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37 Greenpoint Avenue

Part of the Eberhard Faber Historic District. The only building in the district that was not purpose-built as a factory for the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co.

Source: Real Estate Record & Builders Guide, vol. 28, no. 702 (August 27, 1881), 848.

Children's Mission, Greenpoint

This building at 125 Eagle Street looks like it was once something, and sure enough it was. It was built in 1891 as the Children's Mission, a project of the Greenpoint Reformed Church on Kent Street. The Mission was established on November 20, 1881 as a Sunday school occupying a storefront on Eagle Street. The school quickly grew, adding rooms in a nearby building, but by 1883 those accommodations were already insufficient and the children of the school began raising money for a new building. Over the course of seven or eight years the students raised about $1,500.

Driggs Avenue

In the original Williamsburgh Street grid, Driggs Avenue was Fifth Street, running from Division Avenue to the Williamsburgh/Greenpoint line. By 1879, Fifth Street extended as far north as Leonard Street in Greenpoint. North of Leonard Street the street continued to Meeker Avenue as Van Cott Street.

Patriot Names

There were 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 43 of whom have (or had) streets named for them in South Williamsburg and Bed-Stuyvesant. These streets were mapped and named around 1846, when this area of the city of Brooklyn (then generally called East Brooklyn) was just being developed. The 13 signers not commemorated in East Brooklyn already had streets named for them elsewhere in Brooklyn (or streets that coincidentally had the same name, and thus conflicted). Here are the 56 signers and the streets named for them:
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