Park Slope's Old Tower House

Today’s photo of the week takes us to Park Slope, where a residence locally known as "the old tower house” once stood on the south side of 8th street between 5th and 6th avenues. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle published the above photograph of the old tower house in 1910, two years after the death of the building’s longtime owner, Asa B. Richardson. The Eagle claimed at the time that the home was one of the oldest in Park Slope, that it had been built by an eccentric German who modeled it after a castle on the Rhine, and that it was originally octagonal in shape.

While the property was owned by German-born merchant Charles Schneider and his wife Sophia in the 1850s, evidence suggests that the house itself may have been built around 1864 by Agnes and Edward Root (who were not German), and an atlas from 1869 gives no indication that it had an octagonal shape. Asa Richardson purchased the house from the Roots in 1865 and made additional renovations in 1876, likely adding the mansard roof and removing a staircase that had existed in the tower.

After Asa Richardson’s death, neighbors hoped to save the unusual landmark and its surrounding green space, but Brooklyn’s ballooning population and the recent ground-breaking of the 4th Avenue subway were driving an increase in new business investments and development. The old tower house was razed in 1913 along with the B’nai Sholaum synagogue that stood behind it (the congregation built a new synagogue one block up the hill). On the site of the old tower house and synagogue, vaudeville impresario B.F. Keith built the Prospect Theater, which opened on September 7, 1914.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at [email protected].