Storefronts on the north side of Fort Hamilton Parkway, west of East 4th Street; December 15, 1958.

FDNY Engine 240 ARCHITECT: Peter J. Lauritzen DATE: 1895 STYLE: Romanesque Revival The Firehouse for Engine Company 40/Hook & Ladder Company 21 was built in 1895 as part of a campaign by Brooklyn Fire Commissioner Frederick W. Wurster to replace the old firehouses housing the volunteer fire companies in Brooklyn’s recently annexed districts with new up-to-date buildings suitable for modern equipment and full-time paid professional staff. This building was designed by the noted architect Peter J. Lauritzen. It is one of eight firehouses he designed for the Brooklyn Fire Department between 1894 and 1897 and is his finest in the Romanesque Revival Style, a style favored for Brooklyn firehouses of the period. The building’s imposing limestone and brick façade features an asymmetrical design, with a rusticated limestone ground story, round corner turret richly decorated with Romanesque motifs, a broad tripartite round arched window set off by a drip molding with label stops, a flat-arched double-window flanked by colonnettes, an elaborate arched cornice, and an asymmetric parapet.

Monument of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), as seen from Hillside Avenue, 1891. Henry Ward Beecher was a clergyman, social reformer, orator, and ardent abolitionist. Well known across the United States (indeed, Debby Applegate titled her Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Beecher “The Most Famous Man in America”), thousands would come to hear him at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, his sermons were transcribed and published, and he was regularly requested to speak at high profile events. An 1875 adultery trial threatened his reputation, but ultimately the civil jury could not reach a verdict. Despite being surrounded by controversy, his granite monument bears the inscription, "He thinketh no evil." (Lot 25911, Sec. 140)