Here’s an item that’s been under my nose for decades and I never realized its presence. Charles Vanderveer, a scion of one of Brooklyn’s larger landholding families, constructed this home in the southeast end of Canarsie on what is now the south side of Flatlands Avenue between East 106th and 107th Streets in 1829. It’s one of a number of colonial and postcolonial-era farmhouses remaining in Brooklyn, most in the East Flatbush or Flatlands areas, and one of them, the Schenck House in Mill Basin, was taken apart and reassembled at the Brooklyn Museum in the 1960s.
The original Vanderveer, Cornelius, settled in what became eastern Kings County in 1659 and gradually the Vanderveers controlled a lot of territory in Brooklyn in the colonial and postcolonial times. The house in question was built by Charles Vanderveer (1796-1878), a sixth-generation Vanderveer to have lived here. Vanderveer’s Mill, also known as the Red Mill, stood nearby on Fresh Creek east of East 108th Street.
Charles Vanderveer House, 1922.
On this 1929 Belcher-Hyde map, the Charles Vanderveer House stands alone on Flatlands Avenue. Note its orientation away from the street grid.
The house remained in possession of the Vanderveers until 1928, then reverted to the state. A small airfield was built behind it before the Brooklyn street grid was extended east.
Thanks to Harley Nemzer for the heads up.
5/2/13