Editor’s Note: The following letter was sent by Ira Kluger of the Canarsie Historical Society to State Senator Roxanne Persaud on September 6, 2023. Given the impending demolition of the Vanderveer House, at 106-02 Flatlands Avenue, we are reprinting an excerpt of the original letter.
Dear Senator Persaud:
I would like to propose that the East 105th Street Station on the L subway line (commonly referred to as the Canarsie Line) would be renamed East 105th Street – Vanderveer’s Crossing.
The portion of the line that extends from Atlantic Avenue to Rockaway Parkway was originally operated by a private company known as the Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach Railroad. The original route continued past Rockaway Parkway and ended at the Canarsie Pier, where the passengers would transfer to a ferry which would transport them to Rockaway Beach.
During the railroad’s early years, the East 105th Street Station was known as Vanderveer’s Crossing, signifying that the Old Mill Road, which led to Vanderveer’s Mill, crossed the railroad tracks at that point. A grade crossing remained in place at that location until 1973.
The Vanderveer family, being the operators of the local grain mill, which was frequently referred to as the Red Mill, was extremely prominent in Canarsie Although the mill is long gone, the Vanderveer House, located at 106-02 Flatlands Avenue is extant.
A web page entitled Watercourses: Looking for the Lost Streams, Kills, Rivers, Brooks, Ponds, Lakes, Burns, Brakes, and Springs of New York City (https://watercourses.typepad.com/watercourses/water-fresh-creekfresh-kill-canarsie-brooklyn/) states the following:
“A local landmark was the Vanderveer Mill, also known as the Red Mill because it was painted barn-red. This was a tide mill built either in the late 1600s or sometime around 1770; I haven’t yet been able to determine when exactly it first started operating. (It may have been that an earlier mill operated in the late 17th century, and was replaced by the better-known Red Mill around 1770). It lasted until 1879 which it burned down (According to Brooklyn by Name: How the Neighborhoods, Streets, Parks, Bridges, and More Got Their Names, By Leonard Benardo & Jennifer Weiss; NYU Press, 2006). It was built by Cornelius Van Der Veer (or Van Der Veer), or possibly his descendents [sic]. He and his descendents [sic] also owned a massive farm covering much of today’s Flatbush and Canarsie, Brooklyn.”
Th1659,nderveer family genealogy, which is cited on the Watercourses web page cited above, states:
“Cornelius Janszen Van Der Veer b. 1622 or~1642 d. bef 22 Feb 1703 aka Cornelius de Seeuw, Cornelius de Zeeuw, Cornelius Dominicus
He is believed to have departed Amsterdam and arrived in America on Feb 17, 1659 on the ship De Otter, taking up residence in Midwout, what is now Flatbush, NY. On 13 Jun 1661 Cornelius was one of six persons who petitioned Gov [sic] Stuyvesant for a patent of land, who authorized a survey. In Feb [sic] 1678 he purchased a farm in Flatbush for about 2600 guilders. In 1683 The Assement [sic] Roll of Midwout lists him as having 100 acres. This land became known as the 26th and 32nd ward of Brooklyn and was owned by his descendents [sic] until 1906. The Vanderveer Park addition was the last remaining section of the original property and is located near Brooklyn College. He and his son-in-law Daniel Polhemus, erected a grist mill on Fresh Kill in Flatbush, later known as Vanderveer Mills, which came into the hands of his son Dominicus, and later his grandson Cornelius. He died in Feb, 1703 in Flatbush, NY.”
Unfortunately, very few people realize that Vanderveer’s Mill played an extremely significant role in black history. The Brooklyn Public Library’s web page (https://www.bklynlibrary.org/locations/jamaica-bay/black-canarsie-history#:~:text=Introduction%20to%20the%20Exhibit,Brooklyn%20for%20over%20three%20cen
turies) states:
“The following is the transcript for Black Canarsie: A History, a library exhibit that was on display at Jamaica Bay Library from February 1st through February 29th, 2016. It has been uploaded here for educational purposes. Colored Colony: A Free Black Community Grows in Canarsie (c.1863-1961)
After slavery was abolished in the State of New York, many free blacks living in Flatlands continued to work as farmhands or servants for the old Dutch families who had previously owned them. Yet as the eighteenth century progressed, a new generation of African Americans would come to settle the meadows of Canarsie and establish a free black community known as [the] “Colored Colony.”
In Brooklyn’s Last Village: Canarsie on Jamaica Bay, Merlis and Rosenzwieg [sic] describe African American life [in] the Canarsie neighborhood that was home to between thirty and fifty black families from the middle nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
Many black families settled in small cottages fronting Baisley’s Lane [which ran from east [sic] 95th Street to Rockaway Parkway]. By the late 1800s, the section near Rockaway Parkway, Skidmore Lane …, and Avenues J and K grew into a sizable settlement. Residents of Weeksville (now Ocean Hill) would walk via Hunterfly Road to Canarsie to visit their relatives on Sundays after attending church.
The Civil War and its social tribulations left an indelible mark on Canarsie’s Colored Colony. As reported in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Canarsie attracted many black families who had fled Manhattan in the wake of the New York City Draft Riots (July 13-16, 1863), the worst episode of civil unrest in the nation’s history. The riots resulted from the outrage of the white working class at new provisions in the federal Enrollment Act that allowed moneyed citizens to be exempt from conscription into the Union Army by way of a paid substitute, usually a poor Irish or German immigrant. Scapegoating blacks as the cause of the war and fearing increased job competition in the wake of emancipation, the mob loosed its furor on the African Americans of New York, lynching black men in the streets and burning an orphanage for black children to the ground. This violent insurrection prompted the flight of hundreds of African Americans from the city to the relative sanctuary of its outlaying regions, among them the village of Canarsie in Flatlands.
Once arrived in Canarsie, many fleeing the riots took refuge in the old mill on Fresh Creek Inlet that was built by John C. Vanderveer in 1801. Used for the storage of hay, the barn-red mill also became a place of asylum for freed slaves from the American South, leading some to believe that the structure may have been a stop along the Underground Railroad.”
A map, prepared by Surveyor R. L. Williams in 1906, which is in the possession of the Library of Congress, and can be accessed via https://www.loc.gov/item/2005626329/, documents that the area surrounding the East 105th Street subway station was at that time referred to as Vanderveer Crossings. In addition, attached is a masthead of a Canarsie Courier published in December 1964, documenting that the name Vanderveer Crossing remained in use as late as that time.
Given the foregoing, I am respectfully requesting that you introduce legislation calling for the subway station currently known as East 105th Street to be renamed, so that it will henceforth be known as East 105th Street – Vanderveer’s Crossing.
I thank you and for your assistance with this matter and eagerly await your response.
Very truly yours,
Ira M. Kluger |
Co-President
Canarsie Historical Society
