Park Slope Armory ARCHITECT: William A. Mundell DATE: 1887-88 STYLE: Castellated Built in 1891-95, the Fourteenth Regiment Armory is designed in the castellated style by William A. Mundell. The armory consists of a three-story administration building with asymmetrical three- and four-story towers and corner bastions facing Eighth Avenue, and a one-and-one-half-story, barrel-vaulted drill shed with shallow buttresses and projecting entrance pavilions on the side streets. Organized in the late 1840s, the Fourteenth Regiment, known as the Brooklyn Chasseurs and later nicknamed the “Red-legged Devils” for the red Zouave uniforms worn by its members, served with distinction and suffered heavy casualties during the Civil War.

Park Slope Branch, ca.1925. Completed in 1906 to the designs of Raymond F. Almirall, the current Park Slope Branch was originally named the Prospect Branch (it was renamed in 1975). Raymond F. Almirall designed four Brooklyn branches and was a member of the Brooklyn Carnegie Committee’s Architects’ Advisory Commission. Built in a Classic Revival style, the building is set back from the street and is symmetrical in floorplan. The interior of this branch is notable for being particularly ornate and largely still original. The entrance floor is a multi-colored mosaic and the walls of the reading rooms are clad in wooden wainscoting. Other interior features include arched stained glass windows and tiled and wood-framed fireplaces.

Ansonia Clock Company, undated. Anson Green Phelps founded the Ansonia Brass Company in 1844, and six years later the Ansonia Clock Company was founded in Connecticut as a subsidiary of the parent company. For the next eight decades, Ansonia was one of the major clock manufacturers in the United States. This clock factory, which occupied much of the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 12th and 13th Streets, opened in 1879. The factory is lost to a terrible fire in 1880 and rebuilt in the same location the following year. The company condensed its production into Brooklyn in the mid-1880s. 1914 was a banner year for the firm which was then producing 440 different clock models. The war years were hard on the business and they never fully recovered, particularly with new competition in the novelty clock market. The Ansonia Clock Company sold this building in 1926 and sold the business to Soviet Russian interests in 1929. Today the building is a co-op called Ansonia Court.

Grocery store and frame buildings on Sixth Avenue, north of 16th Street, 1940. The corner store awning advertises the grocery as a “direct receiver of butter and eggs,” presumably fresh. Photographer P.L. Sperr describes nos. 567 and 569 as “very old frame dwellings.” Today, both structures remain, but the clapboards have been replaced with vinyl and brick veneer siding.

My Archive Spring 2019 "I was walking the avenue with my camera when I came upon an unusual sight. The couple behind the horse were arguing and the woman was complaining about being embarrassed." —Michael Castellano

Acme Hall was a prominent social club built in 1890. It was designed in the Romanesque style by architect C. Nickenig. The original building was adorned with a crenelated roofline and a tower that jutted out of its southeast corner. The tower bore its name, "The Acme," in an Amherst stone carving. The hall lost its elite status however: in the 1930s it was raided for showing stag films - quite a departure from its well-to-do upbringings. By then, the eatery downstairs was "Diamonds," a bar and grill infamous for a shooting in 1938. A patron, Robert Joyce, was upset over a comment about the Brooklyn Dodger's defeat by the Giants in the National League. Joyce, who had reportedly consumed 18 glasses of beer that evening, shot two people - one of them was the son of the bar's owner. In 1945 , The Acme was turned over to become a mixture of stores and lofts after being purchased by Ernest S. Felzman. An illegal garment factory and loft residencies also found their way into the building around this time. The Acme was turned over once again to Howard Pronsky in 1986. Sometime before the new ownership, the tower was removed and the whimsical crenelation was replaced by a more modest roofline. The space was converted to offices after a $750,000 renovation, making it one of the first non-brownstone buildings with office space in the neighborhood. Today, it operates as a music studio.

Public School 39 ARCHITECT: Samuel B. Leonard DATE: 1876-77 STYLE: French Second Empire Erected in 1876-77 as P.S. 39, this building was renamed in 1916 to honor Henry Bristow, whose home had served as a temporary schoolhouse during construction. Believed to have been designed by Samuel B. Leonard, the building is transitional in style, combining distinctive Italianate features – such as round-arched windows, cornices with modillions, and paired brackets – with mansard roofs typical of the French Second Empire style.

Park Slope Branch, Brooklyn Public Library 431 Sixth Avenue Raymond F. Almirall, 1905-06 This library was originally the Prospect Branch, housed beginning in 1900 in Prospect Park’s Litchfield Villa and consisting solely of books related to natural history. As Park Slope’s population grew, the demand for a larger, all-purpose library led to its relocation in 1901 to several storefronts on 9th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. By 1904, the city purchased a large site and began planning for a new Carnegie-funded building. Its name was changed to Park Slope in 1975. The Classical Revival style, brick-clad building with limestone trim features an imposing, projecting portico entrance with Doric columns and a stone pediment. Like those found on the Pacific Branch, the torches in the keystones above the entrance and windows represent the light of learning. Its intact interior features stained glass, tiled fireplaces, wood paneling and marble mosaic floors. The Park Slope branch was designated in 1998.