Union League Club, ca. 1885. The Union League was an off-shoot of the Union Club, one of New York's oldest and most prestigious social clubs. The Union League was founded by supporters of the Union side during the Civil War. Its original building was in Manhattan on 26th Street, but chapters soon opened in a number of eastern cities. The Brooklyn chapter was founded in 1887 and in 1891 it moved into a brand new Romanesque Revival building on Dean and Bedford Streets. The red brick and brownstone building was imposing with large arched entranceways and a tall tower at the corner (which has since been removed). The large equestrian statue of President Grant that sits across the street from the entrance was commissioned and erected by the League.

1200 Dean Street (Arthur Bates Jennings, c. 1897; expansion: Dodge & Morrison with Kenneth M. Murchison, 1906) – NYC HD, NR-D This Romanesque Revival style church was completed in two phases about 10 years apart by different architects. The northern section facing Dean Street is the original building, while that facing Nostrand Avenue was added later. The church dominates the intersection with its romantic massing, including gables, conical and pyramidal turrets, and a campanile bell tower, as well as decorative features like round arches with rough-faced stone lintels, leaded glass windows, and slate tile roof. The church retains the neighborhood’s original name, Bedford.

Thallon Mansion, 1930. Robert Thallon was a Scot who arrived in the United States in 1853. Over the next decade he became a pioneer in the field of food exporting and a founder of the New York Produce Exchange. After a decade aboard post-retirement, Thallon and family returned to New York. Thallon the elder bought a home in the tony community along St. Marks Avenue at no. 816. Robert Thallon Jr., an accomplished musician and music teacher, set up a studio in his own mansion, seen here at no. 900. Between 1885 and 1901, when the mansion was sold, Thallon Jr. presented more than 600 weekly morning concerts with the assistance of his students, family, and invited musicians. This private venue became an important center of musical life in Brooklyn. The concerts often featured the home's walnut-encased, custom-made pipe organ. The land what was once occupied by the Thallon Mansion is today the children’s playground inn Brower Park. While the house was lost, the organ that once delighted visitors had survived. It was purchased by the Methodist Church of Naugatuck, Connecticut, where it remains in use.

P.S. 93 is an elementary school located in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and New York Avenue. The school was built in 1907 in the "Collegiate Gothic" style. It was designed by the "school builder" of New York City, C.B.J. Snyder, who designed hundreds of school buildings in New York over his lifetime. In fact, he was appointed the Superintendent of School Building in the borough of Manhattan in 1891. Like many buildings in the Collegiate Gothic style, Snyder's P.S. 93 is meant to invoke feelings of academic prestige. The plan of the building is an L-shape, a departure from the architect's signature H-shaped school buildings, though a reflection of the corner lot it occupied. The building's structure is a steel skeleton frame to allow for large windows to let light and fresh air into classrooms. The bricks used in the building are fire-proof terracotta. Decorating the facade, the faces of medieval scholars and various owls of wisdom adorn the structure. This building still operates as an elementary school to this date.

The Brooklyn Children's Museum was first opened in 1899 located in two Victorian mansions on Brooklyn Avenue. Founded through the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, it was the first museum for children in the country and grew immensely popular. Eventually in 1975, the two mansions that housed the museum were demolished and its current building designed by architectural firm of Hardy Holzman & Pfeiffer Associates was constructed. Moreover, its 2008 renovation prompted another first: the first NYC LEED-certified Green museum. It continues to be one of the nation's premiere children's museum, boasting a permanent collection of more than 30,000 items.

Hebron French Speaking Seventh Day Adventist Church 100 New York Avenue (Henry Ives Cobb, 1909-10) This striking church is the area’s only example of neo-Byzantine style architecture. It features unusual massing, an octagonal sanctuary, a pyramidal roof, round arch openings, identical entrance pavilions on New York Avenue connected by a curving, blind arcade, and intricate stained glass with floral and figural motifs. Originally constructed for the First Church of Christ Scientist, it was designed by noted Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb, who was famous for his design of the Fisheries Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The Soviet Private School was for children of Soviet citizens sent to the United States. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle the building "no longer exists, but no further information is available."

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.

Union United Methodist Church, School and Parsonage 121 New York Avenue Designed by Josiah C. Cady & Co., 1889-91 This monumental building was originally constructed for the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. Its Romanesque Revival style design was the work of Josiah Cady, who was known for his use of the style, especially for churches, but which he also famously employed for the south wing of the American Museum of Natural History. The red brick and sandstone church does not feature a lot of ornament, but its solid and complex massing, arched openings, and detailed brickwork are masterfully arranged. Its tower was intended to have a pyramidal roof, but was never completed. The tower was designed with an elaborate air ventilation system, whereby fresh air was drawn through pipes and ducts to cool the building in the summer and warm air from the furnace was funneled upward to warm the building in the winter. The basement once contained a bowling alley. The Union United Methodist Church, School and Parsonage are located in the Crown Heights North Historic District and the State and National Register of Historic Places Crown Heights North Historic District.

Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, ca. 1905. In 1833 a group of local progressive (and wealthy) reformers established the Orphan Asylum of the city of Brooklyn. The orphanage was originally located on Cumberland Street, but by the 1860s the building was running out of space. Fundraising by the wealthy Brooklynites who founded the organization allowed them to buy land in Bedford Stuyvesant and erect a new structure in 1870. The new orphanage, “Modern English Gothic” in style and massive in size, housed both boys and girls for the next seven decades. By the 1940s both the cost of building upkeep in the face of WWII and the declining population of orphans prompted the organization to relocate to Long Island. After the asylum vacated the space in 1942, the building was commandeered by the War Department to house troops before they shipped out. Following the close of the war, the city purchased the land and demolished the building for the full-block St. Andrew’s Playground.

825-833 St. Marks Avenue, 1925. This series of Renaissance Revival rowhouses was constructed circa 1884 and designed by George P. Chappell, who designed many rowhouses and mansions in Crown Heights.The corner building (no. 833), along with its three neighbors, have all had their stoops removed and entrances relocated to the basement level.

Brooklyn Children's Museum 145 Brooklyn Avenue Designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates 1977; expansion: Rafael Viñoly, 2008 Despite the Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s contemporary design, the institution itself is believed to be the oldest children’s museum in the country. It has been located on this site since 1899, when a mansion on this property – the William Newton Adams House – was converted into a children’s museum. It proved to be a huge hit, so at some point over the next two decades, the museum expanded into the L.C. Smith House next door. By 1967, the museum had outgrown both mansions and began planning for a new building on the site, which was completed in 1977. The current iteration of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum was mostly constructed in 2008, but its design is in fact an expansion of the 1977 structure, which was largely subterranean. The expansion, whose wavy design and primary color palette are in stark contrast to the character of the surrounding neighborhood, is clad in 8.1 million yellow ceramic tiles. The expansion roughly doubled the building’s size to 102,000 square feet.

Former Union League Club, General Grant Statue 19 Grant Square Designed by Peter J. Lauritzen, 1890 William Ordway Partridge, 1896 This handsome Romanesque Revival style building was constructed as a social club for the Union League, established in 1863 by Union supporters and members of Brooklyn’s Republican Party. The Grant Square façade abounds in Union iconography, most significantly in the brownstone busts of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant above the entrance arches and a grand eagle supporting the second floor bay window. The building’s rich terra cotta trim includes a plethora of Byzantine leaf, popular in the 1880s and 1890s. The structure’s roofline suffered major alterations in the 1970s, including the removal of Spanish tiles, a turreted observation tower, and a gabled roof with a large dormer. In the early 20th century, after the boroughs were consolidated, the club merged with the Manhattan branch. In 1914, the building became home to a Jewish organization called the Unity Club until 1943, and was subsequently converted to a Yeshiva. The building currently houses the Bhraggs Grant Square Senior Citizens’ Center. The Union League Club commissioned the bronze statue of Grant that sits within the adjacent square, and donated it to the city in 1896, when it was unveiled on Grant’s birthday. The Former Union League Club of Brooklyn and General Grant statue are located within the Crown Heights North Historic District and State and National Register of Historic Places Crown Heights North Historic District.

Described in the Crown Heights North Historic District designation report as “among Brooklyn’s most architecturally distinguished areas” and a “showcase for the work of architects who played an important role in Brooklyn’s development”, the neighborhood as a feast for the eyes. Its magnificent and varied residential architecture is peppered with grand religious and institutional buildings, and anchored by the picturesque Brower Park. The neighborhood’s northern and southern boundaries are Atlantic Avenue and Eastern Parkway, but its western and eastern boundaries are up for debate, though many consider them to be Washington Avenue and Ralph Avenue, respectively. The area’s three historic districts were designated between 2007 and 2015, and this story highlights some of the treasures found within and nearby those districts. The neighborhood’s transition from farmland to suburban enclave began in 1854 with the auction of land parcels by the area’s principal landowner, the Lefferts family. At that time, this area was known as the village of Bedford, a name it retained for some time. The area’s epic transformation over the ensuing half century was enabled by a series of major transportation improvements. The first was the introduction of stagecoach and horsecar service between Fulton Ferry and Bedford, which inspired the construction of freestanding villas on the Lefferts parcels. With the announcement of the new Brooklyn Bridge, to be completed in 1883, speculative rowhouse construction began as early as the 1870s, but dramatically increased after the Kings County Elevated Railway was completed along Fulton Street in 1888. It is this latter wave of development that most strongly characterizes the neighborhood’s architectural significance today. When the subway reached the area in 1920, apartment building construction increased to accommodate a growing commuter population. Around 1890, the area north of Sterling Place became known as the “St. Marks District”, but the moniker was short-lived, as many of the wealthy residents of St. Marks Avenue had moved away and their mansions demolished by 1920. Grant Square was also one of the most prestigious sections of Brooklyn at the turn of the century, second only to Grand Army Plaza in importance due to the prominent institutions on its borders, including the Union League Club, St. Bartholomew’s Church, and the 23rd Regiment Armory. The name “Crown Heights” was used starting around 1910 to describe the area south of Eastern Parkway. The area north of the parkway was called “Bedford” well into the 20th century, since the area was considered part of Bedford-Stuyvesant. However, “Crown Heights” gained traction with its white population in the mid-20th century as a way to differentiate itself from Bedford-Stuyvesant, which many began to consider a black ghetto. While historians often refer to Crown Heights “North” and “South” due to their demographic, architectural, topographical, and historical differences, most do not make this distinction even today. During its boom years, the population of Crown Heights North was of mainly European descent. By the mid-20th century, African- and Caribbean-Americans began to make up a significant portion of the population due to the 1936 opening of the Independent (IND) subway line, which provided direct access from Harlem, the center of the city’s black population. By the 1960s, Crown Heights had the largest Caribbean-American population in the city, and by the 1990s, was known as a major Caribbean-American hub in the entire country. Today, the neighborhood is changing yet again, with populations shifting as a result of rising rents throughout the city.

(church and rectory: George P. Chappell, 1886-90 parish house: Montrose Morris Sons, 1921) – church: NYC IL church and rectory: Set back from Pacific Street by a low fence, wrought iron gate a front yard, St. Bartholomew’s Church was designed in the Arts and Crafts style and features a roundarched stained glass window designed by Tiffany Studios in 1930, making it one of the studio’s last commissions, and a large square tower and belfry. The church played a significant role as one of the venerable institutions near Grant Square catering to the area’s Episcopal population. While the church itself is an individual landmark, neither the rectory to the east nor the parish house to the west are designated. The rectory is believed to have been constructed at the same time by the same architect, while the neo-Gothic parish house was added in 1921.

St. Gregory's R.C. Church and Convent, 1931. St. Gregory's church is an example of a basilican church inspired by early Christian architecture, and specifically modeled on two 5th century Roman churches. The church features a front portico (not visible in this photograph) and a seven story campanile (bell tower). Completed in 1916, the terra cotta-trimmed building was designed by Frank Helmle. Helmle, a prolific Brooklyn architect who mostly worked in Renaissance inspired styles in the early 20th century, designed banks, churches, and a number of landmark civic structures (such as the Boat House in Prospect Park) as the Superintendent of Public Buildings of Brooklyn. The structure seen in the foreground is the church's rectory (no. 224). Also designed by Helmle, with his then partner Harvey Corbett, in 1922, the building is a modest three-story neo-Classical structure.

Grant Square from Bergen Street, ca. 1925. The Union League Club and its statue of Ulysses S. Grant can be seen at right and center, respectively.

Ludwig Nissen Mansion, 1932. Ludwig Nissen was a German immigrant and son of aristocratic German family, who arrived in New York alone and poor in 1872. He went on to find much success as a leading diamond dealer. He also was a Mason, president of a number of Brooklyn social clubs and professional associations, and served as a Civil Service Commissioner of Brooklyn. In 1904 he bought a plot of land on St. Marks Avenue which included a mansion, built in the 1870s, for sugar refining executive John G. Searles. Nissen had the original mansion razed and erected his own huge house, modeled after a palace in Potsdam, Germany. The house went through a number of owners after Nissen, including the Russian (Soviet) consulate and Abraham Shapiro, a local developer of mansion-replacing apartment houses. In the early 1970s the mansion was one of the last homes still standing on what was known as "Millionaire Row." in 1976 it was demolished for the construction of the Marcus Garvey Senior Residence.

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.

While not a particularly distinguished architectural contribution to the neighborhood on first glance, Stuy Park House, a senior housing complex, holds an important cultural significance to Crown Heights North. Its architect, John Louis Wilson, Jr., was the first black architect to graduate from the Columbia University School of Architecture. Throughout his 50-year career, he served as a mentor to black architects, helping many to get their start in the field. In the mid-1950s, he founded the Council for Advancement of Negroes in Architecture, which eventually merged with the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1984, the AIA honored Wilson with the Whitney M. Young Jr. citation. His most famous work was the Harlem River Houses at 151st Street and the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan, the first federally financed housing project, completed in 1937.

(Church: Frank J. Helmle, 1915-16; School: Helmle & Corbett, 1921; Rectory: Helmle & Corbett, 1922) This magnificent church has a strong presence in the neighborhood due to its richly decorated, seven-story campanile. Frank J. Helmle, was a prominent Brooklyn architect who also designed the Prospect Park Boathouse (1905), the Shelter Pavilion in Monsignor McGolrick Park (1910), and the Brooklyn Central Office, Bureau of Fire Communications (1913). Harvey Wiley Corbett, with whom Helmle collaborated on the church’s school and rectory, is well-known for his work in developing designs for setback, streamlined skyscrapers. The design of St. Gregory is inspired by Rome’s oldest basilicas, the fifth-century San Clemente and Santa Maria in Trastevere. While its bell tower dominates the rear of the church, the front is graced with a portico entrance of Ionic columns topped by a setback story that features a wheel window and shell niches housing sculpted figures. The school and rectory are far simpler, designed in the neo-Classical style to complement the church