During this period, the affluent, contiguous districts of
Fort Greene and
Clinton Hill (then characterized collectively as The Hill) were home to such notable figures as
Astral Oil Works founder
Charles Pratt and his children, including local civic leader
Charles Millard Pratt;
Theosophical Society co-founder
William Quan Judge; and
Pfizer co-founders
Charles Pfizer and
Charles F. Erhart. Brooklyn Heights remained one of the New York metropolitan area's most august patrician redoubts into the early 20th century under the aegis of such figures as abolitionist clergyman
Henry Ward Beecher,
Congregationalist theologians Lyman Abbott and
Newell Dwight Hillis (who followed Beecher as the second and third pastors of
Plymouth Church, respectively), financier
John Jay Pierrepont (a grandson of founding Heights resident
Hezekiah Pierrepont), banker/art collector
David Leavitt, educator/politician
Seth Low, merchant/banker
Horace Brigham Claflin, attorney
William Cary Sanger (who served for two years as
United States Assistant Secretary of War under Presidents
William McKinley and
Theodore Roosevelt) and publisher
Alfred Smith Barnes. Contiguous to the Heights, the less exclusive
South Brooklyn was home to longtime civic leader
James S. T. Stranahan, who became known (often derisively) as the "
Baron Haussmann of Brooklyn" for championing
Prospect Park and other public works.