59-23 Catalpa Avenue
Ridgewood | built 1911
Open on the map3 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.
- 1851
George Hulst buys the farmland north of Catalpa Avenue from the Debevoise family
Before any houses stood here, the land roughly between Catalpa and Putnam Avenues was farmed by George Hulst (1811-1902), a Williamsburgh native. He first rented it from the Debevoise family in 1847 and bought it from them outright in 1851. In the 1860s Hulst started selling lots on the western side of his estate of more than 65 acres, which is why some of the district's oldest houses survive near Forest Avenue.
- 1911
Builder Ignatz Martin puts up a wood-frame flats building designed by Louis Berger & Company
Read more
Ignatz Martin was the original owner of 59-23 Catalpa Avenue, filed under New Building permit 3 of 1911 with Louis Berger & Company as architects. The three-story frame building, in the Queen Anne style, was one of four flats buildings Martin raised at 59-19 to 59-25 Catalpa Avenue. The 2014 designation report counts its door hood, main-entrance doors and frame, and iron areaway fence and gate as historic features.
- 1940
The front is stripped of its cornice and wrapped in brick-pattern asphalt siding
Read more
Before 1940 the building lost much of its Queen Anne trim: the individual window hoods and the cornice came off, the parapet was changed, and long hoods were run across the first, second and third stories. The wood front was also covered in asphalt siding made to imitate brick. An angled metal hatch in the areaway also dates from before 1940.
Nearby
- 59-21 Catalpa Avenue1 entry
- 59-25 Catalpa Avenue2 entries
- 59-19 Catalpa Avenue1 entry
- 59-27 Catalpa Avenue2 entries
- 59-29 Catalpa Avenue1 entry
- 59-31 Catalpa Avenue2 entries