The Decatur Playground is owned by the Parks Department and the Board of Education. It opened to the public in 1942. It is one of the many WPA projects in south Brooklyn and is used by children of nearby IS 35 and the neighborhood which surrounds it.

East side of Alice Court, September 13, 1940. This view shows the first row of houses developed on Alice Court, one of two half-block cul-de-sacs off of Atlantic Avenue, between Kingston and Albany Avenues. The development’s 36 Queen Anne rowhouses were built by architect W.M. Coots in 1888-9, for the industrialist and developer Florian Grosjean. Alice Court is named for Grosjean’s daughter.

First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, ca. !!!!. The denomination known as the A.M.E. Zion Church traces the origins of its congregation to the John Street Methodist Church in Lower Manhattan. The John Street Methodist Church was a mixed-race congregation, which welcomed Black worshippers as many Methodist churches did following the Great Awakening. Though allowed to worship freely, Black members of the church still experienced overt discrimination, leading them to eventually break off into and form another church. The smaller churches that separated from the John Street Methodist Church were attended by only Black congregants, though the ministers were still exclusively white, causing tension among those who attended and those who led the church. The church separated for a second time, following Minister James Varick, an early attendant of the John Street Methodist Church. Varick, a Black man, became the first bishop of the newly-formed and independent African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination. By 1866, the A.M.E. Zion denomination had 42,000 members and, by 1868, its size had quadrupled. At the end of the Civil War, the church was sending missionaries to the South to educate newly emancipated freed men. A.M.E. Zion is sometimes referred to as "Freedom Church" for its connection to Abolitionism. The First A.M.E. Zion Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant was originally part of what was known as the Fleet Street Church, which was organized in 1885 by a small group of 15 people who applied to join the A.M.E. Zion denomination. Like many other historic Black churches in the borough, the group had separated from the Bridge Street A.M.E. in Downtown Brooklyn. The church's first building was the largest of the A.M.E. Zion denomination. By 1942, they purchased the building seen here at Tompkins and MacDonough Street, which seats about 6,000 people and is even today one of the largest A.M.E. Zion buildings.

The 13th Regiment Armory was completed in 1894. The building's opening came with all but little fanfare, though not in a positive fashion. Construction of the Armory cost a whopping $700,000, over twice the amount the 13th Regiment had received to construct the building. The bill was ultimately footed by King's County, which the Times, the Daily Eagle, and various other media as "The Armory Blunder...a scandal of no common dimensions." It may seem as though a project that went so over budget would have no problem meeting the bare necessities of construction. However, this was not reality: at its opening, the armory was left without fences or sidewalk around the building, the roof was found to leak in the year of its opening, the drill hall was too small, and in 1904, a wall fell and killed two soldiers training in the facility. By 1920, the regiment became the 245th Coast Artillery and in 1971 it was transferred for use by the City of New York. In 1974, New York State decided to deactivate the armory and four others in Brooklyn. Just as the Armory's beginnings were tainted with scandal, so was its closure. On August 1st, 1971, the New York Times reported that "The leader of a black veterans' group has accused New York State of attempting to limit the number of blacks and Puerto Ricans in the National Guard by closing the Sumner Avenue Armory." James Allen, a member of the 715th Veterans Association, who trained at the armory, criticized the city's decision to close the facility. He declared: "the decision to close the armory is totally racial...why is the only armory in a predominantly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood, where the community has taken an interest, being closed?" Two officials of the New York State Senate Division of Military and Naval Affairs claimed the closure was one of four in the state and "strictly because of budgetary limitations," citing the building's dilapidated state. The Times wrote that at the time of "dilapidation," about 450 men were training at the armory, 10% of whom were black. This was a percentage much higher than the estimated 3% of Black membership in the National Guard of New York State. State Senator Frederick A. Meyerson, member of the Military and Naval Affairs Committee tried to save the Armory, though it was ultimately closed. The building was converted to house homeless men in the 1980s.

13th Regiment Armory, 1927. The 13th Regiment dates to 1847 and during its first fifty years served in national and international war efforts, and had a presence at smaller, more localized clashes such as the 1863 Draft Riots and the the railroad strike of 1877. In 1880 the Seventh Regiment completed their grandiose armory on the Upper East Side (today' Park Avenue Armory). Unsurprisingly, the 13th began to plan for their own epic edifice. Following petitions for funds by other volunteer regiments (who did not want to be showed up by the "Silk Stocking Regiment" of city elites on Park Avenue) the 13th was granted a $300,000 appropriation for a new building. The resulting structure, medieval in milieu, was designed by a young, largely inexperienced architect named Rudolph L. Daus. At a cost more than double the original outlay, the massive structure was highlighted as an example of improper political power holding sway in the construction of new military facilities. Nonetheless the building opened in 1894 and was epic in scale and design. The two towers rose 200 feet over the street and the drill hall could hold more than 1200 parading soldiers (though a need for more space saw the doubling of the drill hall in 1906). The 13th Regiment became the 245th Coast Artillery in 1920 as the National Guard underwent substantial changes to importance and functions. Taken out of military use by 1971, the building came under the control in city a few years later. The city leased the headhouse to a school while the drill hall was used as vehicle storage. Later as the homeless crisis escalated, the city converted this space (as well as all, or part of, at least 10 other armories) into emergency homeless shelters.

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.

Public School 35 annex, March 3, 1931. P.S. 35 was established in 1873, on Lewis Avenue at Decatur Street. This photo depicts the P.S. 35 annex (then No. 201 Decatur), built in 1890 to accommodate a growing student population. Both the original school and the annex were replaced by a new building in 1946-7. Today, the school is designated M.S. 35 and named for Stephen Decatur, an early 19th century American Naval Officer. Chauncey, Bainbridge, Decatur, and MacDonough Streets are each named for naval officers who served in conflicts including the War of 1812 and the First Barbary War. Decatur was killed in an 1820 duel with former officer James Barron, stemming from Decatur’s role in an 1807 court martial in which Barron was stripped of his commission, and subsequent actions obstructing Barron’s reinstatement. Both men sustained gunshot wounds, but only Decatur’s proved fatal.

In October of 1971, a group of protesters effectively closed J.H.S. 263. The action was inspired by the ousting of Principal Ozelius Clement. For the week leading up to the occupation, parents boycotted the school by barring their children from attendance. On October 13th, they locked arms to block entry into the building. According to the New York Times: "Parents and other community residents who have been supporting the two principals have charged that the district board, headed by Assemblyman Samuel D. Wright, is attempting to purge school personnel who will not support its efforts to use the district as a power base to enhance Mr. Wright's political ambitions. Mr. Wright has denied the charge."

Row of shops on Fulton Street, west of Tompkins Avenue, May 14, 1942. P.L. Sperr’s photo was taken almost two years after the Fulton Street elevated line was dismantled, and four years after the IND Fulton Street subway opened. The shops — grocery stores, lunch counters, and meat markets — occupy a row of wood-framed structures dating to at least 1880. Today, those buildings appear intact, though cornices have been stripped and upper story clapboards have been replaced with synthetic siding.

This villa-style home is one of the oldest surviving structures in the neighborhood and a vestige of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s bucolic days. It was constructed for William A. Parker in 1863, who was a local hops and malt merchant. The house was later occupied by James McMahon, the founder and president of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. Since 1945, this structure has been occupied by the United Order of the Tents. The United Order of the Tents was founded as part of the underground railroad, and after the Civil War, was officially organized as a charity and lodge. It is one of the oldest lodges for African-American women in the nation.

St. Matthew’s Protestant Episcopal Church (formerly Tompkins Avenue Presbyterian Church), ca. 1905. This red brick Victorian Gothic church was built in the early 1870s, by Massachusetts-born architect George Hathorne. However, by July, 1875, the church had been foreclosed on, and was rented to the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church. In 1889, the Congregational Church moved into a brand-new structure directly across MacDonough Street, and the original Tompkins Avenue Presbyterian Church was sold to St. Matthew’s Protestant Episcopal. Since 1944, the Stuyvesant Heights Christian Church has worshipped there.

"Throop Avenue, south from Halsey Street, showing the east side of the avenue. At Macon Street is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Victory,1941."