HISTORIC INFORMATION

Fort Crockett was a military installation during the early part of the 20th century. It is interesting to note that the San Luis hotel was built on top of one the the gun batteries, and many of the buildings between 53rd street & 45th street, bordered by Avenue U and the seawall, were part of Fort Crocket. Some are easily identified by their distinctive facade. The original front of our building is the current back of the building where you can see the imprinted number 67 above what was once a barn door, just below the window that was the hayloft! A building just behind us has the number 69 and was the granary.

Although most recently this building functioned as a day care, we took the building back to its roots—a barn where horses lived and worked—and chose to expose some of the beautiful wood rafters, hand cut subfloor cross bracing, original truss beams anchored in hand poured cement walls, and copper plumbing. During renovation, we reclaimed hand-cut tongue and groove boards and used them as accent pieces on the newly built and forged stairway. We also found several hand forged cast iron hooks—look for them around the building!

This renovation project has been a labor of love by our entire crew who has patiently brought my vision for this building to life. This building has seen many things since the early 1900’s and has at the very least been home to horses and lots of children. We wish we knew the stories of old and had actual photos of the horses, but we don’t, so we use our imaginations in this building decorated in a style we call “industrial meets early barn.”

Notes: On the hand drawn map, our building is #14. In the photo you can see the Hoskins Battery where the San Luis now sits and behind it, our distinctively shaped long rectangular building at the corner of 53rd and Avenue U.