Crazy Stable

This is the farm 20 blocks from my house...well, the one that was there about a century ago, at Church Avenue and 38th Street. If I could lay hands on $102.50 within the next 7 hours, I could buy it on Ebay. I can't, but somebody out there clearly shares my love of Daniel Berry Austin, the most hauntingly wonderful photographer you never heard of. 

This "amateur," according to a geneology site, was born in 1864, and by 1910 was an accountant living with his in-laws; perhaps his huge oeuvre of spare, elegiac images of a rapidly disappearing Brooklyn (along with many spots in Queens) offered him a soulful escape from everyday life. He went on to work for Standard Oil and to have six children by his wife, Florence; there is no explanation of whether he continued with his photography as his career and family life expanded. The library's Austin collection includes some thrillingly bleak images (my favorite, for the title alone, is "Fire at Dreamland"). But my passion is for his captured glimpses, through a glass darkly, of my beloved Flatbush. (Above is the T. Bergen house, Ocean Avenue and Avenue J.) Most of these pictures of crumbling or abandoned farmsteads seem to have been taken in winter, and the leafless trees stand like mourners around the neglected remnants of a once-thriving Dutch village. If they were indeed taken around the turn of the century, it was precisely at the brink of Flatbush's transformation into a suburb with commuter rail access via the Brighton line. Elegant apartment buildings and posh subdivisions like Prospect Park South would soon sprout over the leveled remains of these bucolic homes and barns.

This is the Samuel J. Lott house, which stood at Flatbush Ave. and Cortelyou Road (now a mix of apartment buildings, commercial strip, and freestanding homes). If you can look at this picture without having the hair raise up on the back of your neck, stop taking those meds you're on.

Now, I have no idea whether or not I'm allowed to post these Brooklyn Public Library photos; I am too slow-witted to figure out most "terms of use" statements. But it seems to me that Austin's work cries out for a coffee table book of its own, with some delicious research to fill in the backstories of these ghostly scenes. Perhaps the invaluable chronicler of Brooklyn, Brian Merlis, could be prevailed upon. Or if he's busy, I'm available!