194 Adams Street

This is a tale of sloppy research (corrected over time), and strange connections.

Last year, while preparing for a research day in Brooklyn, I decided it would be fun to see some of the addresses where my ancestors lived.  I compiled a list from the family tree and checked through my options, using Google Street View to get a sense of what each address looks like now and whether there's any chance it could still be the same as it was in the 19th century.  Many, of course, were clearly rebuilt, while a few did seem like they could date back that far.  I took that quickly-assembled list on my trip and photographed a number of those spots on a lovely spring day.

One of the addresses I wanted to visit, despite the building being gone, was the location of #194 Adams Street - the home of Mary Mix and Frederick Harrison, their children, and his parents Harriet Hotchkiss and Justus Harrison.  They moved there from #20 High St (which I've previously discussed), probably in the second half of 1843 or the first half of 1844.  It is likely that at least four of Mary and Frederick's children were born in that house - Mary Ellen (my fourth great grandmother) may have been born there or at #20 High St.  Her younger siblings - Frances J, Frederick E, Henry H, and Edward - were almost certainly born at #194 Adams St.  Their older sister Harriet had been born in New Haven.  Unfortunately, Frances J, Frederick E, Henry H, and Edward all passed away young.  I suspect that Mary and Frederick moved to Lafayette Ave after losing three of those children at the Adams St address.  The family appears in city directories at #194 Adams St up until the 1853-54 edition, and then at #28 Lafayette Ave in the 1854-55 edition (published in 1854).  Mary Mix Harrison passed away in July 1854, likely at the Lafayette Ave address, as did Edward no more than two weeks later.

With so many significant family events happening at #194 Adams St, I made a point to stop by and take a photo at the location indicated by Google Maps, which was near the intersection with Johnson St:

On returning home from my trip, I checked over the details of this location once again, and noticed something I had missed... there's a statue of Henry Ward Beecher on Johnson St, at the far end of the block that I photographed.  It's hidden somewhere in the trees - and I had to kick myself a bit, given the family connections to Beecher, thinking I might have been able to include it in the shot if I had done better prep work and known it was there.  I also recognized the building on the right in my photo - it's the Federal Building and Post Office, which figures in the Atlas Iron Construction story.  See my past post about the Post Office Annex, which was constructed on the rear of that building in 1892.

This was all intriguing, and as I double checked the details, I found that I had made an even bigger mistake... maps of Brooklyn from 1874 and 1880 showed #194 not at Johnson Street, but halfway between Nassau and Concord Streets!

The 1880 map also showed a Gothic Hall immediately across the street from #194, which intrigued me.  It turns out that was a large hall used for lectures, concerts, balls, and so forth.  One online article shares that this was the premiere performance venue in Brooklyn in the early 1840s, "slipping to second-class status with the building of Montague Hall" in 1845, after which it "developed something of a rough reputation, what with its rowdy fireman’s balls and Irish Benevolent Society receptions."  I began wondering what the Harrison family might have felt, living across the street from such a venue.  Even more intriguing, that building had been originally built as the Second Presbyterian Church - the same church this family attended, in a different building, as I discussed in a recent post.

 

As I continued to dig into this exciting new set of details, I realized that I was still on the wrong block!  Checking earlier maps of Brooklyn to see what the block might have looked like while the Harrisons lived there in the 1840s and 50s, I saw on an 1855 map that #194 Adams St was actually located between Concord and Tillary Streets.  Oops!

I've put together a version of the 1855 map to the right.  This stitches together three map files, marks the correct location for #194 as of that year, and includes both Gothic Hall to the north and the intersection with Johnson St where I took my photograph to the south.  The pink shading and single dot for the building at #194 indicate that it was a first class brick or stone dwelling, with a coped slate or metal roof.

This stretch of Adams Street has now been widened and replaced by Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard.  The Federal Court Building takes up the full block between Concord and Tillary Streets.

In the end, my sloppy work and mistakes have at least led to an interesting story - as well as a reminder to myself to prepare better even for "smaller" research items.

I also checked for more details on how and when the street addresses changed... and learned that there was a massive renumbering effort undertaken around 1870, covering almost every single address in Brooklyn!  There's a fascinating, interactive online article about this from The New York Times.

Learning about that gave me a stronger basis for checking the details of other pre-1870 Brooklyn addresses with family connections.  I'll have more findings to share about those, soon.

 

Sources:

The 1880 Atlas of the Entire City of Brooklyn (which led me astray), by G.W. Bromley, available from the New York Public Library.

The 1855 Map of the City of Brooklyn, by W. Perris, available from the New York Public Library.

For details on Gothic Hall:
The Brooklyn Theatre Index Volume I, by Cezar Del Valle, p1.
"Montague Hall" at Whitman's Brooklyn.