Outskirts Press, INC.

Old South Brooklyn comprised today’s Brooklyn neighborhoods of Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerun Hill, Red Hook and Gowanus. Anson Blake (1789-1868) was a Manhattan and Brooklyn land speculator and builder, born relatively poor as son of a Massachusetts farmer, he amassed his original fortune (1811-1819) as an Augusta, Georgia storekeeper. Becoming a Pearl Street merchant, he participated in the early stock market at the original Merchants’ Exchange. His first real estate holdings were wiped out by the Great Fire of 1835. In 1833 he began to speculate in Brooklyn farmlands prior to the new City of Brooklyn being chartered in 1834. Prosperous economic times lasted until the Panic of 1837, bringing an economic depression lasting through 1843. Blake bankrupted under the first U.S. uniform code of bankruptcy, after which, as a “gentleman,” he became creditworthy again during the economic prosperity of the 1840s and early 1850s. He engaged in land speculation in Upstate New York where he hoped a railroad would be built through his lots in Oneida, Herimer and Hamilton counties. At the time of his death, he was worth about $250,000, equivalent of many millions in today’s dollars. His story is representative of wealthy men of the era who had been rags-to-riches entrepreneurs. This commercial and financial biography is a contribution to our understanding of the economic fortunes and misfortunes of affluent men like Blake in New York’s antebellum periods.