POTW: Wood-frame Houses

[Virginia Burton as a child holding a cat] 1910 ca,V1981.283.70; Burton family papers and photographs, ARC.217; Brooklyn Historical Society.

The photo of the week depicts Virginia Burton as a young girl around 1910, holding a cat in front of her family’s home at 436 Lafayette Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. I think this photograph is particularly charming because of the way Virginia is gently holding her cat and the addition of the children (possibly her siblings) peering out of the third floor window.

Also worth noting is the Burton family’s wood-frame house. Brooklyn is known for its brick and brownstone buildings, but many people don’t realize that many of the early Brooklyn homes were wood-framed.  The constant threat of fire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a lot to do with the transition away from wood construction. As Charles Lockwood notes in his book Bricks and Brownstone, “Fires were so frequent in New York that visitors regarded them as one of the city’s tourist sites.”

In the 1700s, New York City passed ordinances to prevent fires in residential areas, including requiring chimney maintenance and placing limitations on the storage of combustible materials such as hay and straw. Wood-frame construction was outlawed completely by 1796, after the passage of state laws which limited construction of new homes below Broome Street in Manhattan to brick and stone.  It’s unclear when Brooklyn adopted these limitations, but there is evidence to suggest that wood-framed homes were scarce by 1840.

Unfortunately, the wood-framed home in this photograph no longer stands, but many wood-framed homes remain throughout Brooklyn. To learn more about the history of wood-framed homes, be sure to check out Lockwood’s book (available at the Othmer Library). Check out The Wooden House Project for information on remaining wood-framed homes in Brooklyn and for tours.

This photograph comes from the Burton family paper and photographs collection. William W. Burton was born in England and became a U.S. citizen in 1861, the same year he married Virginia Baptista, a Portuguese immigrant. Burton worked as a housepainter in Manhattan. The couple had five children, including Virginia E. pictured above.  This collection contains both papers and photographs related to the Burton family, from 1870 through 1949. The photographs include 189 items, including cabinet cards, cartes-de-visite, tintypes, and prints with portraits of the Burton family. To view more photographs from this collection, check out this gallery.

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing even more historic Brooklyn images? Visit our Brooklyn Visual Heritage website here. To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Sat, 1:00-5:00 p.m. library@brooklynhistory.org