CROPSEY AVENUE, NO. 1736
OCTOBER 29, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 182

BELEVEDERE RESTAURANT
Bay 16th Street and Cropsey Avenue, Bath Beach
OCTOBER 29, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 183

The once-elegant house at 1736 Cropsey Avenue was built circa 1850 as the home of John J. Voorhees, a member of an old Dutch family that had lived in the area since the mid-eighteenth century. At Voorhees's death in 1893, a third story was added to the house, and it was converted into a summer hotel. The house and four other buildings on the two-acre lot between Bay 16th and Bay 17th Streets accommodated the overflow guests from the popular Willomere Villa. When Bath Beach declined after 1900, the Willomere survived as a cabaret called the Belvedere Restaurant. Like the Children's Aid Society's summer homes, which occupied the adjacent block, the Voorhees house and the Belvedere Restaurant were condemned in 1936 to make way for the Shore Road Extension. In the 1940s, they were replaced by the Bayview Gardens cooperative apartments.

In five of her six Cropsey Avenue photographs, Abbott stood back to show each building in context. With the Voorhees house, she moved in to concentrate on the decorative porch and window details; allowing the facade to fill the frame, she left the perspective uncorrected.

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