“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."

Attached Greek Revival row houses, 1958. The homes were built in 1853 for the developer Samuel I. Underhill, along with a matching pair at 297-299 Cumberland Street (at right). Before Italianate brownstone townhouses came into vogue, Greek Revival row houses were a popular choice for Fort Greene builders and homeowners. The four wooden row houses were built with a shared colonnade porch, each with its own stoop leading to a parlor-level entrance.

Aftermath of a cave-in that occurred during BMT Brighton Line construction at St. Felix Street and Hanson Place, April 17, 1917. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the scene: "A sudden slide of sand, bringing a tremendous impact against the supporting timbers in the new Brooklyn Rapid Transit subway excavation...caused a collapse of the construction work there today, and at least six men were carried down into a hole 50 feet deep." The Eagle further noted that "an Italian, known only as Dominick, died," the only fatality from the collapse. Twelve years later, the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church (out of frame at right) was declared structurally unsound, due to damage to its foundation. A new church was built on the same site.

Cuyler and the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church In 1860, Brooklyn's Park Presbyterian Church, then building a new church on Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene invited the celebrated Pastor Theodore Richard Cuyler to be its pastor. When the church was completed in 1862, the congregation changed its name to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. There Cuyler spent the next 30 years. In 1860, when he became pastor the congregation numbered 140 people; when he left, in 1890, it had grown to 2,330 and was the third-largest Presbyterian congregation in America. He wrote 22 books and more than 4,0000 articles. Cuyler and Henry Ward Beecher were wary friends and sometimes shared a podium. In 1872, Cuyler invited the Quaker leader Sarah Smiley to address his congregation. He was criticized by the Presbytery of Brooklyn for inviting a woman to address a mixed-sex assembly. Cuyler's vociferous opposition to slavery is a large part of what commended him to Park Presbyterian Church, which was founded by abolitionists. "On the Sunday when fire was opened on Fort Sumter," said the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "the American flag was raised on the steeple of the Lafayette Avenue Church and it stayed there until Lee surrendered and the confederacy collapsed." "During the Civil War riots in this city," wrote the New York Tribune, "his church, with that of Henry Ward Beecher's, was closely guarded by the authorities" Two thousand people crammed into Lafayette Presbyterian Church for Cuyler's Funeral on March 1, 1909.

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.

147 St. Felix Street, April 17, 1917.

"Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church, with scaffolding being prepared for its demolition, ca. 1929." Dating to 1873, this was the second Methodist church built on the site, where it replaced a smaller structure built in 1857. In 1927, the Hanson Place church merged with Methodist congregations from Ridgewood, Queens and nearby Fleet Street with the intention of building a new structure in a different location. The newly united congregation was forced to reconsider their plans in 1929, when the Department of Buildings ruled the Hanson Place structure unsafe for occupancy due to subway construction beneath its foundation. Ultimately, they elected to build a new church next door to the nearly-complete Williamsburgh Savings Bank. In 1931, the new, red brick Neo-Gothic Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church was completed.

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.

Times Plaza, September 13, 1913. Times Plaza, so-called for its proximity to the offices of the former Brooklyn Daily Times newspaper, refers to the Downtown Brooklyn intersection of Atlantic, Flatbush, and Fourth Avenues. Times Plaza has long been a hub of Brooklyn transit. This 1913 photo includes: the Atlantic Avenue station of the Fifth Avenue El; the Flatbush Avenue terminal of the Long Island Railroad (now Atlantic Terminal); local streetcar traffic; and, in the foreground, excavation for the new BMT Fourth Avenue subway line. At the time, Brooklyn Elevated Railway provided a connection between the Fifth Avenue El and Long Island Railroad's Atlantic Avenue Line (this service was discontinued in 1916). The Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church is visible in the background.

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.

Times Plaza, viewed from Fourth Avenue, April 22, 1948. The view includes the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, Interborough Subway headhouse, and the Flatbush Avenue terminal of the Long Island Railroad.

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.

Service buildings on Vanderbilt Avenue, 1941. Center-left is the carriage house for the 1882 Cornelius N. Hoagland mansion at 410 Clinton Avenue. Center-right is the garage and chauffeur’s residence for the mansion of Clara Van Vleck, completed in 1919. Most of these type of service buildings have survived and are highly sought after as residences.

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.

"Red Cross Parade: \[Employees Association of Morse Dry Dock and Repair Co.] May 20, 1918." The parade is marching west on Lafayette Avenue, across South Elliott Place. The spire at center is the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church at South Oxford Street.

A collection of churches across New York City from the New York Public Library.

Prior to European settlement, Atlantic Avenue was an unpaved trail ending at the East River. By 1816, when the Village of Brooklyn was incorporated, the road became the village’s southernmost boundary. Originally called District Street, it was renamed Atlantic Street in 1855 (at 75 Atlantic Avenue, an engraved street sign marked “Atlantic Street” is still extant) and designated an Avenue in the 1870s. In 1825, District Street developer Charles Hoyt and his associates petitioned the City to establish a ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn, but Manhattan landholders feared real estate development competition with Brooklyn, so it was not until 1834, the year Brooklyn was incorporated as a city, that a lease was granted for the “South Ferry” between Whitehall Slip and District Street, for which an ornate ferry house was built. In 1832-36, the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad was built to connect District Street to Long Island, with its terminal at the present intersection of Flatbush Avenue. The line was operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), incorporated in 1834. The world’s first subway was constructed at this time underneath Atlantic Avenue to provide steam train service between the railroad terminal and the South Ferry. After steam trains were outlawed in Brooklyn in 1859, the subway tunnel was abandoned and horse car service was introduced above ground (the brick-vaulted tunnel was long forgotten, but in 1980, many decades later, it was rediscovered by a historian named Bob Diamond). Thus, in the span of just a few years, District Street became the conduit for business transactions and the transport of goods between Long Island and Manhattan. The street was poised for major change and the surrounding area became desirable as a suburban community due to its newly acquired access to Manhattan. The earliest development began in the 1840s to take advantage of the commercial waterfront. Mercantile and industrial buildings included the Flint Glass Works, producers of gaslight probes, and the original Benjamin Moore Paint Factory at 55 Atlantic Avenue. The transfer and importation of goods was a major enterprise, and businesses like The Fruit Cleaning Company at 14 Atlantic Avenue, prospered. Many commercial buildings from this period are extant on the blocks from Hicks to Clinton Streets. In the late 19th century, the waterfront to Court Street became a premier commercial boulevard with a bank, small shops and a large dry-goods store called Journeay & Burnham. In 1933, bridges and tunnels had surpassed ferries as a means of entering Manhattan, and the South Ferry was terminated. Beginning in the 1940s and completed in 1964, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) significantly altered the character of western Atlantic Avenue, resulting in the demolition of all structures from the waterfront to Columbia Street. In order to promote economic vitality, attract and retain businesses, create jobs and improve residents’ quality of life, the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District (AABID) launched in early 2012. The AABID is also committed to marketing and advocating for the street’s roughly 300 businesses and to making capital improvements, such as street beautification, as well as celebrating and preserving Atlantic Avenue’s history and architecture. The western end of the Avenue is protected by the Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill Historic Districts, designated in 1965 and 1969, respectively.

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.

The architecture of the church, which opened on March 12, 1862, is noteworthy. It is one of the finest examples of early Romanesque Revival church architecture in New York (the mode had been inaugurated in the 1840s by the architect Richard Upjohn at the Congregation Church of the Pilgrims on Remsen and Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights.) The simplicity and, some would say, primitivism of the Romanesque style commended itself to dissenting Protestant sects that objected to the Gothic style embraced by high Episcopalian and Roman Catholic congregations for whom sacramental ritual rather than preaching was the main point of the worship service. Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Chruch adopted a semi-circular, "theatrical" seating plan, influenced by that of Henry Ward Beecher's Plymouth Church (1849), which was felt better to serve congregants of a gifted preacher. In 1976, under the Reverend George Litch Knight, who was Lafayette's pastor for 33 years, the church interior was significantly altered by the incorporation of murals, "Mighty Cloud of Witnesses," painted by Hank Prussing, who was then 27 years old and a graduate of nearby Pratt Institute. For the Lafayette Avenue commission, he took 500 photographs of neighborhood scenes and residents as preparation for a mural sequence that depicts vividly observed vignettes of neighborhood life and characters. Its a startling thing to see when you enter the church, but the murals proved popular with many congregants, who even recognized local faces among Prussing's subjects.

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.

“Lafayette Ave., south side, east from South Portland Ave. At the left, is the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, undergoing repairs. April 4, 1932.” Built in 1862, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church was known for its abolitionist pastor, Theodore L. Cuyler, and its distinguished congregation of prominent Reconstruction-era political figures, including President Benjamin Harrison and British Prime Minister William E. Gladstone.

“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.