How to Sell Brooklyn Real Estate in 1900

Real estate hasn’t changed much in the last century.

Exhibit A: In an ad from the Friday, October 5, 1900 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle (pictured above), the realtors Pounds & Decker heap praise on the up and coming patch of green known as Ditmas Park. Just like today, every word from the realtor is absolutely true without exaggeration.

Ditmas Park: “Admittedly the best location in Flatbush” from 1900 to 2012.

Lewis H. Pounds (the man behind the ad) is one of the most important men in Ditmas Park history in the way that urban real estate developers sometimes are. Pounds is credited with the first comprehensive development of Ditmas Park, defined then (as the actual sub-Flatbush neighborhood still is today) as the area between Ocean Avenue and the Brighton Beach Railroad on the east and west as well as Dorchester Road and Newkirk Avenue to the north and south. Take note, future real estate alchemists: Ditmas Park started as a small strip of land.

After moving to Flatbush in 1896, Pounds saw a huge opportunity in an area with few houses, “open land with high ridges, valleys and, no roads.”

In 1902, Ditmas Park “entered upon a period of transformation that would have been impossible in a less favored locality,” wrote Herbert F. Gunnison in 1908’s Flatbush To-Day.

To the left, a 1902 ad shows off 471 East 17th Street, built in 1889. Houses in the area were being sold for around $8,500 at the time. Today, the house is worth over $1 million.

Sewers, sidewalks, paved streets and plantings were laid out as Pounds divided the area into building lots.

“All building was governed by a series of restrictions that guaranteed the quality of construction and sought to give the development a distinctly suburban effect,” according to the 1981 Ditmas Park Historic District Designation Report. The neighborhood’s cohesive feel can be credited to similar real estate efforts around the area.

Outside of his work in our neck of the woods, Pounds was Brooklyn’s Public Works Commissioner before he served as Borough President from 1913 to 1917, notable as the only Republican Brooklyn Borough President in history. He became State Treasurer in 1924 and made an unsuccessful run for Mayor of New York City in 1932 where he lost to John P. O’Brien.

In the 1900 ad, Ditmas Park buildings are said to offer a “notably pleasing style of architecture” that “challenge competition and comparison.” Ditmas Park itself is described in the ad as a “beautiful tract” and “admittedly the best location in Flatbush.” It’s like reading today’s New York Time’s Real Estate section.

Because 112 years later, real estate is basically the same game.