It’s hard to nail down my favorite building in Clinton Hill but there’s a good chance that it’s the Joseph Steele House, #200 Lafayette Avenue at Vanderbilt, one of the largest and grandest woodframe antebellum houses remaining in Clinton Hill. The cupola is a nice touch and must have afforded views across the fields to downtown Brooklyn and to the waterfront when the house was built around 1850.
Maybe it’s near where you live and you pass by all the time or maybe it’s in a neighborhood you get to less frequently, but it’s a house that you have an emotional attachment to even though you’ve never set foot inside. For us, that house is the Joseph Steele House on the southeast corner of Lafayette and Vanderbilt. Whenever we walk by (which is frequently) we’re always hoping we’ll get to see something we haven’t before: Maybe the garden door will be open a crack and we’ll catch a glimpse of what the back stair looks like. Or maybe a light will be on in the dining room and we’ll get to see if there are moldings on the ceiling. And, of course, there are the fantasies of someday living there. We’re not the only one with a certain affection for this place. Here’s what the AIA Guide has to say about the 1850 charmer:
An extraordinary relic from the days when these precincts were farm country. Greek Revival, with elegant narrow clapboards, a bracketed cornice with eyebrow windows, and a widow’s walk with a view of the harbor in those open, early days. It wears its age well, with dignity. Jon Butler, formerly of Brownstoner
Yeah, I’d like a look inside, too. Across Lafayette Avenue is the formidable Queen of All Saints Church, and down the block is the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. Architects knew what they were doing back then. Here’s more.
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10/24/23
2 comments
There is a wonderful back story abut Queen of All Saints Church. What is now QAS Church is just a small part of the intended structure. The planned building, Queen of All Saints Cathedral, was to serve the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. (The Diocese then included Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk.) Around 1910 construction began with the current church building.
This was the time of competition between the City of New York and the former City of Brooklyn and between the old-money Episcopalians and the ascending Roman Catholics. The New York City Catholics had St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. The Episcopalians were putting it “in the dust” with the construction of St. John The Divine in upper Manhattan. The Roman Catholics in Brooklyn were going to show them all.
The main entrance of Brooklyn’s new entry in the Great Cathedral Race was to have been on Greene Avenue. The crossing, and the Main Altar would have been in the middle of current Lafayette Avenue, and the current QAS Church was merely to have been the chapel behind the Main Altar. The Cathedral would have taken the full block widths from Clermont Avenue to Vanderbilt Avenue and been about a block and one-half in length. As the chapel was being erected, the Bishop’s Residence was also built on Vanderbilt Avenue. Still serving as the parish’s Rectory, a tour of the interior shows a great example of the high style in which a Bishop was expected to reside back then.
With time, the “over-exuberance” of the project came to be realized. The Chapel was reconsidered. While the front entrance, on Lafayette Avenue, was finished in the same style, it is obvious that something about the scale is not exactly right. Of course, Lafayette Avenue continues through the proposed site of the Main Altar. The remainder of the property, all the way to Greene Avenue was used by the Diocese for other purposes, including Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School.
Is fortunate that someone threw cold water on the project, as it is unlikely that sufficient funds would have been found to complete it. Instead of just having only St. John The Un-Finished, we may also have had Queen of the Incomplete in Brooklyn, too.
The house has been in the Skinner family for many years.