68 Westervelt Avenue

also 66 Westervelt Avenue, 70 Westervelt Avenue | New Brighton | built 1932

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.

1883
Florist Anton Schock buys the lots and appears to build a house beside his greenhouses
Laura and Joseph Pearless bought these lots in 1869 but never built on them. In 1883 Anton Schock, who ran the florist business and greenhouses just to the south, acquired them and appears to have put up a house soon after. The cement merchant Frank Sears lived in it in 1900, and in 1910 the boarding-house manager Clara Ashforth lived there with her children and three boarders. That house was later torn down for the present building.
“In 1883 Anton Schock, proprietor of the florist and greenhouse operation located to the south, acquired the lots on which soon thereafter he appears to have erected a house…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1930
Samuel Gardstein designs a row of three Art Deco shops with a terra-cotta front
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In 1930 Samuel Gardstein designed this one-story brick building with three stores for the Rosengen Land Co., closely copying the larger St. George Gardens Stores he had designed earlier that year at 72-78 Westervelt Avenue. Its terra-cotta parapet mixes stylized flowers with geometric shapes and ends in ribs shaped like lotus leaves. Greenhouses of the florist B. De Meyer had stood at the back of the lot in 1917.
“In 1930 Samuel Gardstein designed the present commercial building for the Rosengen Land Co.; the structure, which contains three stores…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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