St. Andrew's Episcopal Church 4917 Fourth Avenue Designed by Lawrence B. Valk & Son 1893 This Romanesque Revival church is Sunset Park’s oldest church. Valk was a prolific designer of churches throughout the United States, many in this same Romanesque style. The church is graced with many unusual and charming features, including the arches of varying heights and widths on the front façade and a skinny column running up the side of its bell tower, capped with a small turret and modest cross.

Raymond F. Almirall, 1905 The 200-foot tower of St. Michael’s was the second tallest building in Brooklyn after the Williamsburgh Savings Bank until the early 21st century when high-rise residential towers began to sprout up across the borough. The tower’s egg-shaped dome recalls the famous basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Paris, a French connection made through its École des Beaux Artstrained architect. Almirall also designed the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Building at 51 Chambers Street in Manhattan, as well as most of the campus of Seaview Hospital in Staten Island.

Originally part of Bay Ridge, the area got its own name with the creation of Sunset Park in 1891. Today, the neighborhood extends from Prospect Expressway to 65th Street and Eighth Avenue to the waterfront. Sunset Park’s first major development began after the Civil War, when manufacturing enterprises were established on its waterfront. Beginning in the 1880s, the inland area developed as a residential neighborhood for middle- and workingclass families, including many who worked on the waterfront. A major stimulant to its growth was the establishment in 1889 of a ferry service to and from Manhattan at Second Avenue and 39th Street. Sunset Park’s first waves of immigrants were Irish, German and Scandinavian, but by the late 19th century, immigrants from Italy, Greece and Poland also arrived. To accommodate them, large swaths of rowhouses were built. Puerto Rican and other Latin American populations began settling here in the 1940s, and large numbers of Asian immigrants arrived in the 1980s, establishing Brooklyn’s first and New York City’s third “Chinatown.” Sunset Park’s standout building type is the masonry rowhouse. In fact, Sunset Park contains one of the earliest and most extensive concentrations of two-family masonry rowhouses in the city. Mostly built between 1885 and 1912, these stunning blocks are accented by commercial thoroughfares and institutional and religious buildings mostly completed by the early 1930s. The area also has many multiple-family dwellings and tenements, with some early examples of non-profit cooperative apartment buildings. The neighborhood’s most pronounced architectural styles are neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival, all popular at the end of the 19th century. While these rows are attributed to specific architects, it is believed that at this time, architects mostly worked on interior layouts, as exterior designs were repeated in modest neighborhoods like this one. In 1988, an area encompassing 3,237 buildings was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. All of the sites in this brochure are part of the district except numbers 7, 12a and 18. Despite this designation, Sunset Park currently remains unprotected by local landmark status, aside from a few individual landmarks. Though not covered on this tour, Sunset Park’s waterfront is occupied by several notable institutions. To the northwest is Bush Terminal, an enormous industrial complex developed by Irving T. Bush beginning in the 1890s, which at its height consisted of roughly 200 acres. The first facility in the city to integrate shipping, manufacturing and warehousing, it was also the largest multi-tenant industrial complex in the country. In the mid-1980s, Bush Terminal was renamed Industry City, and there remain roughly 40 acres and 16 buildings housing artisans, garment manufacturing and warehousing. Just south of Industry City is the Brooklyn Army Terminal, constructed by the Federal government in 1918. During World War II, roughly 85% of army equipment and personnel were shipped overseas from this 95-acre complex. Sold to the City in 1981 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, it now houses light manufacturing, warehousing and small businesses.

"41st Street, north side, east from Third Avenue. A very old frame dwelling can be seen nestling against the two-story brick homes. On the right is Public School No. 136. September 8, 1940" Public School 136 originally opened in November of 1902. It was more than 1300 regular day students, as well as an evening public elementary school for boys and men.

Public School 136, 1902. Located on 4th Avenue between 40th and 41st Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, this four-story school was designed by C.B.J. Snyder and completed in 1902. C.B.J. Snyder served as the Superintendent of School Buildings in New York City from 1891 to 1923. The building now houses two middle schools: Charles O. Dewey Middle School and Sunset Park Prep Middle School.

"3rd Avenue, at 46th Street, showing the B. M. T. elevated station thereon. The view is west across the avenue along the north side of 46th Street, 1940." In 1939 Robert Moses got permission from the City Councilto built his Gowanus Parkway, an elevated highway constructed atop of the pillars of the 3rd Avenue BMT Elevated Line, which was not longer in use. Moses realized that to accommodate the roadway and entrance/exit infrastructure, 3rd Avenue would need to be widened. The buildings in this photograph of the corner of 46th Street and 3rd Avenue no longer exist as they were demolished for the street widening, completed in 1941.

(Former) Sunset Park Court ARCHITECT: Mortimer Dixon Metcalfe DATE: 1931 STYLE: Classical Revival The former Sunset Park Court House is an impressive Classical Revival style building. It is one of only two courthouse buildings known to have been designed by Mortimer D. Metcalfe, a New York architect who assisted with the design of Grand Central Terminal, served as New York State Deputy Architect under State Architect Franklin Ware, and independently designed several buildings in Palm Beach, Florida. The Sunset Park Court House was built in 1931 to house the magistrates’ and municipal courts and today is one of the neighborhood’s few remaining civic buildings. Its imposing Ionic-columned porticos on the 42nd and 43rd street facades and its grand quoins culminating in American eagle capitals, moldings, meticulously-articulated limestone details, and window treatment make the Sunset Park Court House a rich and faithful translation of the Classical Revival style.

Shade trees replaced cherry trees Caption: "Shade trees replaced cherry trees--Looking down Sunset Park's new tree-shaded foot path \[flanked by park benches] separating the north end of the park from the south end, now under modernization by the \[Works Progress] Administration park crews. ..."