"April come she will..." Paul Simon - Walking North Bedford Stuyvesant with MAS & Crown Hts.

We took a Municipal Art Society (MAS) walking tour of North Beford-Stuyvesant with Suzanne Spellen & Morgan Munsey. We’ve taken quite a few Zoom MAS walking tours with them during COVID & this is the first time we got to meet them in person. They were a wonderful team with so much information to relate & stories to tell.

“Suzanne Spellen is a neighborhood activist who has worked to raise awareness of the architectural gems in Brooklyn Neighborhoods through writing for Brownstoner and leading walking tours.” A native of Bed-Stuy, she now lives in Troy NY. http://www.spellenoftroy.com/ In her words “People often ask me what I do when I research and write house histories for my clients. One of them submitted a sponsored post to Brownstoner, using the report I did for him. Here it is. It's an epic. Most of my histories are not this long or complete. My client, Paul Murphy, lucked out on representing the sale of a house with a well-documented history in a unique and well documented neighborhood. Check it out!.”

Morgan, an architect who had an architecture & design practice in Brooklyn us now a realtor specializing in Beford Stuyvesant. https://www.compass.com/agents/morgan-munsey/

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The 23rd Regiment Armory, built 1891–95.

In addition to being used by the Nat’l Guard, these imposing buildings were meant to kept the unwanted out of the neighborhood. The 23rd Regiment Armory was proposed for redevelopment in 2012 at a cost of $14 million. By 2017, there was still no progress on the armory's renovation.

We walked east, about a mile, to meet Suzanne & Morgan in North Bed.-Stuy.

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New York & New Jersey Telephone Co.; soon to be condos.

The multiple dwellings in NYC were tenements. In this grandiose structure there are two apartments on each floor. It was made palatable for upscale folks to move into an apartment. This architect was very prolific.

Down the block.

This architect was all over Brooklyn. We could pick out his buildings from their brickwork.

The decoration in the lintels was hand carved. Later, pneumatic drills made the job much easier, faster & less expensive.

Our Lady of Victory c. 1894. Constructed of made of dark Manhattan schist (from excavations in Manhattan) trimmed with white limestone. The congregation went through many ethnic groups as the neighborhood demographic kept shifting. This was Suzanne's mom's church.

At one time actor Laurence Fisburne lived down this block. The neighbors loved watching him get picked up in a limo for a shoot.

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This decorative work was done with a pneumatic drill.

The top floor was not taxed by the city because it was considered an attic space...

Bette Midler came visited here to see the house her grandparents lived in & it was no longer there. She was the major donor for the Garden of Hope park on the site.

Bette Midler came visited here to see the house her grandparents lived in & it was no longer there. She was the major donor for the Garden of Hope park on the site (& many others in NYC). https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/bette-midler-new-york-restoration-project-article.

Kim said this is called a "dragger" because they drag their body work going around a turn.

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One of four examples left in Brooklyn of a home with this arch.

A few houses to the left, the condos in this building go for at least a million $ each.

Morgan was kind enough to take us into his brownstone. Those are family photos. The large one is of an ancestor who had 17 children. The piano was his mother's from when she worked in a funeral home.

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A block of very prominent Brooklynites. A doctor lived here & down the block ...

...about here, Benjamin Moore (think paints).

Lifelong corner home of Eubie Blake. Blake American pianist, lyricist, and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music e.g. I’m Just Wild About Harry… In his 90’s, I heard him give a thank you performance at NYU Medical Center, when I was on staff there.