I'm trying to dig up some info about my house, specifically when it was built. See, there was some kind of fire or something that destroyed most of the property records in Brooklyn around the turn of the 19th century, so many houses have estimated construction dates. My house was supposedly built in 1915, which may be late enough that it is actually correct. But I have yet to figure out which houses exactly are affected by this.

Anyway I found out that the entire archive of the old Brooklyn Eagle newspaper is available online at the Brooklyn Public Library site. So far I've only found a couple of references to my property, but of course these articles only reference the address; there's no way of knowing if it's my house or a previous house on the same plot. Anyway, it seems the criminal element of my place dates back to at least 1899:

And also from 1899, I'm sure the family who posted the below want ad will be pleased to know that there's finally a young German girl upstairs:

I've been looking up other stuff about the street in general, I've found there was a rollicking "social club" across the street in the 1880's, and the place next door used to be a boarding house that once housed a couple of guys (one named Frankenstein!) who got scammed into buying a neighborhood bar and a hotel in Jamaica. Suckers.

I found a description of Bushwick when it was mostly farmland, which compared Bushwick Avenue then to its contemporary version in 1894. I think it's still pretty accurate, no?

Bushwick avenue is a broad and beautiful drive, and is, in some respects, like the highway of life. Its birth is at a church, from which it gets its christening; it wanders among the breweries and then becomes a broad and beautiful thoroughfare shaded by trees and bordered by flowers and shrubs, and finally ends at the cemetery.