“Fulton Street, east from South Oxford Street, showing the B. M. T. elevated and the station at Cumberland Street. June 15, 1940.” The Fulton St. El had closed two weeks prior to the photo date. An entrance to its replacement, the then-new IND Fulton Street Line (A/C trains), is just out of frame to the right.

Cuyler Gore, 1942. A “gore” is a small triangular park often found at diagonal intersections. Cuyler Gore is named for the abolitionist minister Theodore Cuyler, of the nearby Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. The city of Brooklyn purchased the western portion of the park in 1845 for the sum of $1. In 1983, the park was expanded to include an area between Cumberland Street and Carlton Avenue, as Cumberland Street was closed to vehicular traffic between Fulton Street and Greene Avenue.

The Hanson Baptist Church at the corner of Hanson Place and South Portland Avenue, 1940. Built between 1857 and 1860, the stately brick and stucco structure has been the home to a Seventh Day Adventist congregation since 1963. Nearly a century earlier in 1864, the occasional minister of the then-Baptist church, Robert Lowry, composed the hymn “Hanson Place,” referencing the church. It was later featured in the Western films of director John Ford.

A dog's day Five children under sprinkler playing with dog on empty street before vacant lot; two boys behind sprinkler looking on; buildings and street behind lot. Caption: "A dog's day at Dean St. and 6th Ave."

The Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church was first founded in 1872 as First North River Bethel Ship Society. This congregation was a direct result of the first Swedish Methodist Church ever founded. That first church was actually founded in the United States, in New York, and on a ship. Immigrant Olof Gustaf Hedstrom started the Bethel Ship society in 1845 on a ship docked at a pier in Manhattan. They would move the ship to Brooklyn and then move the congregation to dry land a few decades later. In the 1920s the First Spanish Church was organized and in the 1960s, as the Scandinavian population declined drastically, the two churches merged. Today the building is the Immanuel & First Spanish United Methodist Church.

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.

Church of the Messiah at Clermont and Greene Avenues, ca. 1910. After a fire destroyed the steeple of the Greene Avenue Presbyterian Church (as it was called in the early part of the century), it was rebuilt with its distinctive beehive tower. A five-alarm fire in February 1969 rendered the building unsalvageable.

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.

Hanson Place Seventh Day Adventist Church ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: c. 1857-1860 STYLE: Italianate This building was originally erected as the Hanson Place Baptist Church, an outgrowth of the Atlantic Street Baptist Church, but has been owned by the Seventh-Day Adventists since 1963. Constructed of brick above a brownstone base and trimmed with wood, this Italianate church gives distinction that still retains of much of its nineteenth-century atmosphere.

Fire rages at the Fulton Flatbush Storage Co. warehouse, just south of Fulton Street; December 6, 1917.

178-180 Ft. Greene Place, ca. 1970s. For the first quarter of the 20th century, this building housed a wholesale meat market owned by Julius Dahlman. In 1921, the New York-based meat newsletter "The Butcher's Advocate" announced Dahlman's engagement, only to retract it in the next issue and apologize for the mistake, saying, "Dahlman, it seems, already has one wife and does not contemplate taking on another." The building was demolished in 1978 as part of the Atlantic Terminal urban renewal.

The headquarters of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, 1931. The big house the school occupied was sold to the Visiting Nurse Association of Brooklyn who razed it and in 1929 constructed a Colonial Revival (alternately referred to as neo-Federal) headquarters designed by the firm of Clark & Arms. The non-profit organization, founded in 1888, provided home and community-based health care services. In 2000 the building was purchased by the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York. The Alliance offers office, rehearsal, and performance spaces for more than 20 performing arts organizations.

The traffic swarmed square outside of Barclay's may seem newly developed, but in fact, it was first established in 1860 when the Brooklyn Jamaica Railroad established a stop simply named "Brooklyn."

The same location, May 17, 1940. "The building is No. 177. The parking space replaced the houses numbers 161 to 175. On the right, at Fifth Avenue, is a gasoline station, where stood houses numbers 179 to 181." - P.L. Sperr

In 1935, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered for the seizure of all pinball machines. They were considered gambling machines, like slots or roulette, which had been made illegal the year prior. Pinball was supposedly a culprit in corrupting the morals of America's youth.

Y.M.C.A Central Branch, ca. 1915. Funded by luminaries including John D. Rockefeller and designed by the Trowbridge & Ackerman firm, the Neo-Georgian Central Branch of the Y.M.C.A opened in 1915. After years of declining membership, the State of New York bought the building in 1967. It was converted into office spaces and in 2011 was named the Shirley Chisholm Building, in honor of the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, and first African American woman to run for President of the United States.

Rear view of the Brooklyn Central Branch YMCA at 55 Hanson Place, from Fulton Street. The street in the center of the photo is Fort Greene Place, 1930.

Dubious Camel advertisement at the northeast corner of Carlton Avenue and Fulton Street. The north side of Fulton Street (right) was formerly home to a vibrant commercial strip, since razed and redeveloped, with lunch counters and a variety of merchants. In the background, the beehive steeple of the Church of the Messiah at Clermont and Greene Avenues.

Fulton Street storefronts, January, 5, 1958. From left to right: Rialto Barber Shop (No. 887), Hall's Fine Foods (No. 895), and Precision Radio Lab and Television Service (No. 899). Upstairs from Hall's is the Local Chapter of the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), chartered by the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

78th Precinct, ca. 1928 Brooklyn’s 78th precinct was built in 1925 in a Renaissance Revival style. This building is more elegant than many of the other precincts in New York City, which are constructed to look like fortresses. But the 78th was built in the post-World War I, pre-Depression era of success that America enjoyed throughout the Roaring 20s, and resembles an upscale bank more than a police station. The building, like a few other New York precincts built in the early 1900s to the late 1920s, was constructed from limestone. The green lamps on either side of the main entrance, which can be seen on every precinct in New York, are a result of a tradition that dates back to the 1650s in New Amsterdam, when night watchmen would carry green lanterns for identification. The NYPD still uses the lanterns as a symbol of their vigilance.

The Lockwood Academy on South Oxford Street, May 1925. Opened in 1870 by Quaker educator John Lockwood, the Lockwood School operated here until 1928. For the final three decades the school was owned and run by a pair of well-loved sisters, Emma and Mary Carr. The Carrs had been early teachers at the school and were gifted the institution by Lockwood upon his retirement. In 1928 when the school closed, Emma Carr was nearly 80, dressed like she had stepped out of the 1860s, and credited her spryness and vitality to a long time vegetarian diet.

“South Elliott Place (left foreground), south of Hanson Place to Atlantic Ave. This view is also general and shows the southern section of Brooklyn. It was taken from atop the Y.M.C.A. Building located at 55 Hanson Place. At the left, beyond the Long Island freight yards on the S.E. and S.W. corners of Sixth Ave. respectively are the Sheffield Farms Co. and the A.G. Spalding Co. Manufacturing buildings. At the right beyond the triangle is the Fifth Ave. Elevated Line on Flatbush Ave., which turned sharply and continued southward on Fifth Ave. June 1926.”

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.

161 to 181 Flatbush Avenue, east side, south from Pacific Street to Fifth Avenue; July 23, 1934. The buildings occupying this block, with the exception of No. 177 Goodyear Sporting Goods, were later demolished.

Triangular block bounded by Fulton Street, Gates Avenue, and Vanderbilt Avenue. June 15, 1940. The small park that occupies this location today is the result of the neighborhood's desire for a peaceful and beautiful space to replace the detritus that was created during the chaos and destruction of the Blackout of 1977.

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