As the trestle carrying the Culver Line elevated train (F), over Neptune Avenue, the Amalgamated Dr. James Peter Warbasse Houses loom up in the background. The co-op apartments were built by United Housing Foundation and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union between 1960 and 1964. Dr. Warbasse was a supporter of the clothing workers union.
From the Amalgamated Warbasse Houses website:
There is a reason our apartments are coveted by every New Yorker. All of our apartments are oversized and were built with families in mind. From the moment you enter, comfort and convenience are the hallmarks of every 1, 2, and 3 bedroom Warbasse home. Each apartment has a spacious foyer, ample closets, and spacious and sunny living rooms and bedrooms – and many have balconies with great views.
Amalgamated Warbasse Houses has waiting lists for all of our apartments. If you are a new applicant, use this site as well as HCR’s website to get on the waiting list. We look forward to welcoming you to one of Brooklyn’s most vibrant and exciting communities.
The Culver El has been here since the steam RR built by Andrew Culver was elevated in 1920. The nearby Neptune Avenue station was known as simply “Van Siclen” (there is no Van Siclen Avenue or street nearby) for decades after the Van Siclen Hotel the station served was torn down.
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10/19/24
4 comments
There was a Van Sicklen Place a few blocks to the east of the station. It has since been gobbled up by the Warbasse Houses and the campus of Lincoln High School. Maps as early as the 1890 Robinson Atlas of Kings County mark the neighborhood bordered by Neptune Avenue, Ocean Parkway, Shell Road and Coney Island Creek as “Van Sicklen”; this neighborhood has since been superseded by the Warbasse development. The station stop remained Van Sicklen at least as late as the mid 70s.
Stations on the Culver Line shown in the 1890 Robinson Atlas include Kensington (At Avenue C, no modern station at this location), Parkville (At Foster Avenue), Cemetery (later 22nd Avenue, now Bay Parkway), Woodlawn (Avenue N), a station (name not marked) between Avenues S and T serving the Brooklyn Jockey Club, and Van Sicklen. As the area urbanized, and the line was modernized and elevated, stations were added, closed or relocated. Stations were redesignated by cross street rather than by community. Decades later, Van Sicklen was the last to be changed to a cross street.
There is a Van Sicklen Street a little north in Gravesend.
At first, I thought the Warbasse Houses were part of the Coney Island NYCHA projects built in the 50’s-60’s to house the people displaced by the Cross Bronx Expressway, and those that burned down their Bronx neighborhoods. Remember Howard Cosell “the Bronx is burning”? I used to see whole families in the early 60’s, riding what was then the “D” train to Coney Island with all their belongings. However, it looks like the Warbasse co-ops were for more affluent people, and not “public housing”.
I grew up in Warbasse buildng #3 from when it was built. It was predominantly Jewish, as was the ACWU (my father and grandfather were members). Each of the five 23-story buildings had 3 sections, and the middle section was at first reserved for senior citizens, a good number of whom were Holocaust survivors. There were about 24 apartments on each floor across the three sections and five buildings, so more than 2500 apartments. A small city. It was a Mitchell-Lama co-op, meaning there was a nominal buy-in, maybe $2,000 in the early ’60s (nothing to sneeze at then) but “rent,” really today called the carrying charges, were low. Proviso was that you couldn’t sell your shares–it’s a co-op, not a condo–for a profit. I think you can now, but it’s complicated. We were across the street from T*ump Village, which we politely called the slums. My kindergarten and first grade were in a building 3 downstairs community room, an annex of PS 216, then across the street to PS (then IS now JHS I think) 303, and then Lincoln. All across the street. It was a modern-day shtetl. I think I knew no more than 3 or 4 non-Jews in my whole life before I turned 13–all the teachers were Jewish, the shopkeepers, everybody I came into contact with. We had not one but two kosher butchers. Amazing, and a time long gone by.