It's a home worthy of superlatives; grand in scale and extremely decorative. The Dr. Isaac K. Funk house was built in 1893 on a very visible corner in "Prohibition Park," now known as Westerleigh.
Westerleigh began as a campground for a temperance group, The National Prohibition Campground Association, which in 1877 bought 25 acres of land and christened the area Prohibition Park. Within a few months of its founding, the association erected tents and cottages on small lots, and a large tent for public gatherings.
The town that grew around the original acreage of the camp grounds celebrated temperance by naming streets after early leaders of the Prohibition Movement — i.e., Neal Dow, Clinton B. Fisk — as well as for states that supported anti-liquor laws, like Maine and Ohio.
Dr. Issac K. Funk was born in Clifton, Ohio, in 1839. A U.S. lexicographer and publisher, he was responsible for the publication of several religious periodicals and secular reference works. His publications include the “Homiletic Review,” “Voice,” an influential temperance periodical, and the “Literary Digest,” which he founded in 1890.
Funk also prepared, oversaw and served as editor-in-chief of the unabridged dictionary, “Standard Dictionary of the English Language” (1893), and the “New Standard Dictionary of the English Language” (1913), which he had nearly completed before his death in April of 1912.
Funk served as a Lutheran minister from 1861 to 1872, resigned from the ministry to travel, and later returned to editorial work for the “Christian Radical.” He started his own business in New York in 1876, supplying materials and books to ministers, and was joined a year later by A.W. Wagnalls. The company was renamed the Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1891.
THE BOULEVARD
The house Funk built in Prohibition Park stands at the corner of Jewett Avenue and The Boulevard. The latter was Prohibition Park’s premier thoroughfare. At one end of the street a 4,000-seat hall called University Temple would be built, featuring an arched entry with two bell towers. The hall burned in 1903.
Funk’s house is actually a “double house,” what we today would refer to as a duplex — a building containing two one-family homes. The structure is baronial in scale, built of wood-frame construction with clapboard and shingle siding.
Two massive projecting bays on the second floor flank and envelop an expansive solarium, while on each side of the building’s facade are displayed Palladian-windowed gables rising from the roofline at the third story. A full front porch running along The Boulevard’s facade features classical columns as well.
Dr. William H. Boole, leader of the group that founded Prohibition Park, was but one of the many influential men connected with the area. Dr. Funk’s brother, Benjamin F. Funk, as well as William T. Wardwell, an official of the Standard Oil Company, and poet Edwin Markham, were other esteemed men who practiced and espoused temperance. Dr. Boole’s stunning house at the corner of Maine Avenue and Jewett Avenue was lost to demolition a few years ago.
HAPPY DAYS
Dr. Isaac Funk’s nephew, Charles Earle Funk, a noted editor was to reminisce that the early days of Prohibition Park’s temperance resort were: “happy days and often exciting to grownups and youngsters alike. Picnic suppers were held in the nearby grove between the afternoon and evening meetings.”
As the temperance movement began to wane and the original inhabitants left the area, the town was renamed Westerleigh. It is considered one of the most historic and lovely of the Island’s neighborhoods, with its history as a center of scholarship intact more than a century after its founding.
In addition to its connection to the temperance movement, Westerleigh also is home to the oldest tennis club in the United States, tennis having been introduced to the States (from England, via Bermuda) at the Staten Island home of Mary Ewing Outerbridge, who played the first game in this country at the Staten Island Cricket Club on an hourglass-shaped court. The College Avenue location is still home to a tennis court.
Happily, the double home at numbers 6-8 The Boulevard that Dr. Funk built in Prohibition Park a century ago, stands as a reminder of the town that temperance built. A time when men of letters like Dr. Funk, Edwin Markham and Dr. Boole were proud to call this portion of Staten Island home.
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