later, it became a clubhouse for an ice skating club in the winter and a baseball club in the summer. The Old Stone house became the first&nbsp;clubhouse of the Brooklyn team of the National Base Ball League, which later became&nbsp;known&nbsp;as&nbsp;the Brooklyn Dodgers.&nbsp; Destruction and Rebuilding Street grading on Fourth and&nbsp;Fifth&nbsp;Avenue raised the street level, causing only the second floor of the house to be above ground. In 1897, the second story was destroyed during&nbsp;a public demonstration of military technology and was then&nbsp;promptly&nbsp;buried. When the Brooklyn Parks Department&nbsp;acquired&nbsp;the site in 1926 and then later in 1930, it was excavated. In 1934, the reconstruction of the house was complete. However, the new building wasn't a perfect replica - built 90 degrees off and&nbsp;a few meters too far west and too high.

The Old Stone house, also known as the Vechte-Courtelyou House, is a former Dutch farmhouse that was central to the Battle of Brooklyn. It was originally built in 1699 by Claes Arentson Vechte, a Dutch immigrant. It was destroyed in 1897, rebuilt in 1933, and finished nearly a year later. Currently, it is open to the public as a museum dedicated to persevering the house's past through exhibits, programs and school and public events. Currently, it is a Historic Interpretive Center and is operated by the First Battle Revival Alliance, which is named in honor of that "first battle" of the newly formed country against Great Britain. 

The Old Stone House

In 1776, British troops landed in New York to combat the colonial troops who fought to free the American colonies from British control. Under the leadership of George Washington, the colonial forces would come out victorious in the War, but the Battle of Brooklyn would be a losing effort. After engaging the British and Hessian hired soldiers, Washington realized he was outnumbered by more than&nbsp;triple the amount of men&nbsp;and was forced to retreat. The Maryland 400 was left behind to defend the retreat, which saved the Continental Army from complete destruction.&nbsp; At the time of the Battle of Brooklyn, the area was covered in swampland. Soldiers were forced to retreat through the swamps and across the East River. The Maryland 400 decided to remain and subsequently launched attack after attack against British forces of nearly 2000 men, who were held up inside an old stone house. The Maryland soldiers were under the leadership of Major&nbsp;Mordecai Gist, who was a Baltimore native. After the attack was over, 256 of Maryland's soldiers were killed on site while the other 144 were either captured as prisoner or fleed.&nbsp;&nbsp; The soldiers killed were buried in a mass grave of six trenches which was located in the vacant lot with the graffiti on the wall that reads, 'NORMSKIDYGYPSY'&nbsp;. After the war was over, the gravesite was marked by a memorial. As time passed, the grave was forgotten, and today, many people believe there is no mass grave at 3rd Avenue and 9th Street. The City of New York bought the location of the grave and intend to do an investigation to determine if the soldiers are located there. With some doubt from the people of Brooklyn about the actual existence of this mass grave underneath the vacant lot next&nbsp;the American Legion building, only a placard stands to remember the lost soldiers of Maryland's First Regiment.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Located next to the American Legion building in Brooklyn, this site is the location where 256 of 400 colonial troops from Maryland were buried in a mass grave after losing the Battle of Brooklyn on August 27, 1776. The soldiers from Maryland were part of the retreat after George Washington lost the Battle of Brooklyn. They guarded Washington's retreat but were all killed in the process. The location of these soldiers was largely unknown until recently, and the City of New York plans to dig the site up before building a school there. 

Gravesite of The First Maryland Regiment 400, Battle of Brooklyn

Long before Park Slope became the desirable and prohibitively expensive neighborhood that it is today, it consisted largely of farmland. In 1854, William B. Cronyn, a successful Wall Street merchant, purchased four of the lots and began building his imposing home two years later. The three-story home is a classic example of the Second French Empire style and features a slanted mansard roof, ornamental iron cresting, and a central half-story cupola. The home remained in the Cronyn family until it was sold in 1862. By that time, the neighborhood now known as Park Slope was becoming more developed and a number of successful businessmen were moving into the area. In 1898, Charles Higgins purchased the Cronyn home and made it the headquarters of the Higgins American India Ink factory. The factory occupied the building until the mid-twentieth century. In 1981, Charles and Vita Sibirsky purchased the home. The Sibirskys were simply looking for an affordable place to raise their children, and Park Slope was not yet overpriced. Both musicians, the Sibirskys began teaching music lessons in the home, and currently operate Slope Music, a Brooklyn institution, in the home. The home, distinctive not only because of its architectural style but its baby blue exterior, is easily recognizable in Park Slope. The home is a New York City Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Interference Archive was founded in 2011 by Kevin Caplicki,
Molly Fair, Dara Greenwald, and Josh MacPhee. The initial collection grew out
of the personal accumulation of Dara and Josh, who amassed an extensive
collection of materials including books, prints, music, moving images, and
ephemera through their involvement in social movements, DIY and punk, and
political art projects over the past 25 years.

Together with Molly and Kevin’s skills, knowledge, and
commitment, they envisioned turning these personal collections into a public
archive, with open-access to materials for the communities who created them,
and with archival work conducted by movement participants with firsthand
knowledge of its historical context.

Since 2011, Interference Archive has launched 16 exhibitions
and held more than 100 public events. They have seen a direct correlation to
the growth of the community alongside each exhibition that they mount. They
have also seen an increase in donations of unique material to the collection as
the profile of Interference Archive grows. This increases the ability to meet
the goals of their mission, providing better access to materials generated by
social movements and more resources for people who visit and use the space.

Among the materials are posters, fliers, pamphlets, zines,
stickers, T-shirts, books, graphic novels, newspapers, games, videos, leaflets,
buttons, audio recordings, and other ephemera. The topics it covers includes
ACT-UP, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Code Pink, Pink Bloque, Rock for
Choice, Latin American art, nature, ecology, feminism, punk rock, criminal
justice, prison reform, apartheid, anti-nuclear movement, squatting, anarchist book
fairs, May 1968 events in France and Dutch anti-fur activism.

In addition to historical materials and preexisting cultural
products, the Archive occasionally commissions artists to produce original
work. 

The owners and volunteers take a pointedly nontraditional
approach to archivism. In selection and acquisition, no priority is given to
particular movements, media types, or well-known artists. Instead, it positions
itself as a commons where people can share what they have and benefit from what
was donated by others. Whereas most archives stress materials protection and
preservation, the Interference Archive promotes access and use: "materials
only have meaning when they're in circulation" spreading ideas beyond
their boxes and files.

Interference Archive explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements. It is housed in an open floor-plan storefront space, filled to the ceiling. The collection includes a number of different kinds of media artifacts (pamphlets, posters, etc.), which provide information and illustration about the histories of radical political movements around the world, with 40 percent of the archive coming from outside the United States. In addition to its primary purpose as an archive and library, Interference Archive also functions as a multipurpose community center, gallery, and events space. Past events and exhibitions have covered prison reform, the Asian American movement in New York, underground newspapers, the anti-nuclear movement, and Art+Feminism edit-a-thons.

Interference Archive

A school was organized in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn (which includes Park Slope) by 1790. This school became Public School 2. The land for Public School 39 (P.S. 39) was purchased in March 1876 from George Riggs. Public School 39 first opened to students in 1877 under the leadership of principal Harriet N. Morris with about 300 students. By the following school term, enrollment grew to over 800. The school was designed to hold no more than 1,087 students.The school building is symmetrical with the main entrance facing Sixth Avenue below an archway in a central tower with a rusticated stone base. A panel between two windows in the tower reads "Public School 39." The central tower once had a mansard roof, but it was removed in the 1940s. The rest of the building's roof is a slate mansard roof with iron cresting. Projections at the center on both long sides of the building contain stairwells. Inside, each floor of the building is divided into two by a central hallway and stairwell. It is thought that P.S. 39 was designed by Samuel B. Leonard, the Board of Education's Superintendent of Buildings. The school is very similar in design to P.S. 37 which had been recently built.Henry Bristow, the school's namesake, had a varied career in public service. He was born in the Azores Islands in June 1840 and came to the U.S. in 1851. Bristow was a member of the New York National Guard and fought in the Civil War as part of the Seventh Regiment. When an early school serving the Gowanus/ Park Slope area (Public School 2) became overcrowded in the early 1870s, Bristow allowed some of the students to attend a temporary school (Primary School 2) held in his house until a larger school building became available, when P.S. 39 was built. In the 1880s he was part of Brooklyn's Board of Education and in 1897 he was appointed Police Justice. Bristow became a member of the U.S. Congress in 1900 as a Republican. He died in Brooklyn in October 1906 after a month's illness.P.S. 39 was recently ranked number 20 among New York elementary schools by U.S. News and World Report, with a score of 99.14 out of 100. Over 85% of the school's students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and over 90% for reading. The student to teacher ratio is about 17:1.

Public School 39 has stood on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn since 1876. The three-story red brick building with stone trim combines Italianate and French Second Empire architectural styles. The school was named in honor of Henry Bristow in 1916 as part of an effort to name schools after city leaders. P.S. 39 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The school is part of the New York City Department of Education and has an enrollment of about 400 in grades Kindergarten through Fifth.

Park Slope and Gowanus Neighborhoods Historical Walking Tour, Brooklyn

William B. Cronyn House (Slope Music)

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources