 
Victorian
Homes
February 2004
Coming Home
Brooklyn's historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood
has been lived in and lovingly cared for by the
descendants of freed slaves for 150 years.
By
Amy Gale Photographs by Gary Isaacs
[A partial excerpt]
Across the street from the Atwells is a 1860s
Italianate that opened in 1995 as the Akwaaba Inn. Monique
Greenwood and her husband Glenn Pogue bought the
place as an abandoned ruin and transformed it into
a bed-and-breakfast. The interiors combine
Victorian furnishings, African-American artifacts
and African craftsmanship. Carved Nigerian
doors decorate the ballroom and Kenyan ceramics
line the plate rail in the dining room.
For longtime residents, it's gratifying to see
a good neighborhood get better. Many belong
to the Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a civic
organization that was founded in 1978 to staunch
local decline. "We believe in preservation
in the largest and best sense," says founder and
current president Brenda Fryson. An annual
house tour raises funds for college scholarships,
literacy programs and other services that keep
the community strong. Ask a Brownstoner about
stoop repairs and he'll probably tell you about
improvements in the schools. "You've got
to look at the whole picture, not only the housing
stock," Fryson emphasizes.
Still, housing stock is lovely. Bedford-Stuyvesant
first developed as a suburb of Manhattan in the
1840s thanks to the establishment of omnibus lines,
an early form of public transportation. By
1880, 14,000 people lived there with the most prosperous
inhabiting the newly built row houses. Architecturally,
little has changed since then, and Bed-Stuy is
today one of the most intact Victorian districts
in New York City.
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