Gary Fonville sent me a magnificent building clad in shiny terra cotta on Nostrand Avenue and Sterling Place, claiming it to be yet another lost Child’s restaurant as featured in this recent FNY special.
I don’t think it is an ex-Child’s, though, since all Child’s restaurants featured a nautical theme in their terra cotta palaces from 1928-1935, includng seahorses, what I call “fish windows,” sea shells and Neptunes with seaweed for hair.
This place does have the decorative urns that were featured on Child’s restaurants, but these have human figures — not fish or sea shells. I’m not buying it as a Child’s.
Anyone have some old directories that can say for sure what this place was?
ForgottenFan Steven Otero:
This building is further described in the Crown Heights Historic District II Designation Report: “Commercial buildings [in the district]…include the two-story building at 713 Nostrand Avenue… which was designed by Isaac Kallich and completed c. 1929 [New Building # 2387-29]. Although its ground floor has been altered, this building’s second floor is a lively and fantastical display of Baroque Revival design, executed in polychrome terra cotta. Like the movie palaces of the time, which were often designed in freely adapted versions of exotic historical styles, this building was a place of amusement, constructed as a bowling alley and billiard hall.” (New York City Landmarks Commission, Crown Heights North Historic District II Designation Report, Edited by Mary Beth Betts, June 28, 2011, p. 30)
And well, whaddya know, Brownstoner has a piece. This was built in 1929 as the Sterling Bowling and Billiard Academy.
7/30/15
4 comments
I happened to pass by this building earlier this week. Marvelous.
Brownstoner claims that this building was erected in 1929 as the Sterling Bowling & Billard Academy
A corner building located at 713-723 Nostrand Avenue exhibits baroque polychrome terra cotta cladding. “The property is a two story retail building consisting of 7 units located on Nostrand Avenue between Sterling Place and Park Place. It is on a highly trafficked block in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.” (http://www.loopnet.com/Listing/17425948/713-723-Nostrand-Avenue-Brooklyn-NY/) This building is further described in the Crown Heights Historic District II Designation Report: “Commercial buildings [in the district]…include the two-story building at 713 Nostrand Avenue…, which was designed by Isaac Kallich and completed c. 1929 [New Building # 2387-29]. Although its ground floor has been altered, this building’s second floor is a lively and fantastical display of Baroque Revival design, executed in polychrome terra cotta. Like the movie palaces of the time, which were often designed in freely adapted versions of exotic historical styles, this building was a place of amusement, constructed as a bowling alley and billiard hall.” (New York City Landmarks Commission, Crown Heights North Historic District II Designation Report, Edited by Mary Beth Betts, June 28, 2011, http://tilesinnewyork.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=6
I live in Seattle and we have quite a few of those Terra Cotta masterpieces still remaining here too..and they were not former Childs either….I remember going to such a building on Eastern Parkway and Hopkinson Ave in Brownsville as a lad for Affairs…..
It wasn’t a Childs, but probably none of the “nautical themed” buildings outside Coney Island and Atlantic City ever hosted a Childs Restaurant. I know of 8 such buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, and one in Ossining, NY. None of these ever showed up in 1930s or 1940 phone directories as a Childs. Further, the city’s circa 1940s tax photos do not show Childs in any of these buildings. In every case, they appear to have been built as what they are today: low-rise commercial (“taxpayer”) buildings. Certificate of Occupancy data is sparse – either missing or not really legible for most of these buildings. But none of them say “:Childs” or even “restaurant”. They say “stores”. That’s what they were – Mom & Pop businesses in the outer boroughs in the 1920s and 1930s.
It is quite understandable why these buildings were identified as Childs: they bear a striking resemblance to the well-documented Childs Restaurants at Coney Island Boardwalk (@ W. 21st St) and Atlantic City Boardwalk (@ South Carolina Ave). The AC location (but not CI) even has the seahorse motif. However, there are some differences, too. Neither of the prototypes have the weird little bear-like gargoyles that all the outlying “nautical themes” seem to have. Then there is the issue of size: the locations of the outlying buildings were, well, out there, not in places that would support a restaurant that would take up the whole building. Further, the other buildings that Childs is documented to have built in the 1920s – other than the Boardwalk locations – are cleanly modernistic.
The outlying restaurants *are* deserving of preservation. I believe that they, like the building in this post, were built by local entrepreneurs who took pride in their buildings and liked brightly colored terra cotta. Many (but not all) also must have liked the seashore Childs and asked the builders to replicate their designs.
Check out this beauty from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Very similar. Also not a Childs. http://www.tyjeskiterracotta.com/uploads/3/4/3/5/3435163/tullgren-003_orig.jpg