flatbush 2

In addition to the Knickerbocker, several other clubs catered to the the affluent residents of Victorian Flatbush. Most prominent among these was the Midwood Club (right). Essentially a social club, Midwood was founded in 1889 by prominent members of colonial Dutchfamilies such as the Lefferts, the Vanderbilts, and the Lotts. As Flatbush boomed, membership was extended to the influx of well-heeled new residents.

The Midwood Club was based in the imposing Matthew Clarkson mansion (left), built in 1836. At the time of the Midwood Club's inception, the stately residence faced Flatbush Avenue, surrounded by wooded Melrose Park (below). As Melrose Park was gradually sold off to real estate developers, the Clarkson mansion was moved to Twenty First Street and Ocean Avenue.

The Midwood Club provided its members with a library, ladies and gentlemen's parlors, billiard, pool and card rooms, a cafe and a bowling alley. The basement also contained a "log cabin" room,
finished in cypress logs from Georgia. Animal skins, hunting equipment, and other rustic elements adorned the walls of this testosterone only clubhouse. Male members spent long winter evenings gathered around the grand fireplace, enjoying the occassional oyster roast or steak dinner.

Membership to the Midwood club was strictly limited to 100 families, leaving the rest of Flatbush's social set to seek leisure activity elsewhere.

The Cortelyou Club (right), located at the junction of Bedford, Newkirk and Ditmas Avenues, was erected on the site of the old Cortelyou homestead and was intended to cater to the needs of South Midwood's exploding population. Decidedly wholesome and family oriented, the club's female members were known for their lavish musical and dramatic productions. Like the Midwood Club and Knickerbocker Field Club also contained a bowling alley.

Bowling, evidently, was a choice leisure time activity in Victorian Flatbush, and at least one private house in Prospect Park South boasted a lane in the basement. Those who were not quite so fabulously wealthy, or who could not gain admittence to one of the area's exclusive clubs, could content themselves with a few games at the South Midwood Bowling Alley on Newkirk Avenue (left).

Yet another private club, the Colonial Club at Avenue I and Flatbush Avenue, was founded in 1901 to serve the residents of Vanderveer Park, a Victorian Flatbush neighborhood, that sadly, no longer exists.

The brainchild of the Germania Real Estate and Improvement Company, Vanderveer Park was the first development of freestanding, wood frame houses to be constructed in Flatbush, beginning in 1892. It was also the largest, consisting of a vast tract of land east of Flatbush Avenue acquired in five seperate phases. (see MAPS).

Literally hundreds of majestic residences, including the homes pictured above, were torn down by hungry post war developers intent on erecting modest brick houses and sprawling multi-story apartment buildings.

Vanderveer Park is not the only development of free standing Victorian homes in Flatbush and its immediate environs to has vitually disappeared. Others include Bay View Heights (pictured right), Greenfield, Kings Oaks, Slocum Park, Westminster Heights, and Yale Park, and to a lesser degree, Kensington.

Many of the private single-family homes situated off the Flatbush Avenue corridor have also been lost, including the impressive De Vann residence (below) on Amersfort Place, which now leads to Brooklyn College's Campus Road in South Midwood.

The magnificent W.A.A. Brown residence in Melrose Park (left), and exclusive enclave off Flatbush Avenue and Church, was described by contemporaries as "one of the handsomest houses in Flatbush."