DOUGHTY Street is one of a network of short streets and alleys adjacent to the Fulton Ferry landing that were built in the early 1800s, making them some of Brooklyn’s oldest streets. Some are still paved with uneven Belgian blocks. Wedged as it is between taller buildings fronting Old Fulton and Vine Streets, Doughty Street looks a little forbidding. It follows its original path for the most part between Furman and Hicks Streets. Doughty Street is named for Brooklyn Village president Charles Doughty (1759-1844) who was the first Brooklynite of note to free his slave, Caesar Foster. He was a Quaker turned Swedenborgian.
In the left background can be seen the Eagle Warehouse, 28 Old Fulton Street, built by architect Frank Freeman in 1893 on the site of the old Brooklyn Eagle building. For 114 years the Eagle was Brooklyn’s hometown paper. While designing the new Eagle Warehouse, Freeman decided to leave intact the old three-story Brooklyn Eagle pressroom at Doughty Street and Elizabeth Place. It can be detected easily by its old cornice. Perhaps Walt Whitman himself, who was the Eagle editor from 1846-1848, worked in this building. In any case, the “Good Gray Poet” is remembered by a plaque near the building entrance on Old Fulton Street.
More from DUMBO, a favorite FNY neighborhood over the years.
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8/1/23
6 comments
The Eagle warehouse once had a big cast iron eagle near the entrance.
Then one of its bolts broke off and it hung upside down for years.
I wonder whatever became of it.
It sits at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch. https://www.bklynlibrary.org/locations/central/central-librarys-eagle
Thanks for the tip.I havent seen it in at least 50 years
When Mr. Doughty, also a Minister, freed Mr Foster, he was thrown out of Brooklyn. Doughty moved to Manhattan with is wife and daughter. For years after
Mr. Doughty’s death, the black community in Brooklyn brought food to his wife and daughter on his birthday for many years. Thank you for writing about him.
Doughty Street is not in Dumbo. It’s in Fulton Ferry, an historic district since 1977.
And away we go