Adams House

115 8th Avenue | Park Slope | built 1888

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1888

    Thomas Adams Jr., inventor of the Adams Chiclets vending machine, commissions a double house from C. P. H. Gilbert

    Thomas Adams Jr., the inventor of the Adams Chiclets automatic vending machine, commissioned a double house at Eighth Avenue and Carroll Street in 1888. C. P. H. Gilbert was the architect. It was the earliest house in the neighborhood to have an elevator. A long-surviving local tale says that servants stalled in that elevator while Adams was away and were dead when he returned.

    “…built in 1888 as a double house, and was commissioned by Thomas Adams Jr., who invented the Adams Chiclets automatic vending machine…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1888

    Gilbert gives the Adams double house a corner tower, stained-glass transoms and a carved Syrian entrance arch

    Gilbert designed the house in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, and it is considered one of the finest examples of that style in the city. Salmon-colored brick, sandstone and terra cotta rise over a rusticated brownstone base, topped by a corner tower with an octagonal tile roof. The Carroll Street entrance has a carved Syrian arch, and the first-floor transoms hold stained glass. The Eighth Avenue door served Thomas Adams's son John Dunbar Adams, who lived in his half of the house.

    “…one of the best examples of that style extant in New York City…”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1900

    After the Adams family leaves for Riverside Drive, Alvin Edger Ivie, a relative of F. W. Woolworth, occupies the house

    Around the turn of the twentieth century the Adams family relocated to Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Their Park Slope house was then home for many years to Alvin Edger Ivie, who was related to F. W. Woolworth by marriage. Ivie worked for the F. W. Woolworth Company and also served as a director of the East Brooklyn Savings Bank.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 22 buildings with stories in Park Slope