CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY SUMMER HOME
1750-1818 Cropsey Avenue, Bath Beach, Bensonhurst
OCTOBER 27, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 175

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY SUMMER HOME
1750-1818 Cropsey Avenue, Bath Beach, Bensonhurst
OCTOBER 27, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 177

Founded in 1864, the Children's Aid Society provided New York's immigrant poor children with shelter, medical care, schooling, and, in the summer, a respite from the city. Between 1880 and 1902, the Society built a four-and-a-half-acre enclave for summer outings in the fashionable resort town of Bath Beach on Gravesend Bay. With the advent of the subways in the 1920s, the town grew more populous, driving away both wealthy vacationers and the Society, which in 1930 moved its summer programs to rural Westchester and Dutchess Counties.

In 1937, the already neglected beach properties on Cropsey Avenue were condemned for the construction of the Shore Road Extension (now Belt Parkway) linking Dyker Beach Park to Bensonhurst Park. Aware of their impending demise, Abbott spent two days photographing the buildings, includes two on the abandoned Children's Aid Society grounds: the Green Corridor Cottage (Abbott File 175) and the Haxtun Cottage (Abbott File 177). The parkway cut off Cropsey Avenue from the bay, and in the 1940s, the former resort was built up with attached houses and low-rise apartments.

Return to Brooklyn