model south hot Ridgewood South Historic District, Ridgewood, Queens, New York City, New York, United States The Ridgewood South Historic District is significant as a large, intact grouping of fully developed model tenements that reflect the development of Ridgewood in the early 20th century. A contiguous district in both typology and style, it is composed of over 210 buildings, primarily three-story brick tenements, and the St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church Complex. The tenements were constructed between 1911 and 1912 by the G.X. Mathews Company and were designed by architect Louis Allmendinger. Known as “Mathews Model Flats,†these “new law†tenements had larger rooms and more adequate sanitary facilities than their 19th-century predecessors. Built in long rows of repeated designs that create a sense of place, the facades retain a high degree of integrity and are distinguished by their buff and amber-colored brick facades, cast-stone details, ornate pressed metal cornices, and stoop and areaway ironwork. Transportation improvements and the consolidation of Greater New York City contributed to the development of Ridgewood, which was characterized by open farmland and several amusement parks in the 19th century. Denser building activity had begun with the coming of the electric trolley in 1894, and after 1898, Ridgewood was subjected to the eastward expansion of a growing New York City. Located adjacent to Brooklyn’s Eastern District (which contained the communities of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint), Ridgewood became an ideal location for upwardly mobile German-Americans to relocate, away from the over-crowding and more recent immigrants inhabiting Bushwick and Williamsburg, as well as Manhattan’s Lower East Side. German-immigrant Gustave X. Mathews began building in Ridgewood in the first decade of the 20th century. Using wider lots, large air shafts, private bathrooms, and limiting occupancy to two families per floor, Mathews’ “cold-water†flats were a radical improvement to the overcrowded tenements of Williamsburg and the Lower East Side. By creating improved living quarters and controlling costs so that the apartments could be affordable to families of modest income, Mathews found a niche in the real estate market and met with immediate success. He built and sold over 300 tenements in Ridgewood between 1909 and 1912, receiving 25% the tenement house permits issued in Queens in 1911. As testament to their improved design, the “Mathews Model Flats†were exhibited by the New York City Tenement House Department at the Panama-Pacific Fair in San Francisco in 1915. The buildings in this district are fully developed Mathews Flats buildings, which became standards for later tenement house construction, and are characteristic of the development of the area in the first quarter of the 20th century. In addition to being innovative in plan, the tenements are striking in appearance. Built after 1905 when fire codes in Ridgewood began requiring masonry construction for attached rows, the buildings have load-bearing masonry walls constructed of light colored Kreischer brick. Using mainly buff and amber-colored brick, the buildings have fine detailing in the Romanesque- and Renaissance-Revival styles, including corbelled, projecting, contrasting and geometric patterned brickwork, brick pilasters, and contrasting brick bases and cast-stone string coursing. Most of the tenements employ the same design with Romanesque Revival-style round and segmental arches of contrasting brick, and carved-stone door lintels. With mainly flat facades, the mid-block buildings are recessed from the street wall of the corner buildings, adding further interest to the row. Other handsome details include Classically-inspired carved-stone entablatures, pressed metal cornices and original ironwork at the stoop and areaway. The buildings facing Woodward and Onderdonk Avenues have commercial storefronts at the first floor and apartments on the second and third floors, while those on the side streets are completely residential. The St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church complex, which includes a cathedral, rectory, school and convent, faces Catalpa Avenue at the eastern edge of the district. Constructed of pale yellow or amber brick, these four buildings are architecturally congruous with the rest of the district and are significant in the telling of Ridgewood’s history and development. The first building, designed by the prominent architect F.J. Berlenbach as a combined church and school, was erected on the property in 1909 and is currently used as the school. As the congregation grew with the population of the surrounding area, the grand cathedralâ€"which was designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival styleâ€"was completed in 1926. The buildings in the district are mostly intact, however some alterations include new stoops, replacement windows and doors, removed ironwork, new awnings and altered storefronts. A cohesive collection of speculative urban architecture, the tenements in the Ridgewood South Historic District retain extremely high levels of architectural integrity and represent an important part of the development of housing in New York City. THE HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE RIDGEWOOD SOUTH HISTORIC DISTRICT History of Ridgewood, Queens The Ridgewood South Historic District comprises approximately 207 multi-family residential and commercial buildings developed between 1900 and 1915, mainly by the G.X. Mathews Company, and the four-building St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church complex. Located along Catalpa, Onderdonk, Putnam, and Woodward avenues and Cornelia, Madison, and Woodbine streets, the district is located in southwestern Ridgewood, close to the Brooklyn-Queens border. Located in western Queens County, the town of Ridgewood originally spanned the Brooklyn-Queens border, an area that was inhabited by the Mespachtes Indians prior to being settled by Europeans. The high, thickly wooded terrain is part of the terminal moraine that runs through Ridgewood and continues east through the center of Long Island. Part of the town was located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, one of the original six towns that joined together to become the City of Brooklyn in 1854, while another section was part of the adjacent town of Newtown, one of the original three towns of Queens County. During the 17th and 18th centuries, farms in Bushwick and Ridgewood were tilled by Dutch and British families, who grew lettuce, corn, potatoes, cauliflower, and a variety of fruits for urban markets in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The only-known Dutch farmhouse surviving in Ridgewood is the Adrian and Ann Wyckoff Onderdonk House (third quarter of the 18th century, a designated New York City Landmark). At the start of the American Revolution, Ridgewood was mostly farmland, along with a small burial ground. During this period and for some time thereafter, many of the farms held slaves. In the mid-19th century, Bushwick began to lose its rural, agricultural landscape. Large numbers of Germans immigrated to New York following the political upheavals in central Europe in 1848. Many settled in Williamsburg and Bushwick (collectively with Greenpoint known as Brooklyn’s Eastern District) and began the development of the area\'s most famous local industry, brewing. Owned by German immigrants, the breweries employed a largely German workforce, whose families also provided a sufficient local demand for lager beer. Ridgewood was named for the reservoir, built in 1856-59 by the City of Brooklyn, located on the glacial ridge formed by the Long Island terminal moraine. The reservoir was located in the present-day Highland Park on the south side of Ridgewood. Early records show that the Woodard and Van Ende families, 18th-century owners of the land contained in the Ridgewood South Historic District, as well as many of their neighbors, were slave owners. [Henry Onderdonk, Jr., Queens County in Olden Times (Jamaica, NY: Charles Welling, 1865), 48; LPC, Adrian and Ann Wyckoff Onderdonk House Designation Report (LP-.1923) report prepared by Jay Shockley (New York: City of New York, 1995); United States Federal Census: 1790, 1800, 1810]. Development in Bushwick was further propelled by improvements in transportation. The Myrtle Avenue horsecar line was extended east to Broadway in 1855, while the elevated rapid transit line, operated by the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad, reached Broadway and Gates Avenue in 1885. By 1880, 35 breweries had been established in Brooklyn, including at least 11 located in a 14-block area in the Eastern District known as “brewer’s row,†and other German immigrants opened factories and knitting mills in the area. Tenements and small row houses were built to house the workers and their families. A second wave of development began after the construction of the elevated railroad along Myrtle Avenue in 1888, making the area an attractive alternative to congested downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Development, consisting primarily of three- and four-story multiple dwellings, spread eastward toward the Brooklyn-Queens border during the following decade. A number of picnic grounds, beer gardens, amusement parks, and racetracks opened amidst Ridgewood’s fields and farming villages towards the end of the 19th century, catering especially to the large German population of Bushwick. Located to the east of Bushwick, Ridgewood (also known as East Williamsburgh) remained largely rural until after the consolidation of the City of New York in 1898, just as the last vacant land in Bushwick was being developed. Transportation improvements to the area helped propel development. Myrtle and Metropolitan avenues and Fresh Pond Road are among the oldest streets in Ridgewood, having originally been Native American trails and then used by Long Island farmers to take their products to market. Stagecoaches and horsecars ran along Myrtle Avenue which extended from Fulton Ferry â€" with ferries that provided access to Manhattan â€" to Jamaica Avenue. The first railroad to reach the area, in 1878, was the New York Connecting Railroad Extension (once the Manhattan Beach Railroad), running from Brooklyn through Ridgewood to the Brooklyn seashore. In 1881, the Bushwick Railroad Company secured a right of way through several Ridgewood farms, and began operating steam service from Wyckoff and Myrtle Avenue to Lutheran Cemetery. The elevated rapid transit line ran to Wyckoff Avenue along the Brooklyn/Queens border beginning in 1888 and an extension of the electrified trolley ran from Bushwick to Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood in 1894. The Myrtle Avenue line was extended at grade over the private right-of-way of the former Lutheran line from Wyckoff Avenue to Lutheran Cemetery in 1904. By the turn of the century, Bushwick’s builders began purchasing Ridgewood’s farms, parks, and racetracks. Over the next two decades they constructed tenements and small row houses similar to those they had built for the German-immigrant workers and their families in Bushwick. An article in the Real Estate Record and Guide published in late 1909 mentions that Bushwick was not a company town. Housing was constructed by speculative builders, most of whom were also of German descent, including some brewers who invested some of their profits into real estate. Three basic types of homes were constructed: two- and three-family row houses with one apartment per floor, two- and three-story tenements with two apartments per floor, and small multiple-dwellings with ground-floor stores. an area of over 150 blocks of former farmland and picnic parks in Ridgewood was then experiencing intense growth. The construction of the Queensboro Bridge further contributed to the development of the area. The bridge opened in 1909, linking the roadways of Queens to Manhattan, just as the United States was beginning to embrace automobile travel. From the turn of the century to World War I, more than 5,000 structures were built in Ridgewood; industrial areas developed to the north, while residential construction occurred in the southern section. The developers built wood-frame houses until 1905, when building codes took effect requiring masonry construction. All subsequent construction in Bushwick and Ridgewood, including within the Ridgewood South Historic District, was of masonry. Many of the builders, including the G.X. Mathews Company, hired the architectural firm of Louis Berger & Co. to design their rows, which were faced largely with bricks produced by the Kreischer Brick Manufacturing Company. Thus, many of Ridgewood’s buildings share similar designs, brickwork, and ornamentation. Building stopped during World War I, resuming at a slower pace following the war and continuing until the last Ridgewood farms were developed in the late 1930s. During this period, more of the same types of buildings were constructed, including new-law tenements and attached and semi-detached single- and multi-family houses. In 1939, the WPA Guide called the area “old-fashioned and respectable;†Ridgewood remained a working- and middle-class neighborhood throughout the rest of the 20th century. Middle-Class Housing in New York While the working poor were being crowded into tenement buildings, the rapidly increasing population was also displacing the middle class, who were priced out of the New York City housing market by the second half of the 19th century. By 1866, those who could not afford their own houses included “professional men, clergymen, shopkeepers, artists, college professors, and upper-level mechanics.†Some middle-class families adapted by moving into boarding houses, but living with other families in a subdivided former rowhouse conflicted with the era’s middle-class values, which stressed the “individual private house as the protector of family privacy, morality, and identity.†In the years following the Civil War, new types of multiple dwellings emerged to cater to those of greater means than the poor or working-class. Among New York’s first apartment houses were two designed by Richard Morris Hunt: the Stuyvesant Apartments (1869-70, demolished) at 142 East 18th Street, and Stevens House (1870-72, demolished), on the south side of 27th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway. (As opposed to tenements, in which residents shared toilets, both flats buildings and apartment houses had self-contained suites of rooms; the latter term generally referred to the more luxurious buildings, particularly those with elevators.) Between 1875 and 1879, approximately 700 new flats buildings were erected in New York; 516 were built in 1880 alone. A “revolution in living,†as the New York Times deemed it in 1878, was occurring, and by the mid-1880s, more New Yorkers lived in multiple dwellings than in rowhouses. For those unable to afford a private home and willing to live outside of Manhattan, the two-family house presented an alternative to the rented flat. Two-family houses had taken root in newly developing areas of Brooklyn by 1895, with affordability accounting for much of the house type’s appeal. A typical 1898 advertisement for a two-family house of Brooklyn described the house as “self-supporting … rent of upper floors pays all expenses.†As transportation improved, other areas in Brooklyn and Queens become feasible as commuter suburbs for the growing middle class. Gustave X. Mathews and the G. X. Mathews Company Ridgewood’s best-known builder, Gustave Xavier Mathews, was born in Rodalben, Palatinate, Germany in 1871. His parents, Xavier and Rosa Matheis, and their five sons immigrated to the United States in 1886, settling in New York, and later, on Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick by 1900. Shortly after, Gustave Mathews married Clara Kuntz, daughter of Louis (Ludwig) Kuntz, a prominent builder in the Bushwick-Ridgewood area. It was from his fatherin-law that Mathews learned the building trade, working with Kuntz and his partner, John Dreher. With his wife Clara, Mathews had four sons, Ernest L., Curtis X., William E. and Gustave X. Jr., who later became active in their father’s business. Mathews married a second time in 1917, several years after his first wife’s death, and had a daughter, Rose Claire. After over fifty years as a developer and builder in Queens, Mathews died at the age of 88 in 1958. Gustave X. Mathews began purchasing former farmland in Brooklyn and Queens County just after the turn of the 20th century, and was one of the first builders to start developing the Queens section of Ridgewood. In 1904, the Mathews Realty and Construction Company of Queens was incorporated, with G.X. Mathews and two of his brothers, William F. and Ernest, as its directors. Mathews first began building on a large scale on Grove, Linden and Bleecker Streets, near the Brooklyn border and the last stop of the elevated Myrtle Avenue train. Like the other turn-of-the-century multi-family houses developed in Bushwick and Ridgewood, the earliest buildings that Mathews constructed conformed to the standard 20-foot-wide lots that were being laid out in the area and resembled rowhouses, but were divided on the interior into one apartment per floor. By 1909, the G.X. Mathews Company was incorporated with G.X. Mathews as its president, a role he held until his death. In 1907-08, Mathews purchased portions of the former Schwamb and Fleckenstein farms along Forest Avenue, and began the company’s first full-block development, constructing the model tenement buildings that would make the company and Ridgewood famous. (Figure 1) By developing a large-scale and efficient building system, the company was able to produce well-designed housing at an affordable price. Meeting with continued success, the company agreed to purchase the old Meyerrose farm, the site of the Ridgewood South Historic District, in 1911, and constructed almost 170 model tenements on the site. That same year, the G. X. Mathews Company received 25% of the tenement house certificates issued in the borough of Queens. In 1915, the Tenement House Department of New York City selected the “Mathews Model Flats†as the “most up-to-date method of housing for the masses at a minimum of cost;†and other builders began to copy the buildings. By the mid-1910s, few large tracts of land were left to develop in Ridgewood, and the G.X. Mathews Company began to look for other areas for development. With a growing demand in the low-cost housing market, in the 1910s, the G. X. Mathews Company began constructing Mathews Model Flats in Astoria, Woodhaven, Corona, and Long Island City, moving the company’s office there to Jackson and 18th Avenue by 1919. The need for affordable housing continued after World War I, when the demand for housing in general was at another peak. At the time the City Housing Corporation began constructing the affordable row houses at Sunnyside Gardens (a designated New York City Historic District), the Mathews Company had already begun constructing over 300 buildings, including its model flats, smaller, two-story apartment buildings, and one- and two-family houses, just east of the site in Woodside. By 1924, the Mathews Company was based in Woodside and was advertising over “950 houses sold; ‘never a single foreclosure’â€, promising a high return on investment. Despite the Depression, the Mathews Company continued building in the 1930s, constructing a group of 250 one-family brick homes with garages in the Elmhurst section of Queens. By 1942, the company had completed another 150 modern-style, 2-family homes in the area, near Calamus and Grand Avenues. Later in his career, Mathews’s work also included a group of single family homes near West Nyack, New York, where he and his family lived. After his death in 1958, his sons, who had been active in the G.X. Mathews Company, completed and sold the remaining houses in the West Nyack development. The Design of Mathews Model Flats Many of the turn-of-the-century multi-family houses developed in Bushwick and Ridgewood included two- or three-story plus basement buildings constructed on standard (20’ x 100’) lots, similar to those developed elsewhere in Brooklyn. These buildings resemble rowhouses and generally feature one apartment per floor. Some of the earliest buildings constructed by Gustave X. Mathews were of this type. According to Department of Buildings records, the earliest Mathews buildings were designed by the architecture firm of Louis Berger and Co., a prolific architect in the area. Filed in 1908, Berger is listed as architect of record for the earliest buildings that represent a departure from the conventional multi-family house plan: they were among the first that Mathews built featuring his innovative floor plan. The “Mathews Model Flats†were built on larger lots, 27.5 feet wide, allowing two apartments on each floor, each with its own full bathroom, with shared light shafts providing windows in each room. (Figure 2) The layout was “first planned and constructed†by the Mathews Company, and the buildings quickly became widely known in Queens, with other developers’ copies later described as the “Mathews Model Flats†type. A number of these “copies†are located within the Ridgewood South Historic District. Most of the three-story plus basement buildings in the district have six separate residential apartments, except for many of those that face Woodward, Onderdonk and Catalpa Avenues, some of which have commercial spaces at the ground floor. The basic plan of the Mathews Model Flats features five rooms â€" living room, dining room, bedroom, sitting room, and kitchen â€" plus a bathroom per apartment, all of which have access to light and air from central light shafts, as required by the 1901 Tenement House Law. The “cold water flats†had running water to all floors and a full bathroom â€" toilet, sink and tub, but no hot water or central heating system. Instead, a coal stove in the kitchen and a kerosene heater in the living room were used to heat each apartment. Although steam heat was common in most apartment and rowhouse buildings at the time, it was not uncommon for tenement buildings to lack a central heating system. With a private bathroom in each apartment, the Mathews flats buildings were a clear upgrade from a tenement, but lacked the extra amenities that distinguished them from more expensive apartment buildings. The G. X. Mathews Company created a niche in the real estate market. They built flats that were desirable places to live, while providing affordable home-ownership through multifamily occupancy and large-scale development. Using the economic advantages of the multifamily dwelling, Mathews Model Flats generated more income than a two-family rowhouse but were not as initially cost prohibitive as a larger flats or apartment building, and were easier to manage by owner-occupants. By building on a large scale, Mathews was able to keep costs down while still creating comfortable, low-rent apartments; and the company met with immediate success. The G.X. Mathews Company built and sold over 300 tenements in Ridgewood between 1909 and 1912, including many of the buildings in the Ridgewood North and Ridgewood South Historic Districts. Newspaper articles indicate that the six-family brick flats-houses in the Ridgewood South Historic District sold for $11,000, while other buildings in the area were less affordable. An article in the Real Estate Record and Guide published in late 1909 list prices of two- and three-story brick rowhouses at $9,000 to $12,000 and tenement buildings selling for $16,000 to $17,000, depending on size and location. Since there was a great demand for affordable housing, apartments rented immediately upon completion, and there was often a waiting list for Mathews Model Flats apartments. The buildings were so successful that they became the model for future development; the “Mathews Model Flats†were endorsed by the Tenement House Department. In a letter dated January 23, 1918, a commissioner of the Tenement House Department recommended “Mathews Model Flats†as a solution to the shortage of housing for U.S. Government shipyard employees. The letter explained that the model had been adopted as a standard in Queens for both the Mathews Company and other builders. Development of the Ridgewood South Historic District According to the 18th and early 19th century records, the land in the Ridgewood South Historic District was part of the Woodard and Van Ende/Onderdonk farms, two long narrow farms that extended along both sides of Woodward and Onderdonk Avenues, respectively, from approximately Newtown Creek to Myrtle Avenue. Following his death in the 1830s, Joseph Woodard’s heirs began selling off portions of the property, which had been mapped and divided into over 100 lots. Van Ende descendents occupied their farm for almost 100 years from 1709 to 1805, the property passing from purchaser Paulus Van Ende to his son, then to his granddaughter and later to his great-grandson. In 1786, the western portion of the farm was sold to Johannes Covert. (The small sections that extend from the otherwise straight western boundary of the district were part of the Covert property.) The next long term owners of the property were Adrian and Ann Wyckoff Onderdonk, whose descendents sold the southernmost portion of the farm, including the bulk of the property in the historic district, to Joachim Meyerrose in 1864. Born in Bremen, Joachim Meyerrose (whose name is sometimes spelled Meirose or Meyerose) immigrated to Newtown in 1844, finding employment on the farm of John C. Debevoise for a short time before renting farmland on 56th Street in Manhattan. Meyerrose returned to Newtown in 1854, purchasing almost nine acres of property from Debevoise. Ten years later, he enlarged the farm by purchasing additional land from Gertrude (Onderdonk) Schoonmaker. Meyerrose farmed the land, with the help of his sons, into the last quarter of the 19th century. His older son Richard left farming to open a hay and grain market, while Joseph Meyerrose continued to work the farm after his father’s retirement, expanding the operation by renting adjacent property. The earliest buildings in the Ridgewood South Historic District were not developed by G.X. Mathews. A number of other developers were also prolific in the Ridgewood area around the turn of the 20th century. When much of the property in Ridgewood was still used as farm or park land, the Long Island Real Estate Exchange and Investment Company, an extensive property owner in Queens at the turn of the 20th century, acquired the southern portion of the former Covert farm, on either side of Seneca (formerly Covert) Avenue, between Greene Avenue and Catalpa (Elm) Avenue, and had the site mapped and lotted by 1892. Part of this sub-division, 1817 Woodbine Street appears to be the oldest extant building in the historic district. Constructed c.1900, this wood-frame building was acquired by William and Carolina Haug by 1906. A German-immigrant and plasterer by trade, Haug hired the architecture firm of Louis Berger & Co. to design the buildings at 1813 and 1815 Woodbine Street on the adjacent property. The existing building was likely refaced in masonry to match around the same time. (Figures 9 & 10) Designed in 1906, these buildings followed the model of the earliest phase of Ridgewood residential development: multi-family residences resembling rowhouses with only one apartment per floor. They do, however, have similar exterior features to other buildings in the district, including light colored brick, projecting and denticulated brickwork, carved stone lintels and pressed metal cornices. Louis Berger & Co. was the architect of record for over 5,000 buildings in Ridgewood and Bushwick between 1895 and 1930. Born in 1875 in Rheinpfalz, Germany, Berger immigrated to America as a young boy in 1880 and settled in Ridgewood in 1892. He studied architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and served as an apprentice with the firm Carrere & Hastings before establishing his own firm in Bushwick in 1895. His specialty was the design of tenement houses and the laws governing their construction. In 1910, he moved his office to Ridgewood, Queens, when he joined the development team of August Bauer and Paul Stier as resident architect. Berger, the most prolific architect to work in Ridgewood, benefited greatly from his association with Bauer & Stier, Inc., which alone built over 2,000 houses in Ridgewood. He also served as the president of the Brooklyn Society of Architects. The next group of residential buildings in the district was constructed on the south side of Catalpa Avenue in 1909 by developer Henry Schlachter. Also designed by Berger, these sixfamily tenements feature a floor plan similar to that of the Mathews Model Flats, employing shared, central courtyards to meet light and air requirements. (Figure 11) These buildings, however, are only 25 feet wide and feature a four-room plus hall, rather than five-room plan. Born in Germany, Schlachter came to the United States in 1880 and began his career as a mason. He became a prominent builder in the Bushwick and Ridgewood areas, constructing both two-family houses and larger, six-family flats. He also worked on the construction of the St. Matthias rectory, and later developed single family homes north of Jamaica Village. Also in 1909, Louis Berger and Co. designed the three buildings at 1811, 1815 and 1817 Cornelia Street for developer Jacob Rodler. Berger used the same exterior design and floor plan as the Schlachter buildings for two of the three buildings, (Figures 12 & 13) while the third features the earlier “rowhouse-style†plan due to its narrower lot. Another prominent developer in Ridgewood, Rodler was born in Germany and began his career in Queens as a framer. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, he began to work as a builder of multi-family frame, and later masonry, buildings. Rodler relocated his company to Hempstead, Long Island in the 1920s. Newspapers indicate that G. X. Mathews agreed to purchase the entire Meyerrose Farm in February of 1911, at the reported price of $400,000 or $20,000 per acre, a record price for land in Ridgewood. Deed records show that he began the purchase in smaller, half-block or quarter-block parcels in August of that year, with Mathews giving purchasers’ mortgages of $1,000 per lot to the Meyerrose heirs and builders’ mortgages, ranging from $6,500 to $9,000 per lot to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank or other financial institutions. The permits at the Department of Buildings were filed in a similar manner, generally in groups of eight or nine buildings, with overlapping commencement and completion dates among the groups. This likely allowed Mathews to begin systematically developing the site on a large scale without a huge outlay of capital, selling buildings as they were completed and paying off the mortgages. As construction was wrapping up, the G. X. Mathews Company reported that 153 of the 167 tenements built in the district had already been sold. According to Department of Buildings permits, most (149 of 167) buildings constructed in the Ridgewood South Historic District by the G. X. Mathews Company were designed by architect Louis Allmendinger. Allmendinger (1878-1937) was born in Brooklyn to a German-immigrant beer brewer in 1878. A graduate of the Cooper Union, Allmendinger was working as an architect as early as 1901. With offices in Bushwick, he worked both for himself and for various architects until 1922 when he established his own firm, specializing in industrial and commercial buildings. Allmendinger’s work also included other types of buildings, including the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Brooklyn (1916-21, a designated New York City Landmark) and its Parish House (1916). In 1926, he formed a partnership with M. Allen Schlendorf (b.1902) which lasted until Allmendinger’s death. Continuing to practice in Brooklyn, the new firm was responsible for numerous institutional, industrial, and commercial designs, including the Former J. Kurtz & Sons Store Building in Queens (1931, a designated New York City Landmark), the German Masonic Temple in Manhattan, the Liebmann Brewery and North American Brewery in Brooklyn, as well as the Ehler Coffee Plant, also in Brooklyn. After Allmendinger’s death in 1937, Schlendorf, who had studied at both the Cooper Union and Columbia University, continued the practice under his own name. Department of Buildings permits list R. George Smart of Ridgewood as the filing architect for the 14 buildings constructed by Mathews on the northwest side of Madison Street. Little is known about Smart, and it is unclear why Mathews changed architects for these buildings. The exterior details are the same and map footprints indicate that the buildings likely have the same plans as the other model flats in the district. The last buildings in the district constructed by Mathews are located on the northwest corner of Madison Street and Woodward Avenues. Permits for these buildings, filed in 1914, list G. X. Mathews as the owner and architect. Similar in architectural details to the others buildings constructed by Mathews, these buildings feature unique floor plans due to varying lots sizes and non-rectilinear shapes created by the railroad right-of-way. At 1879 Madison Street, the facade is curved outward from the adjacent building, rather than projecting as a bay. (Figure 14) Although he constructed the entire block front of buildings on the southeast side of Cornelia Street, Mathews did not develop the remaining portions of the block flanking the St. Matthias Church complex. The lots facing Woodward Avenue were purchased in 1913 by builder Kilian Schurger, and permits for the buildings’ construction were filed at the Department of Buildings the same year. Schurger immigrated to New York from Germany in 1881, and by 1913 was responsible for the construction of over 200 buildings in Ridgewood. Designed by Louis Berger and Co., the buildings constructed by Schurger feature alternating amber- and palered-brick facades with decorative brickwork and Renaissance-Revival-style cornices, carved-stone lintels and doors surrounds. The lots on the other side of the church property, along Onderdonk Avenue, as well as those across Onderdonk Avenue on the northwest side of Catalpa Avenue, were developed by Charles Fritz in 1913. Fritz used Allmendinger to design the tenement buildings; and they have a very similar appearance to the Mathews Model Flats. Fritz immigrated to Ridgewood from Germany as a child in the late 1870s, and began working as a builder in 1895. He constructed the buildings on Onderdonk and Catalpa Avenues in partnership with fellow German Joseph Barudio, in addition to a number of other multi-family buildings in the Ridgewood area. Among the last residential buildings in the district were 57-14 and 57-16 Catalpa Avenue, constructed in 1914. Designed by architect Louis Allmendinger, the buildings follow a similar basic plan to most other model tenements in the district, but have simplified Renaissance-Revival-style facades. These buildings were constructed by Cornelius Werberig, a German-born framer, who was also responsible for the construction of over 50 speculative houses in the Ridgewood area. According to 1920 and 1930 census records, a high level of home ownership and working-class employment was evident in the historic district. Most of the buildings were owner-occupied, primarily by German immigrants whose occupations included: engineer, store manager, brewer, butcher, baker, restaurant chef, restaurant waiter, house carpenter, cabinetmaker, and stonecutter. Mathews himself occupied a property on Putnam Avenue. Generally, the owners occupied one apartment and rented the others to help cover the mortgage and building maintenance. A number of their tenants had professional occupations such as salesman, clerk, bookkeeper, accountant or insurance inspector, while others held jobs in factories, as paper, glass or clothing cutters, shoemakers, or tool makers, or in the construction trades, including: electrician, contactor, carpenter, plasterer, painter, and metal worker. In the 1930s, the trend of working-class home ownership continued in the Ridgewood South Historic District. In general, most of the residential buildings were owner-occupied, while those with commercial ground floors had more absentee landlords, possibly due to the higher initial sale price of these properties. St. Matthias Church Complex Before selling the bulk of the family farm to G.X. Mathews, the Meyerrose heirs sold a large lot fronting on Catalpa Avenue to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brooklyn for the construction of a new church. Between 1909 and 1926, a combined church-school, rectory, convent, and larger church were constructed for the newly formed parish of St. Matthias, all designed in a Classically-inspired style by local architect Francis J. Berlenbach, Jr. (Figure 16) The St. Matthias church complex is significant as an ensemble of buildings designed over a period of time by the same architect, and also as a highly intact example of early-20th century ecclesiastical architecture in New York. The founding and growth of the St. Matthias parish was integral to the development of Ridgewood as a largely German and German-American working-class community, and reflected the importance of the church as a community institution. In 1908, Father Nicholas M. Wagner (1873-1930) was appointed pastor-founder of St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church by the Right Reverend Charles E. McDonnell, Second Bishop of Brooklyn from 1892-1921, whose goal it was to have a church dedicated to each of the twelve apostles in Brooklyn. St. Matthias was the first Catholic church in Brooklyn dedicated to that saint. Born in Brooklyn to German-immigrant parents and trained overseas in a German seminary, Father Wagner’s first undertaking as pastor of St. Matthias was to conduct a census of the Ridgewood area; the approximately 1,500 Catholic residents counted in his census formed the new church’s parish. The first mass was held in an open-air pavilion at the Ridgewood Park and Colosseum, and by early 1909 an organized effort was underway to raise funds for the construction of a combined church-and-school building. Constructed in 1909â€" in record time, by all accountsâ€"the parish’s first building was a combined church-and-school designed in a handsome Romanesque/Renaissance Revival style by Francis J. Berlenbach, Jr. and clad in the same Kreischer brick as the surrounding tenements, with stone and terra-cotta trim.(Figure 17) A chapel seating 600 occupied the main floor, with six classrooms for a parochial school on the floor above. In 1913 an addition to the rear of the building increased the capacity to 900. Construction of a brick-and-stone rectory was completed in 1910, with Berlenbach again providing the designs.(Figure 18) A convent was erected in 1914 to house the Sisters of Notre Dame, who had joined the parish in 1910 to take charge of the parochial school. Berlenbach designed the convent building in a Neo-classical style, using a slightly lighter shade of yellow Kreischer brick than was used for the church-school and rectory. (Figure 19) The rectory and convent are distinguished by their Dutch Renaissance-inspired central parapets. German-born mason Herman Veit was the contractor for the church-school and convent, and developer Henry Schlachter was the contractor for the rectory and the later church building. As the St. Matthias parish continued to grow during the 1910s, the need for a larger church became pressing. In 1917 a major building campaign was launched, only to be suspended due to the scarcity and high cost of materials and labor during wartime. Despite these challenges, Father Wagner took the farsighted step of planning for a temporary church structure that would ultimately serve as the foundation for a new church when funds allowed. The “basement†church, a simple one-story brick structure located between the convent and rectory, was completed in 1919. By 1924, the parish had raised enough of the projected $250,000 cost to begin construction on the new church; remarkably, this was accomplished largely through donations of $200 or less given by the parish’s working-class families. Dedicated in 1926, the new church, cruciform in plan and featuring a bell tower with a clock face atop the narthex, made a grand architectural statement for the thriving parish, yet complemented the existing buildings with its modest scale, pale-yellow brick, and elegant Classical forms and ornament. St. Matthias parish remained largely German-American until well into the 20th century, when immigrants from Poland and Latin America began settling in the area and joining the parish. Today masses are still offered in German, as well as in Polish, English, Spanish and Italian. Kreischer Brick The brick manufacturing firm that would later become B. Kreischer & Sons was founded by Balthazar Kreischer (1813-1886) in 1845. Kreischer was born in Bavaria and came to New York City in 1836, where he worked for a period as a mason. In the early 1850s, Kreischer was one of the first in the United States to produce fire brick, a fire resistant brick used in many industrial buildings. In 1853, Kreischer became aware of refractory clay deposits in Westfield, Staten Island. He acquired several tracts with clay deposits and purchased the rights to mine clay on nearby land. Two years later he established a brickworks on the Arthur Kill. As the factory expanded, the area became known as Kreischerville. By the time of Kreischer’s retirement in 1878, the company had become a major producer of building materials in the metropolitan area. Kreischer’s sons continued the firm, but financial problems forced them to sell the company in 1899. The Ridgewood South Historic District has remained largely unchanged since its completion in 1915, although the church has expanded its buildings over time. Transportation to the area was enhanced with the opening in 1928 of the BMT subway station at DeKalb and Wyckoff Avenues, just across the Brooklyn border, which provided service to 14th Street in Manhattan. The only major alterations in the historic district include the removal and replacement of the historic storefronts on the ground floor of the buildings facing Catalpa, Onderdonk, and Woodward avenues. The upper stories of these buildings and those on the residential side streets are largely intact. (Figure 21) Minor alterations include the installation of replacement windows and doors, the reconstruction or resurfacing of bluestone stoops and the removal of stoop and areaway ironwork. After the Second World War, Ridgewood’s large German population was joined by new immigrants from Romania, Italy, and Slovenia. A second wave of immigrants from Romania arrived in the 1980s, along with people from Poland and Yugoslavia. The neighborhood also drew large numbers of Chinese, Dominicans, Italians, Koreans, and Ecuadorians. While some of the six-family buildings have been subdivided into cooperative apartments, the architecture of Ridgewood has retained remarkable integrity. The rows of buildings in of the Ridgewood South Historic District, with their light-colored brick facades, comprise incredibly intact streetscapes.
