Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club, 1928. The Riding and Driving Club of Brooklyn, a fancy equestrian club, was established in 1889 by a group of elite Brooklyn men. The club commissioned the firm of McKim, Mead & White to design a Roman circus inspired building. Massive, with a curved front facade facing Prospect Park (fronting Plaza Street west of Vanderbilt Avenue), the facility was three interconnected buildings: the clubhouse, the riding ring and the stables. Here members had an indoor place to ride, practice dressage, harness and polo, and socialize with tony, like-minded neighbors. Aiming to create an exclusive community, the club originally limited membership to 200, but quickly doubled that number, a nod to its popularity and appeal (even though the $100 membership fee was not a paltry sum for most). The venture proved to be so successful that the buildings were reconfigured and added to by 1894. Frank Freeman was hired to design additions, pushing the club's campus all the way to Flatbush Avenue. The popularity of the club continued into the first two decades of the 20th century but the 1920s saw many changes for the club and its neighborhood. Interest in horse sports declined, as other entertainment pursuits flourished. The cost of upkeep to the now five buildings outpaced the revenue, particularly as the demographics of the community changes. With the wealthy leaving the neighborhood for the suburbs or Manhattan, the new apartment dwellers of the neighborhood were not interested in or could not afford this type of hobby. Finally closing in 1938, the facilities were sold soon after. The larger buildings were demolished for apartment houses, while the carriage house and motor garage were as garages until 1950s, before meeting their own end.

The city is home to more than one million school-aged children—at least an eighth of the population across the five boroughs. While there many distinct ways to be a kid in New York City, there are also some iconic experiences, places, and routines that most, if not all, city kids share as they grow up.

Public School 111 ARCHITECT: Samuel B. Leonard DATE: 1867-68 STYLE: Romanesque Revival Public School 111 has been a neighborhood institution in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn for 150 years. Prominently sited at the northwest corner of Sterling Place and Vanderbilt Avenue near Grand Army Plaza , it is a handsome brick school building in the early Romanesque Revival , or round-arched , style. When the building opened in 1868 it was known as Public School 9. The school building is a fine example of the early Romanesque Revival style, distinguished by round arches executed ln brick.

Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew ARCHITECT: John Welch DATE: 1888-91 STYLE: Romanesque, Northern Italian The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue (once the “Gold Coast” of Brooklyn) is the masterpiece of Brooklyn architect John Welch, who established himself as a church architect, designing a number of notable Greek Revival and Gothic Revival churches. Welch’s designs for the church are loosely based on twelfth-century Romanesque churches of Northern Italy but adapted for use by a nineteenth-century urban congregation in America.

New York City accommodates all juxtapositions. Spend enough time here and no two things paired together, however odd, will seem unusual. This is the city where nothing can be out of place however willy-nilly the arrangement may be: from the gently surreal sight of a coyote cowering beneath an SUV in Manhattan, to the more terrible and spectral image of ash-covered workers wandering the daytime streets of the Financial District. Whether it is welcome or not, the city will make room for it. But for all this open-armed receptiveness -- allowing this or that to suddenly and irrevocably appear and to become a new fact of city life -- the city remains a strange host and one whose ultimate indifference can seem a form of cruelty. (This story can be seen in its original context here)

Designed in the late Romanesque Revival style by James Naughton and built in 1895 to handle the increasing student enrollment of P.S. 9 (today P.S. 340) across the street, the P.S. 9 Annex in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn is a brick and sandstone structure, featuring Italianate architectural elements including protruding dormers, towers and colonnettes, with accents of terra-cotta. In 1978, P.S. 9 Annex was listed on the National Register of Historic places and was converted into 22 co-op apartments in 1989.

Margret Apartment Building, 1921. William H. Reynolds was a Brooklyn-born real estate developer of Prospect Heights, Borough Park, and Bensonhurst. Not only known for his real estate dealings (he opened a broker's office at age 18), he was also a New York State Senator (the youngest senator at age 24), amusement park (Coney Island's Dreamland) and theatre owner, mayor of Long Beach, Long Island, convicted swindler, athlete, and all around lover of the good life. He built the Margret across from Prospect Park in the 1890s while also developing rowhouses on the surrounding blocks. In 1898 he was involved in a real estate exchange with the Cord Meyer Development Company of Queens. They got the plot the Margret was on and he got a 354 lots in Flushing, Queens. His later real estate projects included Laurelton, Queens and Long Beach, Long Island. The trolley seen at center is traveling along the Vanderbilt Avenue Line, which began service as a horse-drawn streetcar in 1869 and though a number of owners and name changes survived as a trolley through the middle of the 20th century.

Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew ca. 1914 The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew is the largest Episcopal Church building in the Diocese of Long Island. Architect John Welch was commissioned to design the church after a fire in 1887 destroyed much of the structure. Welch drew inspiration from the churches built during the Italian Renaissance, particularly those in Modena and Verona. The current interior decoration is the fourth reworking of the inside of the church. The romanesque design and elaborate plaster work were completed in 1915. Almost all of the stained glass was produced for the church by the Tiffany Studios of New York. The first pair of lancet windows were installed in 1897. Our Rose Window was given by the children of the Sunday School at the time of the rebuilding in 1890. It is 28 feet in diameter and one of the larger windows of this type in Brooklyn. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission considers the Church to be "one of the grandest 19th century ecclesiastical buildings in Brooklyn" and in 1981 designated it as a landmark.

Survey photograph showing the intersection of Plaza Street West, St. John's Place, and Flatbush Avenue; September 15, 1914. The photo was taken ahead of the construction of the IRT Eastern Parkway Line. Today, an there is an entrance to the Grand Army Plaza station immediately to the north of the fire hydrant in the foreground.

This grand corner home within the Park Slope Historic District was designed by Lawrence B. Valk for Charles Pied. The corner home and the three buildings to the south were all designed in the same Romanesque Revival style. No. 21 is known as the Lillian Ward Mansion as it was once the home of Ward, a famous late 19th century singer. On the morning of December 16, 1960 two commercial airliners collided in the airspace over Staten Island. One of the pilots, attempting to land the plane in Prospect Park, came down instead at the corner of Sterling Place and 7th Avenue, directly in front of the Ward Mansion. All 128 people on both planes were killed, as well as six people on the ground. The debris scattered around the neighborhood and set more than 10 buildings on fire. A church on Sterling Place was completely destroyed while the building directly across from No. 21 had its cornice sheared off by the crashing plane. Somewhat surprisingly the mansion was left completely unharmed.

Montauk Club This club found its inspiration in the Palazzo Santa Sofia (Ca' d'Oro ) in Venice. It is built of brick and terra cotta, and a warm yellow color pervades the whole structure. Certain windows, reminiscent of the loggia of this Italian palazzo, are replete with flamboyant Venetian Gothic detail.

Public School 111 ARCHITECT: Samuel B. Leonard DATE: 1867-68 STYLE: Romanesque Revival Public School 111 has been a neighborhood institution in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn for 150 years. Prominently sited at the northwest corner of Sterling Place and Vanderbilt Avenue near Grand Army Plaza, it is a handsome brick school building in the early Romanesque Revival, or round-arched, style. When the building opened in 1868 it was known as Public School 9. The school building is a fine example of the early Romanesque Revival style, distinguished by round arches executed ln brick.

The Montauk Club, 1928. Described as “an architectural treasure on the slope” in the 1973 Park Slope Historic District Designation Report, the Montauk Club building was the headquarters of an exclusive gentlemen’s social club, whose founders included Gilded Age luminaries like Charles Pratt. The club was named after the Montauk Native American tribe, whose history is depicted in a continuous terra cotta frieze atop the third story, along the Eighth Avenue, Lincoln Place and Plaza Street facades. The massive Venetian Gothic clubhouse was designed by Francis H. Kimball, who took inspiration from the Ca' d'Oro, a 15th century Venetian palace on the Grand Canal. Kimball’s design includes Gothic Arches with intricate terra cotta ornamentation, surmounted by quatrefoils, and that most Venetian of features: a second floor loggia (covered exterior corridor), itself an element of a grand two-story bay facing Plaza Street. The Club was unusual for its acceptance of Jewish members and its inclusion of women in Club activities (though they were excluded from full membership until the 1960s). A separate “women’s entrance,” left of the main entrance led to a staircase to the second floor dining room. Today, that entrance leads to the residential portion of the building — the club continues to operate, but declining membership and rising costs forced members to convert and sell the upper floors and basement.

This lesser-known Brooklyn armory was built in 1884 by Robert Dixon. It was first occupied by the Third Gatling Battery until the group moved to the Clermont Armory in 1895. The Gatling Battery stored all of their weapons (and horses) in this masonry fortress. After the first occupants moved out, architects Robinson & Kunst renovated a great portion of the building. The battery underwent so much remodeling between the years 1909 and 1911 that by the time the Second Company Signal Corps moved in, the building was unrecognizable. The Second Company Signal, whose name is still inscribed over the entrance of the building, stayed at the armory until 1964. Since then, it has seen a number of different occupants from the Crown Heights Boxing Association to the Nigerian American Muslim Integrated Community.

"St. John's Place, west from Eighth Ave., showing Grace Methodist Episcopal Church at the right, and the Memorial Presbyterian Church at the left, in the background." This 1928 looking west along St. John's Place is unobstructed enough that the photographer could capture the steeples of the two church at the next corner at 7th Avenue. The greening of these residential streets of Park Slope have made that same view today certainly more verdant but also less far reaching. This current lush view was likely created by the Park Slope Civic Council, which in the 1950s and 1960s advocated against urban renewal demolition, for historic preservation, and for the greening of the neighborhood through the planting of thousands of trees.

Prospect Heights - Sprinkler at the Dean Street Playground between 6th and Carlton Ave. Prospect Heights - Sprinkler at the Dean Street Playground between 6th and Carlton Ave.

Pillar of Fire Church, August 6, 1942.

The Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew is the largest Episcopal Church building in the Diocese of Long Island.