Building of the Day: 1090 Greene Avenue
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy. Address: 1090 Greene Ave, corner of Goodwin Place Name: Former Henry C. Bohack house Neighborhood: Bushwick Year Built: late…
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.
Address: 1090 Greene Ave, corner of Goodwin Place
Name: Former Henry C. Bohack house
Neighborhood: Bushwick
Year Built: late 1870’s, early 1880’s
Architectural Style: Italianate
Architects: Unknown
Landmarked: No
This is a handsome home, a vanishing remnant of the days when Brooklyn was filled with wood framed Italianate houses. There are great details here: the columns, and entryway, the finely carved cornice, and the splendid window frames and bays.
It’s now, in part, the Lighthouse Church of God, but was once the home of Henry C. Bohack, the founder of the Bohack’s Supermarket chain. He opened his first store on Fulton Street in 1887, and the chain, at its height in the 1940’s, had 740 stores in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, employing over 3,000 people.
Henry Bohack died in 1931, but the stores went on for several more generations. In the late ’60’s, they tried to grow out of financial problems, expanding into Westchester, and elsewhere, but the effort failed big time and the chain went bankrupt in the 1970’s.
Many of their stores were sold to Daitch Shopwell, which became Food Emporium. Anyone who grew up in NYC before that time remembers Bohack’s, as their stores were literally, everywhere.
As for this house, few in the neighborhood now know the Bohack’s name, but the house remains as a fine example of residential architecture in a neighborhood with an eclectic mixture of architectural styles and a rich history. They need historic designation protection.
Thanks to Kevin Walsh of Forgotten NY, for a very well put together, and fascinating walking tour of Bushwick yesterday. The group was an interesting, eclectic group of people, and we all followed Kevin through the heat of the day, and learned a lot about Bushwick. It was great.
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
(I know, i know, don’t feed the troll)
“it needs to be razed and replaced with new hygienic housing”
It’s funny, that’s what they said in the cities of the world when they built most of the (mostly) disastrous 1930’s-1960’s housing developments, many of which they spent last decade dynamiting.
and what poor people want, you condescending ninny, is to stop being poor. You seem to be assuming that they prefer modernism to historicism, and that the things fancy people like (beauty, a sense of grandeur, etc.) are irrelevant and meaningless.
Aside from being obvious hogwash, there are plenty of reasons that having stuff rich people like in your poor neighborhood is a good thing (btw- have you _been_ to bed stuy recently?) Fancy and relatively inexpensive buildings encourage mixed neighborhoods (often decried as gentrification) which yields a much more dynamic mix than your big project block with its desirable elevators and bathrooms and roofs. These old buildings also have better natural ventilation and natural light than their new counterparts, and at a pricepoint significantly lower than constructing a quality new building. Project blocks never attract fancy people, as you’ll constantly hear repeated across these pages.
I will also unfashionably argue that there is something uplifting about living surrounded by beauty, even if it is not perfectly shiny and new. If you were replacing these buildings with new elevator’d roof’d buildings of any quality, I might disagree, but that’s going to cost 10x (100x?) the price of just moving into this existing one, and so it won’t happen, you’d end up with a bunch of fedders crapboxes, and your neighborhood will be even less desirable than it already is.
Anyway, it’s such obvious nonsense I’m not sure why I’m responding, so I’m going to go have my coffee.
Well McKenzie, the people who live in the neighborhoods you wish to disparage happen to disagree with you. You are insulting their homes, which are, in fact often quite beautiful because they weren’t tampered with by people who had the money to make “improvements”. I’ve been in houses like this one, their owners often knew the house’s history far better than the residents of affluent “historic districts”. They do the best they can and deserve credit for that.
Maybe its not the neighborhood you want, but in that case I’d merely advise you to leave these people alone and keep your criticisms to yourself. It’s disrespectful towards people who have a pride in their homes that you could not understand.
i completely disagree with mckenzie in every way. my house is a true brooklyn gem, and just because it’s in bushwick doesn’t make it less worthy than if it was in the slope. it’s here to stay for another hundred years!
anyways, i was so happy to see this particular wood house make it on here. i live in a brick townhouse just a block away on bushwick avenue and corner of greene, and would always stare at it on the way to the subway. this place was actually recently repainted, but the way it looked before was even better. there are more and more folks buying on bushwick avenue and just like me are renovating with the sense of original architecture in mind. historic preservation status is exactly what we need to make the neighborhood more livable, attractive and vibrant. i am saving up to re-do my stoop and portico, as well as touch up the cornice. i got the original picture of the house to work with thank god! my columns are sandstone and had so much amazing detail before they were painted white by some well meaning idiot. now they are damaged beyond belief and are peeling and crumbling. we got almost all the paint off our brick though so there is hope yet. so much of the plasterwork and hand carved mahogany wood was left intact on the inside that i can hardly complain. i wish i could afford copper flashing! someday….
Yes, it’s Linden. I was in one of the row houses In the middle of the block once. It appeared to have been laid out as a three family (three apartments). The yards are shared — there’s no division between them.
You are so correct about the spelling of Cincinnati, but you are incorrect about other things. Most of Brooklyn has been redlined and neglected for generations, most of the Borough is a pathetic hodgepodge.
However there are nice areas like Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights that were teetering on the edge thirty years ago but managed to pull themselves out of the brink just in the nick of time.
I believe there is no hope for Bushwick, and I am very dubious about most of Bed Stuy. The building stock is antiquated and full of lead and completely ill-suited for normal, non-affluent, family life. It needs to be razed and replaced with new, hygienic housing with parking and nice bathrooms and elevators and concrete floors and fireproof roofs, the stuff poor people value. Let the rich spend fortunes on their copper details and carved angels and stained glass windows. Most people in Brooklyn are just barely surviving.
Maybe this granny palace could be shrink-wrapped and air-lifted to Roslyn, Long Island where someone could spend a million dollars to make it livable.
Yes, it’s Linden. I was in one of the row houses In the middle of the block once. It appeared to have been laid out as a three family (three apartments). The yards are shared — there’s no division between them.
Fortunately, McKenzie, some of us care about places that aren’t upscale and pretty. This house is also far from neglected and pitiful. Not everyone has the money for state of the art restorations. The fact that this house is in as good a shape as it is, speaks to the fact that it has been cared for over the years. Perhaps not by people with large incomes, but people who did the best they could. Way to go with the “encouragement”.
And if you’re going to rag on cities, at least spell them right. It’s Cincinnati.
to me, this looks like it could be in a slum in Detroit, or Cincinati or Newark.
It is obviously a neglected, pitiful old heap in a neglected, pitiful neighborhood. My how you folks romanticize!
http://www.groceteria.com/photos2/tags/ap/tags/nationalloblaw/photo/3871533268/bohack.html
Fans of Jack Lemmon certainly know their Bohack’s.
One on the Upper West Side was used in “The Odd Couple” film.