Clinton Hill's namesake avenue was once known as the Gold Coast of Brooklyn. Oil tycoons and baking powder magnates built lavish mansions here in the late 1800s. Charles Pratt, who kicked off the architectural gold rush, founded the Pratt Institute just a few blocks from his home.
Clinton Hill was also home to Mollie Fancher, AKA “The Brooklyn Enigma,” who was famous for spending 50 years in bed. The Enigma was said to see through walls, read books by touching them, and survive on minuscule amounts of food. During one seven-month period, she reportedly consumed only “four teaspoons of milk, two teaspoons of wine, one small banana, and one cracker.”
In 1967, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe moved into an apartment on the second floor of a townhouse on 160 Hall Street with walls smeared with blood and psychotic scribbling, an oven crammed with discarded syringes, and a refrigerator overrun with mold. They paid $80 a month. Today, that same townhouse rents for $8,000 a month—used syringes not included.
Clinton Hill was also where Biggie Smalls, one of the greatest rappers of all time, grew up. He was raised in a “one-room shack” by his mom at 226 St. James Place.
"The building formerly housing the exclusive Lincoln Club of Brooklyn is a striking Queen Anne style structure designed in 1889 by Brooklyn based architect Rudolph L. Daus. The club is located in the Clinton Hill area, once the home of some of Brooklyn’s wealthiest citizens. It is one of a number of large, sumptuous clubhouses erected in Brooklyn in the last two decades of the 19th century, and it is one of the few to retain its architectural integrity. Founded in 1878 by a small group of men who banded together for social purposes and to further the interests of the Republican Party, the Lincoln Club was dissolved in 1931 as many of Brooklyn’s elite moved away."
https://hdc.org/buildings/lincoln-club-now-mechanics-temple-independent-united-order-of-mechanics-of-the-western-hemisphere/
The house at 200 Lafayette Avenue is what the landmarks commission calls “the largest and best remaining example, of a wooden suburban mansion in the transitional Greek Revival/Italianate style now standing in any of the five boroughs of New York City.” Throughout its 179-year history, the house has only had three owners. The Skinner family, who currently own the home, have owned it since 1903.
The Vendome is Brooklyn’s oldest surviving multi-unit apartment building. When it opened in 1887, the building’s 17 apartments were serviced by an elevator and had access to the billiard room, a caterer, and a shoeshine.
Eventually, the building fell into decline, and after being abandoned for several years, it was taken by the city for failure to pay taxes. In 1980 a fire gutted the building and its demolition was imminent. At the last minute, thanks to local efforts, state and city grants were secured for rebuilding the apartment.
Maybe the nicest of the Pratt family houses, this Romanesque Revival home at 241 Clinton was built for Pratt’s oldest son, Charles Millard Pratt, who became President of the Pratt Institute when his father died in 1891. Today, it is the residence of the Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn.
313 Clinton is “one of the finest neo-Grec residences in New York City.” Prominent Brooklyn architect George Morse designed it for lace manufacturer A.G. Jennings. Who knew lace gloves could be so lucrative?
The white paint job really raises the hackles of the Clinton Hill Historic District report writers who say it “destroys the romantic intensity of the original deep red hues.”
Right next door is 315 Clinton, built in 1888 by famed architect Montrose Morris for John "Mr. Coffee” Arbuckle. The coffee merchant’s big breakthrough was figuring out a way to keep roasted beans fresh by coating them with a sugar and egg glaze to close the pores of the bean. Though it sounds pretty gross, coupled with technology Arbuckle pioneered in automatically packing and sealing bags, it made shipping beans across the country possible.
Arbuckle’s real genius, though, was in marketing. Every bag of coffee contained a peppermint stick, a collectible card, and a coupon. The coupons were redeemable for everything from handkerchiefs and straight razors to wedding rings. Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee was particularly popular with cowboys who referred to their campfire-brewed beverage as “a cup of Arbuckles.”
These ten buildings, designed by Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz, were built during World War II as housing for Navy personnel at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard. The north complex housed enlisted men, while the south was primarily for officers. Several of the large mansions on Clinton Avenue were torn down during construction of the towers. After the war, the buildings became a private development.
The availability of affordable housing in the Clinton Hill Coops, and later the St. James Towers, as well as the solidifying presence of large institutions like Pratt and St. Joseph's University, are the reason Clinton Hill was able to stave off much of the urban blight that plagued other Brooklyn neighborhoods in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
In 2017, residents of the St. James Towers voted to remain in the Mitchell-Lama program.
The Emmanuel Baptist Church was built in 1886 by Charles Pratt who had left his previous church after the minister there (a prolific novelist) wrote an antimonopoly satire. Pratt commissioned architect Francis H. Kimbal to design this masterpiece of neo-French Gothic design just two blocks away from his former congregation.
The church, with a congregation of over 2,00 people, is considered the “largest and most luxurious Baptist church in Brooklyn.” It’s also a great place to watch the New York City marathon.
Christoper Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Biggie, aka Notorious B.I.G., aka Big Poppa, was raised by his mom, Voletta Wallace, at 226 St. James Place.
In front of 226 St James. Clarence Davis/NY Daily New He went on to become one of the greatest rappers of all time. Smalls was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1997. He was just 24 years old. His only two LPs, whose titles eerily bookmarked his death, were Ready to Die and Life After Death, which came out just 16 days after his murder.
In 2019, the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street was named "Christopher Wallace Way."
The Orient Temple Masonic Lodge, the site of some of Biggie’s first gigs In a sign of how the neighborhood has changed, the "one-room shack" that Biggie rapped about in his hit single "Juicy" was recently listed for rent at $5,100.
Some might say that the name, The Graham Home for Old Ladies, is an improvement on its predecessor, the Brooklyn Society for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females. It’s certainly more to the point. When the building at 320 Washington opened in 1851, it housed 90 women from Brooklyn who were over 60 and could “bring satisfactory testimonials of the propriety of her conduct and the respectability of her character.”
Eventually, the home ran out of money and sat vacant until it was turned into the Bull Shippers Plaza Motor Inn, an establishment where conduct and respectability, not to mention AARP membership, were no longer a prerequisite. The Inn operated as a brothel by "ladies by the hour who brought only scanty-panty testimonials of propriety.”*
In 2001, the building was bought and turned into condos.
- The scanty panty line comes courtesy of the now defunct Fort Greene Newsletter.