165  - 173    South    Second   Street

1939-1940 Tax Photos. Courtesy of the Municipal Archives of the city of New York.

Date of Construction: unknown
Architect: unknown
Original Owner: unknown
Type: Flats
Style: Italianate Townhouses
Stories: Three and basement
Structure/ Materials: Brick with stone trim and wood cornice

These five buildings all appear on an 1868 map, and early conveyance records indicate that 165-171 were bought and sold as a set. However, 167-171 were all of the same original design.  Four of the five buildings have a significant amount of historical material intact, none of the front facades have had major alterations. The four row houses are good examples of mid to late 19th-century townhouses.

The area on which the buildings are situated was laid out in city lots in 1825, when the Messrs. Garret & Grover C. Furman, merchants from New York City, bought twenty-five acres of land on South Second Street. There were no buildings in this area at the time and the land was contained by a stone wall and divided into fields that were surveyed and made into city lots. South 2nd Street opened in 1829 and was regulated in 1832. The lots were bought and sold a number of times, as a set, between 1855 (when Williamsburg became a part of Brooklyn) and 1865.

#165 Mainly housed working class families between 1880 and 1910.

#167  The building was home to a Merchant family in 1880. By 1910 it had become a tenement. In 1965, new brick work was added to the rear of the building.

#169 In 1880, the building was home to an Irish family of seven, and a servant, also from Ireland. The father was in the iron foundry business. In 1900, a German family of seven resided on the premises. They were in the plumbing business. The building was owned by Henry M. Eutlick in 1919; he added an extension in the rear of the first floor, which he built on top of an existing brick extension.

165-173 S2nd St, Insurance maps of the city of Brooklyn L.I. 1868, Vol. 4, Double Page Plate No. 78. Courtesy of http://www.maps.nypl.org.

#171 In 1880, the building was inhabited by a Prussian family of eight, who were in the butcher business. It was still a one family home in 1910. In 1976, South Side United Housing Development Corp began to manage the building. It stated that the "building was gutted and vacant," and rehabilitation began in 1976 and finished 1977. This building exemplifies more recent societal changes: the late 1940s slum clearance of Williamsburg (the building was deemed inhabitable) and the general urban blight that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s.

#173 In 1880, an American family lived in this building. In 1900, the building housed an Irish family of six and the children worked as dressmakers and clerks. In May of 2005, extensions to the first and second floors were added.

2011. Photo taken by Elin Juselius.