This week on ‘Picture Postals from Lovecraft’, newly colourised views of 169 Clinton Street in 1935. These are two of the Sperr pictures, via the NYPL. 169 is the end residential building in the short row.

The building on the far right of the pictures had served as the New York Court of Special Sessions (of the Second Division, meaning Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond) since 1902… “The Second Division the Court of Special Sessions is now held at the corner of Atlantic avenue and Clinton street” at “171 Atlantic avenue”. The Court’s lease was renewed in 1922. This was the court for the trying of petty crimes. Meaning crime that merited either a fine, or some days in jail or in a youth reformatory. The presence of this court must have greatly increased the number of delinquent youths and low-life in the immediate vicinity of Lovecraft’s room, and on the sidewalks on the way to his nearby grocery store on the corner of Clinton and Atlantic.

One can just make out the “Tailor” sign, which may have been the Syrian tailor he mentioned and patronised. However, there was also a tailoring sign on might be small rentable units that ran down the side of the court building, so perhaps we can’t be quite sure. They may have been two tailors here, or one tailor with a shopfront and also a sign a bit further down the street.

The vacant and cleared lot was the site of the once lavish but later seedily decayed ‘Fouguera’ building, which was standing when Lovecraft lived at No. 169. 1934 was when the ‘slum clearance’ demolition boards went up on the ‘Fouguera’ building, as noted by the Brooklyn Eagle. Thus, walking down Clinton Street would have been a more canyon-like experience than the open sun-washed 1935 view above implies. Nevertheless, on a bright January day in 1925, it might not have looked too dark and gloomy…

Evidently in 1935 the roof had been changed and raised since 1926, to add the couple of attic rooms whose low windows we see in 1935.