Essay · May 2026

Three families at 47 Windsor Place

Driscoll, Crosby, and Hands — and what the 1920, 1940, and 1950 censuses say about thirty years of one Brooklyn brownstone.

The 1950 federal census schedule for ED 24-1664 lists 47 Windsor Place as a single street address with three separate households — three heads, each on a different sheet of the same enumerator's roll. In the order the enumerator recorded them: Mary Crosby, Charles Driscoll, and Nora Hands. All three were listed as Head; two of the three had been born in Ireland; the youngest of the three was 71.

The 1920 census, taken thirty years earlier, lists each of them too. The age progression matches to within a year. The birthplaces line up. The three households did not move in together — they had been living under one roof for at least three decades.

And between them, in the ten years bracketed by 1930 and 1940, the building was almost something else entirely. The 1940 census enumerator recorded 104 Pale-of-Settlement-born residents at 47 Windsor Place — more than at any other address on the block — and 27 Italian-born residents, headed by the Troia and Iurino families. That is the highest immigrant concentration of any house on the block in 1940, and it sat directly between the Driscoll-Crosby-Hands trio that came before and the same trio that returned after the war. The building was a brownstone-shaped boarding house for the people who could not yet afford their own brownstone elsewhere in Brooklyn. The Crosby and Hands and Driscoll names did not leave; they shared the building with a far larger immigrant household for a decade and then resumed sole tenancy. The block-wide migration-waves finding is where that crossover shows up most cleanly.

Driscoll

Charles Driscoll was 40 years old in the 1920 enumeration, born in Ireland. By 1950 he was 73, still listed as Head of his household at 47 Windsor Place. The intervening 1940 sheet (also enumerated for this block) lists a Frank M. Driscoll, 37, salesman — almost certainly Charles's son, with a wife Mary and five Brooklyn-born children ranging from Patricia, age 1, up to Frank Jr., age 10. The household structure suggests Charles was already retired and living with — or alongside — his adult son's family by 1940.

The Driscoll name persists in the neighborhood. In 284 Windsor Place, a Frank M. Driscoll appears again in 1949 — a separate Brooklyn Eagle birth notice surfaced by the May 2026 article walker. Whether that's the same Frank M. who was 37 at 47 Windsor in 1940 (he'd have been 46 in 1949, consistent) or his son grown into adult, the data isn't conclusive enough to decide.

Hands

Nora F. Hands was 43 in 1920, born in New York. Thirty years later, the 1950 census lists Nora Hands, age 71, born New York, Head at 47 Windsor Place. Two adult sons share her household: Arthur, 35, clerical, and Edwin, 35, bartender. The repetition of "age 35" between Arthur and Edwin in the OCR'd transcription is either a true coincidence (twins) or an enumerator error — the actual penciled handwriting on the sheet may show one of them a year or two off; the underlying NARA scan would resolve it.

Just below Nora's listing the enumerator recorded a second Hands household, headed by Howard, 35, laborer, with wife Mary C., 43, clerk. This may be a third Hands brother sharing the building, or Nora's apartment may have been subdivided into two units by 1950 — the kind of detail the form's dwelling-number column should answer.

Crosby

Mary Crosby, age 73 in 1950, listed as Head at 47 Windsor Place, born Ireland. The 1920 census records a Mary E. Crosby, age 45, who would be 73 in 1950 — the ages line up. But the 1920 record gives her birthplace as New York, not Ireland. Either the 1950 enumerator misrecorded, the 1920 transcription was imperfect, or — most likely — Mary E. Crosby of 1920 and Mary Crosby of 1950 are two different women whose name and age progression happen to overlap. The Crosby name itself was associated with this address in 1933 and again in 1935, when the Brooklyn Eagle ran two separate birth announcements for the John Crosby family at 47 Windsor Place — but that John Crosby is not Mary E. Crosby's husband on the available evidence. The Crosby connection to 47 is real; the specific person-by-person continuity is the part the records make probable but not certain.

The building they shared

47 Windsor Place is a four-story brownstone built in 1901, on the south side of the block, lot 58 of NYC Block 1108. The 1940 NYC tax photograph, held by the New York City Municipal Archives, shows the building's street face intact and unaltered. The 1950 enumerator's sheet placed three "Head of household" listings under the single address, separated by two or three lines each — the standard form for a multi-unit brownstone where the families had taken over individual floors.

By 1980, the Driscoll, Crosby, and Hands names had all gone from the building's deed chain (a Stephanie Vinci sale to Agnes C. Lecomte appears that year, the first transaction the current ACRIS records show). The current owner of record is Tamara Lee Plummer, per NYC PLUTO.

What the data does and doesn't say

What the censuses confirm: at least one Charles Driscoll, one Nora Hands, and one Crosby family were continuously associated with 47 Windsor Place from 1920 through 1950 — a span longer than most twentieth-century American household tenures. Charles Driscoll and Nora Hands are the strongest matches, with consistent birthplaces and age progressions across the three censuses. The Crosby continuity is more probable than certain.

What the records can't tell us: whether these three families knew each other in any meaningful sense; whether they shared a back hallway or a stoop or holidays; how they distributed the rent or the building's repairs. The 1950 enumerator wrote each name on its own line and moved on. That was the limit of what the federal government cared to record. The rest is up to whoever has it in family memory.

Sources: 1920 US Census Population Schedule, Brooklyn Borough Kings County (NARA T625 via DPLA description text). 1940 US Census Population Schedule, ED 24-2727 (NARA T627 via DPLA mediaMaster, OCR'd via Gemini 2.5 Flash with a Gemini 2.5 Pro quality-review pass). 1950 US Census Population Schedule, ED 24-1664 (NARA T1185 via DPLA mediaMaster, OCR'd via Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 2.5 Pro). NYC ACRIS deed history for Block 1108, Lot 58. NYC PLUTO. NYC Municipal Archives tax photograph collection. Brooklyn Eagle digital archive (Brooklyn Public Library), May 2026 sweep.