A Walking Tour of Crown Heights

1.We'll start our tour where the A points to Paul Robeson High School, at 140 Albany Avenue. This was formerly Alexander Hamilton High School, which had been given the bust of Arthur S. Somers after he died (see obit pages).

2. Walk west for 2 blocks on Bergen Street to Brooklyn Avenue and make a left. The location across the street from the Brooklyn Children's Museum used to be the Froebel Academy, 176-178 Brooklyn Avenue, where Valerie and Andy Somers attended grammar school.

3. Continue south on Brooklyn Avenue for 2 blocks to Sterling Place, then turn right and you will find 988 Sterling Place in the middle of the block, between Brooklyn Avenue and New York Avenue. This was the home of Arthur and Virginia Somers, and their children, Andrew, Fred and Arthur.

Pictures of 988 Sterlng Place

4. Now backtrack on Sterling Place back to Brooklyn Avenue, make a right and walk south for one block to St. John's Place. Here at 224 Brooklyn Avenue, you can visit the impressive Church of St. Gregory, R.C., where Somers weddings, funerals and baptisms took place. You can also see the St Gregory the Great School which is located around the corner at 991 St. John's Place.

5. Continue south on Brooklyn Avnue for 5 blocks (crossing Eastern Parkway) to President Street, where you will find 1328 President Street, just in from the corner of Brooklyn Avenue. This is the house where Congressman Andrew Somers and his wife Ruth Edna raised their children Arthur, Andree, Edward, Andrew Jr. and Valerie. This area is known as Congressman's Row.

Pictures of 1328 President Street,

Two doors down from here is 1338 President Street, where they moved after the older children got married and moved out.

Pictures of 1338 President Street.

6. Continue west on President Street for a block and a half, then turn left on Nostrand Avenue and walk one block south to Carroll Street, which is where you will find Brooklyn Prep, located at 1186 Carroll Street, between Nostrand and Rogers Avenues. Brooklyn Preparatory School has since been renamed Medgar Evars High School. It was a Jesuit run all-boy school attended by Somers and Lawrence boys alike. Brooklyn Prep is also where Tom Ross, who grew up in Williamsburg Brooklyn, and married Andree Somers, went to school. Andree's brother Edward McCormick Somers also attended Brooklyn Prep, as did a slew of Lawrences, who commuted in from Flushing, Queens. My cousin Andrew's father William Lawrence attended, as did two of his uncles, Andrew Lawrence and Lou Murtha, who was a track coach and teacher there for 25 years. Andrew and his brother Bill, the next generation of Lawrences, also attended, as did their first cousin Raymond Dunne, of Flushing (his Aunt Mary's eldest). Arthur (my father) for some reason attended Poly Prep instead, which is also located in Brooklyn, which he always spoke very fondly of. His youngest brother Andrew attended Saint Cecilia's High School in Englewood New Jersey, as by that time the Somers family was no longer living in Brooklyn.

6. Walk east on Carroll Street for six blocks, to where it dead-ends into Lincoln Terrace/Arthur S. Somers Park, at Rochester Ave. This park was renamed in honor of Arthur S. Somers sometime after his death in 1932, then renamed back to Lincoln Terrace Park and finally is today named Lincoln Terrace/Arthur S. Somers Park.

7. After leaving the park, walk west one block to Utica Avenue and hail a cab. Drive south on Utica and turn right on Clarendon Rd. to get to the entrance to Holy Cross Cemetery. There are a couple of family plots to be visited here - the McCormick grave and the Somers grave. Buried in the Somers grave are Arthur and Virginia and their children who died as babies:
Edna May 1888- 1898
Virginia Ellen 1890- 1890
Arthur Sylvester 1890-1893

Buried in the McCormick grave are Ruth Edna McCormick and her husband, Andrew Lawrence Somers, her parents, Edward and Mary McCormick and her two sisters who died as children.

Lawrence Family

Many Lawrences were also buried at Holy Cross Cemetery.

click to enlarge



8. Side trip to Gallagher's Funeral Home: This would have been worth taking years ago when Mr. Gallagher was still around. The Gallaghers were great friends of the family. In fact they would sometimes go there to visit Mrs. Gallagher, who was Ruth Edna's godmother. Aunt Valerie remembers being taken there as a child. Getting bored once with sitting in a chair, she left the room to explore, only to find herself in the company of a dead person! John Gallagher's files on the burials of family members provided valuable information in later years. The above response to Cousin Clytie Somers is what initially got Uncle Ed and Aunt Nancy started on their genealogy research.

To get there, get back on Utica and drive south to Flatlands Avenue, then make a left on Flatlands and drive west to Flatbush, to where John T. Gallagher's Funeral Home is located at 2001 Flatbush Ave. To go to the old location, go north on Flatbush Avenue, then turn right at Church Avenue and continue east for about two blocks to 2549 Church Avenue.