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The Old Stone House
Pack/Troop 14 meets at the Old Stone House in J.J. Byrne Park.
About the Old Stone House
The Old Stone House is a replica of a Dutch stone farmhouse originally built by the Dutch immigrant Claes Arentson Vechte in 1699. The building is a 1930 reconstruction of a Revolutionary-era farmhouse, also known as the Vechte-Cortelyou House, which was destroyed in 1897. It is located in Brooklyn, in the Park Slope neighborhood, at Fourth Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets – beside the former Gowanus Creek.
The Battle of Long Island
The Vechte family farmed the lands adjacent to the house, harvesting oysters in the Gowanus Creek and ferrying their produce to Manhattan down the creek to the Gowanus Bay and thence to lower Manhattan. Today, one of the branches of the Gowanus Canal ends several hundred feet away from the house, near Third Avenue between Third and Sixth streets. The farmhouse built of brick and stone is in the center of the present day J.J. Byrne Memorial Park (formerly Washington Park), which is near the site of one of the main battles of the Battle of Long Island.
On August 27, 1776, the house was used as an artillery position by an estimated 2,000 British and hired Hessian soldiers who fired on the Americans, who had already suffered disastrous losses and were fleeing to the American forts across the Gowanus Creek. Some four hundred soldiers of the Maryland Brigade regained the house twice that day, but were finally repulsed by the British. No doubt George Washington was resident in the house on that day, though it does not seem likely that he slept there.
The Building's History
Nicholas Vechte, grandson of Claes, lived in the Old Stone House during the American Revolutionary War under the British occupation. Upon his death in 1779, the farm he willed to his grandson, Nicholas R. Cowenhoven. In 1797, Cowenhoven sold the house to Jacques Cortelyou, who purchased it for the use of his newly married son, Peter. Peter's son Jacques inherited the house in 1815. His family was the last to live in the Old Stone House.
After the death of his wife, Jacques Cortelyou sold the property to Edwin Litchfield, a railroad developer, in 1852. Litchfield lived in a mansion that is currently in Prospect Park. Litchfield Manor is the Brooklyn headquarters of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Litchfield was the major landowner of the farmland in the area at that time and sold much of his land to the city for the creation of Prospect Park.
After the Litchfield purchase, The Old Stone House remained standing another forty years. It was occupied by an African-American caretaker during that period. It also served as a club house for the professional baseball team called the Brooklyn Superbas – later known as the Brooklyn Dodgers – before their move to Ebbets Field. The Old Stone House was across the street from Washington Park, one of the oldest professional Baseball stadiums in New York. A wall from Washington Park is still visible on Third Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets.
The Old Stone House Today
The land that the house was on was purchased by the New York City Parks Department in 1923, and the house, which had been razed and burned in 1897, was excavated in 1930. Half of the house was below street level, because the grading level of Fourth Avenue had been raised at the end of the nineteenth century. The house was reconstructed in 1934 from the original bricks, though it was moved slightly from its original location. It underwent additional restoration in the 1970s and 1990s.
Today the Old Stone House Historic Interpretive Center is operated by the First Battle Revival Alliance, a private group that is named after the American Revolutionary War battle fought here against the British.
