Studebaker Building ARCHITECT: Tooker & Marsh DATE: 1920 STYLE: Neo-Gothic Built in 1920, the Studebaker Building is one of the few automobile showrooms remaining on Brooklyn’s once thriving Automobile Row, the stretch of Bedford Avenue running north and south from Fulton Street to Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights. Designed by New York-based architects Tooker and Marsh, the neo-Gothic style building is brick, clad in white terra cotta manufactured by the Atlantic Terra Cotta Works. An excellent example of a commercial terra-cotta clad structure which served as a company icon, the Studebaker Building retains the original terra-cotta design inscribed with the name “Studebaker” in black cursive on a diagonal banner across the wheel emblem, an image that was used by the corporation on buildings throughout the United States.

Loehmann's Department store was founded in this corner building in 1921 by Frieda Loehmann and her son. Frieda's business plan was to buy overstocks, samples, and discontinued products from top New York designers and sell them at affordable prices; she became known as the Grand Dame of Cut-Rate Fashion (long before Marshalls and T.J.Maxx). She would eventually buy this building and live upstairs. Though only one other Loehmann's opened during her lifetime (in the Bronx on Fordham Road). Following the founder's death in 1963, the store here on Bedford closed, but Charles Loehmann went public with the company and expanded nationwide. The company was bought and sold numerous times through the 1980s and at its peak around the turn of the 21st century, there were more than 100 stores in 17 states. The new century saw a number of bankruptcies before all the brick-and-mortar stores finally closed in 2014. For some time after Loehmann's closed at no. 1476, a similar store that used items purchased from Loehmann's closing auction, set up shop. In 1976 the building was sold to New Life Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, which it remains today.

Sterling Place, west from Franklin Avenue, showing the north side of the street, 1941.

Brooklyn Training School for Teachers, ca. 1930. Rendered in a Collegiate Renaissance Revival style, the Brooklyn Training School for Teachers was both a training school for aspiring teachers and the school in which their training was put into practice. This progressive model offered free education with theoretical and real classroom experience to a generation of adults, the children of immigrants, looking to make their way in the city. The building was completed between 1902 and 1907 as the population of New York, and as such, the number of students in its public schools, was booming. The training school model was discontinued in the early 1930s as the success of the program and the Depression resulted in an excess of qualified but out-of-work teachers. The building became a regular public grammar school called P.S. 138.

Troop C Armory 1555 Bedford Avenue Pilcher & Taschau 1903-1906 This massive structure was New York City’s first National Guard cavalry unit armory, and is the only Art Nouveau-inspired armory in Brooklyn. Architect Lewis F. Pilcher designed a unique stable wing within the building that could sanitarily house 117 horses – a major feat in the urban environment of Brooklyn. He utilized various levels and pitches for his floors, a complex drainage system and an abundance of windows and vents, all hidden behind the bays of the President Street exterior. The armory’s enormous drill shed, extra tall for ventilation, was also used for sporting and social events, and more recently, as a stage for movie sets. The administrative wing housed officer’s quarters and meeting rooms. The armory functioned as an active National Guard unit until as recently as 2011. Despite its important history and architectural contribution to the neighborhood and the city, the structure is unfortunately not protected as a designated landmark

The Kings County Savings Bank, date unknown. Designed by Halsey, McCormack & Helmer, the architectural firm that was responsible for the Williamsburg Savings Bank tower at Hanson Place, this Art Deco building was completed in 1930. The facade features sculptural figures of lions, a dog and a number of human representations of scientists, scholars, and inventors. Once the home of the Kings County Savings Bank, it now houses the Banco Popular.

Park Place adjoining northeast corner of Franklin Ave, 1941.

(Pilcher & Taschau, 1903-1906) This massive structure was New York City’s first National Guard cavalry unit armory, and is the only Art Nouveau-inspired armory in Brooklyn. Architect Lewis F. Pilcher designed a unique stable wing within the building that could sanitarily house 117 horses – a major feat in the urban environment of Brooklyn. He utilized various levels and pitches for his floors, a complex drainage system and an abundance of windows and vents, all hidden behind the bays of the President Street exterior. The armory’s enormous drill shed, extra tall for ventilation, was also used for sporting and social events, and more recently, as a stage for movie sets. The administrative wing housed officer’s quarters and meeting rooms. The armory functioned as an active National Guard unit until as recently as 2011. Despite its important history and architectural contribution to the neighborhood and the city, the structure is unfortunately not protected as a designated landmark. Many local and citywide activists are concerned that the building could be in danger of becoming the centerpiece of an inappropriate and unsympathetic development project that would destroy the original façade of its signature stable wing, and loom over the surrounding neighborhood.

Located along the hilly terminal moraine between the prosperous communities of Bedford and Flatbush, Crown Heights South was considered a rocky no-man’s land of scrub farmland for most of the 19th century. During that time, it was home to subsistence farmers whose homes dotted the landscape, as well as poor Irish and black families who settled in shantytowns called “Crow Hill” and “Pigtown” by a derisive press. In 1846, this was where the city of Brooklyn placed the Kings County Penitentiary, as far from downtown Brooklyn as was feasible. By 1874, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had completed Eastern Parkway as a Parisian-style boulevard to extend the picturesque character of Prospect Park into the expanding residential neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The parkway, which followed the moraine through the neighborhood that was now called Crown Heights, was designed to be lined with fine homes and mansions, though this housing never developed as Olmsted and Vaux envisioned. The thoroughfare did bring attention to the neighborhood, though, and formed the border between Crown Heights North and Crown Heights South in later years. While the northern side of Crown Heights was fully built up by 1900, it wasn’t until after the new century began that large-scale residential development began in southern Crown Heights. The north-south corridors of Nostrand, Bedford, Rogers and Franklin Avenues were already important transportation corridors, leading to the paving of Union, President, Carroll and other cross streets. Several major changes led to the development of Crown Heights South after the turn of the 20th century. These included the 1907 demolition of the infamous Kings County Penitentiary, which was replaced by a Jesuit Prep school and college; the 1913 construction of Ebbets Field, home to the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team; the development of Brooklyn’s famous Automobile Row, with its showrooms and service centers, which flourished on Bedford Avenue between 1905 and 1945; and the presence of the nearby Brooklyn Museum, which opened in 1897. Encouraged by these developments, as well as the new subways constructed under Eastern Parkway, developers built up entire blocks at a time with new housing. With the exception of certain blocks of single-family mansions, much of what was built was designed for multiple families, as the age of the single-family rowhouse had nearly passed. Crown Heights South displays a fine array of architectural styles of the early 20th century, designed by such prominent Brooklyn architects as Montrose W. Morris, Axel Hedman, J. L. Brush, Arthur Koch and Slee & Bryson in the Revival styles popular at the time: Renaissance, Colonial, Flemish, Tudor and more. Today, the neighborhood retains its vibrant mix of residential architecture, including attached rowhouses, detached mansions and grand apartment buildings, as well as some fine religious buildings and grand institutions. One of its most well-known structures is the Bedford Armory, the city’s first mounted cavalry-unit armory that occupies an entire city block. The armory’s future is a source of controversy, with developers seeking to construct housing on the site and community members vying to preserve the building. Unfortunately, none of Crown Heights South’s architectural gems have been designated as landmarks by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Local advocates, including the Crown Heights South Association, formed in 2016, are working to survey and advocate for the neighborhood to ensure that any future changes are sensitive to its rich past.

Cameo Theatre, 1924. In 1924 Harrison Wiseman designed a grand Egyptian influenced Art Deco in Crown Heights. A well-known and sought after theatre architect Wiseman created a fanciful facade rendered in colorful terra cotta. A unique feature of this theatre's design was a 1500 seat roof garden auditorium (the concrete screening wall is still visible on the roof). The theatre, which became a Loew's house the year after it opened (and was renamed the Kameo), survived until 1974. That year the Philadelphian Sabbath Church bought the building. Used for church functions since then, the interior of the theatre has been well maintained, and the exterior ornamentation remains if a little dirty.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Epiphany (now Lutheran Church of the Epiphany) was founded in 1908. The building has an exterior of stone and was designed in the Gothic style. The present structure was built in 1925. It includes a gymnasium, kitchen, 800-seat auditorium, Sunday school, parsonage and sexton's quarters.

802 Park Place, 1925. According to the photographer's notes this small wood-frame structure is the gardener's cottage for the home of George B. Fisk. Fisk was president of the Long Island Rail Road from 1839 to 1847. He presumably had a large home, which by 1925 was no longer standing, somewhere in the vicinity of this cottage.