Arts and Entertainment Brooklyn Boro

An old house and a worn-out pair of shoes

January 23, 2017 By Andrew M. Wasserman Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
My mom, Bernice, and dad, Dr. Bernie Wasserman, at home circa 1959. Photos courtesy of Andrew M. Wasserman
My mom, Bernice, and dad, Dr. Bernie Wasserman, at home circa 1959. Photos courtesy of Andrew M. Wasserman
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Readers may recall an article my late father, Dr. Bernie Wasserman, wrote for the Brooklyn Heights Press in 2005. In it, he shared some history about the people and houses on and near the corner of Hicks and Cranberry Streets, including 59 Hicks, the old white house with the red doors he bought in 1957 to start his veterinary practice. After my parents passed away in 2011, we started renovating the building and found out some interesting things about the house that I thought might be of interest. But first, a little background.

In my dad’s 2005 article, he described the corner of Hicks and Cranberry as it was in 1957 when he bought the old, and at the time, run down, house there to open Brooklyn Heights’s first veterinary practice. Back then, some streets had not a single tree on them, and dilapidated buildings and seedy rooming houses were not uncommon. My father renovated 59 Hicks, receiving praise from the Brooklyn Heights Association for “the taste with which [he] rescued and improved the property at the Corner of Hicks and Cranberry streets.” And, in July 1959, the Brooklyn Heights Press credited him with being one of the “first to start the renaissance on lower Hicks Street.” It’s hard to imagine, but the Heights was quite a different place back then.

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Over the years my father built a thriving and beloved practice through a love of animals and an inherent appreciation of their owners’ relationship with them. He took pride in his new veterinary hospital and genuinely cared about his patients and clients. Truman Capote, a friend and client of my dad’s, captured the essence of my father’s practice when he wrote about Brooklyn Heights in a 1958 article for Holiday Magazine: “Astonishing, really, the amount of lost strays who roam their way into the neighborhood, as though instinct informed them they’d find someone here who couldn’t abide being followed through the rain, but would, instead, lead them home, boil milk, and call Dr. Wasserman, Bernie, our smart-as-they-come young vet whose immaculate hospital resounds with the music of Bach concertos and the barking of mending beasts.” That legendary article was republished last year, along with a host of truly amazing photos of the Heights taken in 1958 by photographer David Attie, in a book titled “Brooklyn, A Personal Memoir” (Little Bookroom, 2015).

Operating a thriving veterinary hospital in Brooklyn for several decades was sure to generate a lot of good stories and so, my father collected the best ones in a book he wrote in 2001. Titled, “The Dog Who Met the Queen and Other Stories,” it tells of his and my mom’s friendship with Capote; a stray dog my father treated who ended up meeting the Queen of England; a feline escape artist, and much more. For anyone who loves animals and the Heights it’s a great read (if you can still find a copy!).

My father passed away in late 2011 at the age of 91, just three weeks after my mother, to whom he had been married for 53 years. Shortly thereafter, the veterinarian to whom my father had sold his practice retired, and a number of veterinarians contacted me about taking over the space. One in particular, Dr. Heather Thomson, struck me as having the same dedicated, caring and thorough approach my father had. She is now operating the reborn Brooklyn Heights Veterinary Hospital, carrying on the legacy my father started there nearly 60 years ago.

The house, however, had not been renovated since 1957 and needed extensive updating of the plumbing and electrical systems as well as some structural work. Dr. Thomson also had plans to substantially upgrade the first-floor veterinary space (now masterfully completed, striking the perfect balance between your local neighborhood vet clinic and modern day, full-service veterinary hospital). During the course of the renovations, we found some interesting things about the construction of the house and some curious things concealed behinds its walls.

Commonly thought to have been built in 1822, the house is likely a bit older. Jeremy Lechtzin, a friend and Hicks Street neighbor who has done substantial research on the older houses in the Heights found evidence that the house was built no later than 1820, more likely in 1816 and possibly even earlier. To put that in perspective, George Washington died in 1799, Alexander Hamilton, in 1804, and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were still alive at the time of construction. They would be for several more years, dying just hours apart on July 4, 1826.

The house is of post and beam construction; a carefully crafted puzzle of joists, beams and studs artfully pieced together with precisely carved mortise and tenon joints, in many places fastened together with wooden pegs. And many of the beams were hand hewn, some with bark still on them. We also discovered the original 200-year-old wide plank, tongue and groove floor that had been hidden for generations under more recent flooring.  

Another feature we uncovered were some interesting markings on the beams. Back when the house was constructed, in order to ensure that each custom carved beam was correctly pieced together with its intended mate, carpenters notched Roman numerals into each piece, one appearing frontwards and the other backwards to ensure proper pairing (for example, one piece of lumber would have a “VII” and its partner would have a “IIV.”)

Throughout the construction our builder, Ed DeLaurot, a life-long Heights resident and one of my oldest friends, went to lengths to maintain the historical integrity of the house, removing as little of the original construction as he could while extensively reinforcing it with modern building material. We are also keeping some of the original woodwork and historic features exposed or otherwise accessible so future generations can see the original workmanship, including some beams, Roman numerals and the long-hidden, original wood floor. This all took tremendous talent and ingenuity on Ed’s part, along with the insightful guidance and creative design work of our architects, Ben Baxt and others at Baxt Ingui, since the easiest thing would have been to gut the house and replace the original construction with new material.

While the hand-carved Roman numerals were my favorite discovery, by far the most curious was a pair of very old, very worn-out shoes dating to the construction of the house that had been hidden beneath the floorboards of the third floor. Ed and Chris Rommelmann, another old Heights friend working with Ed, found them when they came tumbling down after they removed some plaster from the second floor ceiling, exposing the space between the ceiling and the floor above.

It was hard to imagine how they got there. Our best guess was that they were simply discarded and left there during construction. Lord knows we found a lot of things in the walls left during later renovations (mainly old bottles from the 1920s and a nostalgic sampling of beer cans representative of the breweries still located in the New York City area in the late 1950s and early ’60s: Ballantine Ale, Schlitz, Shaefer, Rheingold and, of course, “The King of Beers,” Budweiser). Beer cans make some sense, but shoes?

Only by accident, months after discovering them, was the mystery of the shoes solved. While visiting family friends, Chris and Michele Kohler, during a business trip in England, I happened to mention the shoes. Michele (a former Heights neighbor) immediately said, “They put them there for good luck!” On returning to the United States, I did some exhaustive research on the topic (OK, so I Googled “old shoes in the wall”) and here’s what I found.

 

The shoes are what are sometimes referred to as “concealed shoes.” Since early modern times it was customary in Europe and England to hide a variety of objects, most commonly shoes, in ceilings, walls, chimneys and under floors for good luck, to ward off evil spirits and for fertility. The practice made its way to colonial America, particularly New England and throughout the Northeast, before dying out completely sometime in the early 20th century. This also explains another object we found hidden with the shoes, a piece of pressed metal that looks vaguely military and bearing the Latin phrase “Morior in Spe,” but otherwise unidentifiable. So, it appears, the shoes were put there quite intentionally, 200 years ago, to bring the house and its inhabitants good luck.

The renovations gave us a unique opportunity to look behind the walls and see how one of the oldest homes in the Heights was constructed and to reveal some interesting artifacts. Thankfully, we were able to preserve much of the original construction — unfortunately, we had to remove some beams beyond repair between the first and second floors and an interior wall on the second floor — and figure out ways to incorporate some of the historic features into the interior design.

I am grateful my father bought this unique house way back in 1957 and that he and my mom raised my brother and me there. They were fun and loving parents and made us a great home in the old house. My dad’s practice thrived throughout the years he owned it and, afterwards, during the years he was involved until his full retirement in the late 1990s. I don’t know how much, if anything, the shoes had to do with all that, but now that we know they were concealed there all these years, we’re not taking any chances. We’re putting them right back where we found them and where they silently hid for 200 years. We might even add a thing or two from 2016 — a time capsule of sorts — to be found during the next renovation in say, 2216.

 


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2 Comments

  2. R Hartle

    The metal item with the latin inscription (meaning, ‘I die with hope’) is a piece of early 19th century coffin furniture. Specifically, a coffin ‘grip plate’. Grip plates were part of a coffin’s decoration and was placed behind handles (or grips) of the coffin. This particular style was in us in England from at least the 1810s.

    April 29, 2021 at 5:57 am
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