Henry and Susan McDonald House
128 Clinton Avenue | Fort Greene | built 1910
Open on the map7 entries
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.
- 1853
Baker Henry McDonald buys a Clinton Avenue parcel and builds a house on it
In 1853 Henry McDonald, a baker with a business on Catherine Street in Manhattan, bought a 100-by-200-foot parcel here for $6,500. He split it into three lots, sold two of them that same year, and kept the 50-by-120-foot lot facing Clinton Avenue. The McDonalds built their house there between 1853 and 1854, when the city directories first list him as living on Clinton Avenue.
- 1854
An Italianate frame house with Greek Revival details and Tower of the Winds column capitals
The house is a free-standing wooden Italianate building with a cubic form, a low hipped roof and bracketed eaves. Its full-width porch has fluted columns whose capitals follow the Tower of the Winds in Athens, a Greek Revival detail. The Landmarks Preservation Commission could not determine the architect and called the house unusually well preserved. It stood on Clinton Avenue, then the neighborhood's premier residential street, lined with the villas of wealthy merchants.
“…unusually well-preserved and rare free-standing Italianate style frame house with Greek Revival style elements was erected for Henry and Susan McDonald in 1853-54…”
- 1855
The 1855 census finds the McDonalds sharing the house with a daughter's family and two Irish servants
The 1855 state census recorded Henry and Susan McDonald living there alongside one of their daughters, Amelia Dilks, and her husband Joseph, a locksmith. Also under the roof were their daughter Susan Hobby and her son Henry, four more McDonald children, and two female servants from Ireland. By 1870 Henry had stopped working, and three young boys, probably grandsons, were living with the family.
“According to the 1855 New York State Census, Henry and Susan McDonald were residing in the house with their daughter Amelia Dilks and her husband Joseph, a locksmith…”
- 1873
Henry and Susan McDonald die months apart and their daughter Henrietta inherits the house
Susan McDonald died on May 30, 1873, and Henry followed on September 23 of the same year. Under Henry's will the house went to their daughter Henrietta, who had still been living there. In December 1874 a Brooklyn Eagle classified ad offered it for sale, describing 11 rooms and beautiful grounds and calling it the finest residence on the avenue. Jennie Spowers bought it in 1875.
- 1880
Three families share the house in 1880, and merchants, a lawyer and a doctor own it afterward
The 1880 census lists three families in the house, led by iron dealer John J. Spowers, an agent named James Sascoyne, and John Hagar of the type business. Later owners who lived there with their families included flour merchant David S. Jones (1881-1890), the lawyer Edgar Phillips and his wife Nellie (1890-1906), merchant Wolf Hurwitz (1906-1911), and Dr. Domenico Candela (1911-1920).
- 1926
The Gagliardo family buys the house and keeps it for nearly half a century
Nicola Gagliardo bought the house in 1926 from Theresa Cranflone and members of his family owned it until 1974. The 1930 and 1940 censuses show two renting families in the house, including the family of Joseph Gagliardo, and by the mid-1950s it held three families. The Gagliardos sold it to Richard Arnow in 1974, who sold it to John Pascoe in 2000. Pascoe passed it on in 2006, and it is still a three-family house.
- 2015
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the McDonald House an individual landmark
The commission voted to designate the Henry and Susan McDonald House on June 16, 2015, after a hearing on June 2. The proposal had first been heard on June 25, 2013, and drew support from the Historic Districts Council, the New York Landmarks Conservancy, Council Member Laurie Cumbo and Brooklyn Community Board 2. No one spoke against it. The report calls the house an important reminder of the early development of Wallabout.
“There were no speakers or letters in opposition to the designation.”
Nearby
- Lefferts-Laidlaw House136 Clinton Avenue | 7 entries
- Feuchtwanger Stable159 Carlton Avenue | 4 entries
- Caroline Ladd Pratt House229 Clinton Avenue | 6 entries
- Pratt Institute Library261 Hall Street | 4 entries
- Pratt Institute Memorial Hall205 Ryerson Street | 3 entries
- Pratt Institute Main Building207 Ryerson Street | 7 entries