Author: Margaret Iuni

On April 6, 1917, the United States of America joined the Allied forces in the “Great War,” or World War I. The people of Flatbush responded with great enthusiasm and nationalism to this declaration. On May 11, 1917, “Flatbush held its first big war meeting… at which several thousand residents united in a demonstration of loyalty and service.”[1] The meeting consisted of a patriotic parade and a formal meeting in which many speeches were given in support of the U.S. Men were urged to join the army or the navy and women to join the Red Cross. Home front efforts were also emphasized. The meeting ended with “a salute to the flag by the boy scouts and the singing of ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’”

World War I Liberty Bond Advertisement

In July 1917, the Flatbush Red Cross’s efforts were reported in The New York Times. One article reported that this branch of the organization had already shipped 39,000 surgical dressings to the Allies with about 30,000 more waiting to be shipped. Flatbush’s Red Cross also manufactured nearly 4,000 articles of clothing for soldiers abroad.[2]

[1] “Flatbush Heralds Her Patriotic Spirit,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 12, 1917.

[2] “Red Cross Magazine Lauds Allies’ Work.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 29, 1917.

By the turn of the century, Flatbush was a hotbed for political discussion. The temperance movement, which began in the early 19th century, grew more popular in the early 20th century. In Flatbush, there were several organizations focused on spreading the movement’s ideas. One of the most well documented groups was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, or the WCTU. The WCTU transcribed meeting notes and announcements and posted them in the Eagle on a regular basis.[1] This group held many meetings within Flatbush, which highlights the importance of the location at this time. By January, 1920, because of groups like the WCTU, the Temperance Movement had gained enough support that Prohibition laws were passed nationwide.

Woman’s Holy War

Women in Flatbush were not merely focused on temperance, though. In the early 20th century, the women’s suffrage movement was gaining support. The Flatbush Political Equality League and the Bedford Leaguers were two active women’s suffrage organizations within Flatbush.[2] Parades were organized, national leagues were joined, and political representatives were put into place by these leagues, which helped sway the nation’s opinions in favor of the women’s right to vote. In February, 1914, some of Brooklyn’s suffragettes announced that they would be opening a school in Flatbush to specifically teach “suffrage theories and practice.”[3] The goal was to help teach everyday women how to give speeches at an affordable and accessible location. Though some Flatbush residents were against women suffrage, including some women, there was a very large group of supporters in Flatbush. In August,1920, women gained the right to vote nationwide.

[1] “Women’s Christian Temperance Union Notes,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 2, 1910.

[2] “A Column About Suffrage,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 5, 1912.

[3] “Brooklyn Leaders State Plans for New Suffrage School,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 8, 1914.

The Civil War did not leave Flatbush unscathed. In 1861, the Union Movement in Brooklyn was growing rapidly.[i] Six hundred men in Brooklyn, including some from Flatbush, joined together to create the only local volunteer regiment in the city and women of Flatbush made one thousand and six hundred havelocks—a cloth attached to a hat to block the sun—for the soldiers.[ii]

In February 1865, the Times reported that fourteen men from Flatbush had been drafted.[iii] In 1864, a lengthy article was published in The Times that described the maladies of soldiers and the services provided for them.[iv] The article also emphasized the need for nurses and other health practitioners to help the war effort.

Strangely enough, the article also gives brief mention to the Flatbush Lunatic Asylum, saying, “I have deliberately to put on record about the profoundest satisfaction with professional capacity, completeness of house arrangements to ends required, and the right vital spirit animating all, that I have yet found in any public curative institution among civilians.” The article never explicitly states that soldiers experiencing mental disorders were sent there, but there would be no other reason for this reference to the asylum in this article if not to commend its services to the wounded soldiers. In the next few sentences, the author of the article describes how reading to wounded soldiers, playing games, or even talking with them could help the soldiers to relax and get well.

Image taken by Wally Gobetz as found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/181246155/

In 1875, the tenth anniversary of the close of the Civil War called for a touching ceremony honoring dead soldiers in Green-Wood Cemetery, including those from Flatbush.[v] Brooklyn Mayor John Hunter and several ministers were in attendance and spoke to the crowd of more than 10,000 people in the cemetery, a testament to how many residents were affected by war.

[i] “The Union Movement in Brooklyn,” New York Times, September 29, 1861.

[ii] Fisher, Flatbush: Past and Present, 85.

[iii] “The Draft in Kings County and Their Quotas,” New York Times, February 15, 1865.

[iv] “Our Wounded and Sick Soldiers,” New York Times, December 11, 1864.

[v] “Dead Heroes in Green-Wood,” New York Times, June 1, 1875.

While physical diseases were obviously an issue during this time period, a more subtle health issue came in the form of mental illnesses, which lead to the construction of the Flatbush Lunatic Asylum. The first reference to this facility was in 1852, when the Board of Supervisors first pitched the idea. The board selected “a level piece of ground, east of the Nursery Building, 200 feet from the road” to be the building site.[i]

This photo, taken by Brian Wasser in 2007, shows one of the buildings of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center. The KPPC, a project that evolved from the Flatbush Lunatic Asylum,  ran from 1885-1996.

By 1854, the Lunatic Asylum was functional, albeit experiencing some physical health issues, such as cholera.[ii] However, investigations in 1875 revealed that perhaps this institution was not treating its patients with the care they deserved, not uncommon in mental hospitals of this era and even later times. Some of the charges included “undue intimacy with some of the females in the asylum” and “cruelty to the patients.”[iii] Even after some of these charges were proven, the asylum lived on, gracing headlines for quite some time. In 1886, the Eagle covered the doctor’s duties in the asylum and tried to disprove reports of maltreatment of patients.[iv] Accusations continued to fly well into the 1890s, including one case where doctors were accused of mistreatment of a dead body.[v] There were also accusations that the asylum released patients who were not yet cured.[vi]

[i] “Board of Supervisors,” New York Times, June 4, 1852.

[ii] “The Yellow Fever of 1856,” New York Times, February 13, 1858.

[iii] “The Flatbush Asylum Investigation,” New York Times, November 18, 1875.

[iv] “The Insane – Dr. Shaw’s Humane and Difficult Work,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 27, 1886.

[v] “Shocking Desecration Charged,” New York Times, September 11, 1893.

[vi] “A Lunatic Not Cured,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 10, 1895.

Though Flatbush was quickly developing and becoming increasingly popular, the area was not without its faults. During the period of 1850-1920, Flatbush was plagued with many different kinds of illnesses, including cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, and typhoid fever. In the 1850s, cholera’s rampant run was drawing to a close in Brooklyn, with cholera one fifteenth of what it had previously been.[i] However, Flatbush still saw several deaths per week from cholera in August 1854. [ii] This disease affected a range of New Yorkers, from new immigrants to old workers, wives of policemen to patients in the local insane asylum.[iii] By the 1860s, this disease seems to have been eradicated because no articles on cholera were published at this time. The worries of cholera were replaced by fear of the yellow fever. Yellow fever was present and widespread in some areas, including Flatbush, as early as 1856.[iv] However, it was not until 1858 that yellow fever truly became as dreaded as cholera, with patients being removed to a hospital in Flatbush.[v]

Yellow fever continued to rage throughout Brooklyn in the 1860s, and the early 1870s saw the fear of the disease continue as false reports of the fever submitted by worried family members reached health offices. The same article that reported false accounts of yellow fever also revealed that the newest dangerous disease in Flatbush in the 1870s was smallpox. It is stated that “fifty-four small-pox patients [were] in the hospital at Flatbush, being an increase of 400 percent within the last month.” [vi] That rapid growth led Flatbush’s Small-Pox Hospital to receive unfavorable reviews, though the critic in question in the article, “The Horrors of a Small-Pox Hospital,” was perhaps not the best judge.[vii] Another disease present during this time period was typhoid fever, as seen in the case of the Sisters of Mercy and the residents of their institution.[viii]

[i] “Mortality in Brooklyn – Decrease of the Cholera,” New York Times, August 28, 1854.

[ii] “Death by Cholera,” New York Times, August 28, 1854.

[iii] “The Cholera,” New York Times, August 26, 1854.

[iv] “The Yellow Fever of 1856,” New York Times, February 13, 1858.

[v] “Yellow Fever in New-York and Brooklyn,” The New York Times, August 31, 1858.

[vi] “Brooklyn,” New York Times, September 30, 1871.

[vii] “The Horrors of a Small-Pox Hospital,” New York Times, January 22, 1876.

[viii] “Typhoid Fever – Forty-One Patients in a Female Reformatory Asylum,” New York Times, March 20, 1872.

The period from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s was a time of tremendous growth and change in Flatbush. In 1850, Flatbush had 20,862 acres of farmland but by 1930 the area was down to just 87 acres.[i] The area did not change overnight, and “[a]s late as the 1860s and 1870s, gently turning windmills dotted the landscape.”[ii] Citizens of Flatbush were proud of their rural neighborhood, and many opposed the urbanization of the area. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, the farms that dominated Flatbush were slowly starting to disappear.

Acreage of Farmland in Flatbush 1850-1920

From 1850 to 1875, land that once supported hundreds of farms was slotted for parks, such as Prospect Park. Its development began in 1862 with the purchase of two hundred and fifty acres of Flatbush farmland from the Martense and Vanderbilt estates. The park was thought to be a great place for enjoyment but to also have great value for the modern home and the suburban home.[iii] Though a lot of land was taken over for parks and “green spaces,” Flatbush was also becoming a more residential and commercial area. It is thought that the introduction of the streetcar to Flatbush in 1860 changed the dynamics of the area. It is noted that this might have been the doom of Flatbush as a country style area and the beginning of development. At this time the coach-and-four, or the tally-ho coach, was still commonly used for drives through parks or boulevards.[iv]

Scene Prospect Park

In 1894 the project to build what is now known as Victorian Flatbush began and a large amount of farmland was taken for these developments.[v] Flatbush residents were resentful of the change in their neighborhood but saw to it that the area maintained a residential character as one of the first suburbs in Brooklyn. This meant “[f]actories and other industrial facilities were not permitted.”[vi] But these efforts did not slow urbanization and by 1910 Flatbush Avenue was a highly successful business area where farms and farmhouses once stood.[vii] By 1912, the focus shifted to developments of recreational areas, such as baseball fields.3

Number of Farms in Flatbush 1860-1930

The change from stagecoach and horse-car to new forms of transit, including the electric service, is noted at an important aspect of the “improvement” within Flatbush. The area became “something much better, a section of comfortable, commodious, artistic and happy homes.” Residents of Flatbush were nostalgic for green space and not quite willing to submit the entire area to a growing urban infrastructure.

This meant that there were some suburban ideals, even as development grew. In 1834, Garrett L. Martense opened Erasmus Street, and Matthew Clarkson, Clarkson Street. Two years later portions of the Michal Neefus and Schoonmacker farms were developed by Willinck and Vanderveer, and Vernon Avenue was opened. The stage-line transit available at the time did not allow for much suburban movement.

Cortelyou Club

The development of parks stirred great movement in real estate. Prospect Park caused the opening of Diamond Street (Lenox Road), between 1868 and 1872, “with asphalt pavement, curbed gutters, and sidewalk laid between double rows of shade trees.” This was developed on the John Lott farm by Aaron S. Robbins. In 1868 William O. Mills bought the Helen Martense farm and opened Linden Boulevard. Then, on the Samuel G. Lott farm, William Matthews developed Waverly Avenue and Matthews Park. Winthrop and Hawthorne Streets opened the following year after much of the Isaac Cortelyou farm was bought by Robert S. Walker and others. In 1872, Kings County purchased land from the estate of Susan Caton and opened the Parade Grounds, a stretch of land south of Prospect Park that was used for many purposes, including military and athletic. Dr. Homer L. Bartlett opened Fennimore Street in 1877 and purchased the Melrose property from Dr. Johnson Robinson in 1883. Avenue A was opened by the John C. Bergen estate in 1885. In 1886 the Tennis Court section, which included parts of Ocean Avenue, East 18th and 19th Streets, and the Knickerbocker Field Club grounds were improved by Richard Ficken.[viii]

Knickerbocker Field Club

[i] U.S. Census Data, 1850 – 1920. Social Explorer.

[ii] Kenneth T. Jackson and John B. Manbeck, The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn (New Haven: Citizens Committee for New York City, 2004), 117.

[iii] “Cornerstone Laid at Ebbets Field,” The New York Times, July 7, 1912.

[iv] Edmund D. Fisher, Flatbush Past and Present (Brooklyn, NY: Flatbush Trust Company, 1901), 41.

[v] Jackson and Manbeck, The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn (New Haven: Citizens Committee for New York City, 2004), 118.

[vi] Nedda C. Allbray, Flatbush: The Heart of Brooklyn (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia, 2004), 123-124.

[vii] Allbray, Flatbush: The Heart of Brooklyn ,59.

[viii] Edmund D. Fisher, Flatbush Past and Present (Brooklyn, NY: Flatbush Trust Company, 1901), 82.