The First Days of the Hotel Oak

Day one in a series exploring how the Hotel Oak (on the corner of East 12th Street and Avenue H) has changed through the decades.

Over the course of its history, the Hotel Oak has been many things. In the beginning, it was painted a perfect white.

Looking south at East 12th St’s Hotel Oak in 1910. Photo courtesy of Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn Borough Historian.

Over a century ago in 1910, the hotel served as an overnight spot for people making the trek to the then-entertainment mecca of Coney Island. Coney was the Playground of the World, home to impeccably dressed patrons in countless dreamlike scenes.

Like much of the rest of the city, Flatbush enjoyed unprecedented growth during the period. The hotel was a catalyst for and benefactor of that growth.

One piece of lore about the early years was that the Brooklyn Dodgers stayed in the hotel. There isn’t any concrete evidence of this and Brooklyn Borough Historian Ron Schweiger doubts that the hotel was ever a stop for the Dodgers players.

In the above picture, the hotel is surrounded by trees that would not survive the decades. It is host to a large garden on the roof that would be torn away and tall brick columns that would be knocked down. Customers were protected from the sun by awnings that would fall to the street to be removed. Its perfect white paint stained and its private hotel business eventually ended, but the building has remained inhabited for the vast majority of the last hundred years.

Finding information on this period is difficult. We’re lucky to have a resourceful and generous Borough Historian, but the public records are complex and sometimes contradictory. Having grown up in the shadow of the Oak, I’m deeply interested in finding concrete evidence about the the building’s early days.

Do any neighbors have stories, pictures or records to share about the hotel? Leave them in the comments or email them to patrick@ditmasparkcorner.com.