On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, early in April 2023, as my wife Dana was cooking some matzo ball soup and I was hovering nearby, we saw an all too familiar sight outside our apartment’s kitchen window — a gaggle of folks chatting by the building’s front yard and wrought iron fence. No doubt it was one of the many walking tour groups making the rounds in Clinton Hill to see its historic landmarked houses on the tree-lined streets.<\/p>\n
Along with the Pratt mansion, St. Joseph’s University, and other architectural gems, our four-story building on Clinton Avenue is one of the usual stops on the tour circuit. We moved to the 12-unit co-op in 2001, 20 years after the historic district was designated and as part of a decades-long wave of gentrification. We had bought the apartment from one of the original co-op owners from the early ’80s who was relocating to be near relatives in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Soon after arriving, I learned that while the building had been erected as an elegant single-family mansion for a Pratt crony in the late 19th century, from the 1930s to its conversion to a co-op in the early 1980s it was home to the left-leaning Brooklyn Community Woodward School. It turned out my friend Ted had spent his early years in the building with other kids of progressives learning cursive and long division before moving on to Brooklyn Tech. Ted was buddies at the K through 8 school with Walter Mosely, who years later followed Hakeem Jeffries and represented the neighborhood in the New York State Assembly. Before he began his storied career in Apocalypse Now, Laurence Fishburne had apparently attended Woodward. I had also heard that Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, was a Woodward student years ago, but I was never quite sure if that was true or simply a Brooklyn urban legend. <\/p>\n %<\/span><\/span> | %<\/span><\/a> | %<\/span><\/a> | %<\/span><\/a> | %<\/span><\/a> | %<\/span><\/a> | %<\/span><\/a> Single Page<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Built as a mansion for a well-to-do family, our apartment building on Clinton Avenue is one of the usual stops on the walking-tour circuit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206883,"featured_media":520097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"schneps_byline":"","schneps_post_style":"","schneps_post_source":"","schneps_syndicated_read_more":"","schneps_post_source_sitename":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_html":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_src":"","schneps_post_source_shortname":"","schneps_post_source_url":"","schneps_post_source_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7674,7646],"tags":[34381,34382],"districts":[],"class_list":["post-524998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clinton-hill","category-history","tag-brooklyn-community-woodward-school","tag-clinton-avenue"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"A Surprise Visit on Clinton Avenue","url":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/history\/clinton-hill-historic-district-history-unexpected-guests\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/history\/clinton-hill-historic-district-history-unexpected-guests\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/clinton-hill-spring-clinton-avenue-march2024-sdevries-links-1.jpg?w=150&h=150&crop=1","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/clinton-hill-spring-clinton-avenue-march2024-sdevries-links-1.jpg"},"articleSection":"Clinton Hill","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"David Woloch"}],"creator":["David Woloch"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Brownstoner","logo":""},"keywords":["brooklyn community woodward school","clinton avenue"],"dateCreated":"2024-05-15T14:00:04Z","datePublished":"2024-05-15T14:00:04Z","dateModified":"2024-05-15T14:00:04Z"},"rendered":"