Borden's Plant, formerly Empire State Dairy. Founded by Gail Borden Jr. in 1857, the Borden Company began as a producer of condensed milk. By the 1920s, the company had come to sell processed milk, evaporated milk, ice cream, and a whole slew of dairy products. Borden eventually became a holding company, and their subsidiaries became divisions. They dabbled in rendering to produce adhesives and plastics and bought up food companies like Wise and Cracker Jack. After suffering financial strain in the 1990s, the company was acquired by Grupo LaLa of Durango, Mexico.

The Sharon Hall Hotel, formerly The Montrose. June 5, 1961. Montrose Morris, a leading late 19th century Brooklyn architect, built the fifteen-unit, Romanesque Revival apartment building in 1888. The Montrose, to which he lent his first name, functioned as a preliminary study for the Alhambra apartment building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a larger development and an extension of the Hoyt Street building’s floorplan. Each of the Montrose’s fifteen units had entrance hall illuminated by a street-facing stained glass window, parlor, library, and three bedrooms. The building was converted to the Sharon Hall Hotel during the 20th century, and later demolished, likely in the late 1960s or later.

Times Plaza Hotel, c. 1931. The Times Plaza Hotel was built in 1931 by architect Murray Klein in the Art Deco style. The building was a marker of Brooklyn's ability to overcome the Great Depression, it offered low-rate rooms for men only, much like the nearby YMCA. The hotel was named for Times Plaza at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue. It boasted a circulating library and elaborate dining room, and in the 1940s and 50s, the press reported it to be a prospering home for single men, both retired and working. For the decades following, the hotel rapidly deteriorated. In 1995, the building was acquired by the Lutheran Social Services who updated the facilities and still operate the Muhlenberg residence in the building, a home for the formerly homeless, the disabled, and the elderly.

Rogers Memorial Building of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; February 28, 1960. Founded in 1866 by Henry Bergh, the ASPCA's first offices were in Manhattan, but the organization soon established a Brooklyn chapter and expanded nationwide. Bergh, a Lower East Side native who attended but did not graduate from Columbia, was inspired by England's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals during his travels abroad. Among Bergh's primary concerns in founding the organization was the treatment of the city's horses, a class of work animals then powering the city's transportation and commerce. This mission is reflected in the granite trough still evident on the Butler Street sidewalk (obscured in Morrell's photo by the Chevrolet in the foreground). The ASPCA's Butler Street building was designed by the acclaimed Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker firm, and completed in 1913. The Renaissance Revival structure was funded by donations from the prominent Bowdoin and Schermerhorn families, and, when completed, had greater square footage than the Society's Manhattan headquarters. The building doubled as a shelter facility for some animals, and was the Society's base of Brooklyn until 1979, when the building was sold. While the entablature identifies the structure as "The Rogers Memorial" building, it is unclear to which "Rogers" this dedication refers.

In 1917, a New England Society committee organized what was then called " the Colony House Guild" in order to take care of the children of factory girls and women. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle documented the Colony House’s work with the borough’s children.

“336 Atlantic Ave., south side, west of Hoyt Street, showing a home bought by Mrs. Pruize from Samuel J. Krooks of No. 421 East 11th Street.” Eugene L. Armbruster, 1922. The brick, shingle-roofed house appears on Brooklyn maps as early as 1855. In Armbruster’s 1922 photograph, the Coca-Cola placard visible above the ground floor storefront may indicate a grocery or lunch counter operating in the space. Today, the shop window and entrance have been mostly enclosed while the building remains intact.

Harriet Judson Y.W.C.A. Building, November 25, 1929. Designed in a Renaissance Revival/Colonial Revival style by the architect Frank Freeman, the Harriet Judson YWCA Building was completed in 1913. The Young Woman’s Christian Association in Brooklyn was founded in 1888 and offered a meeting place for young working women. The women had access to lectures, concerts, a reading room, Christian education classes, and later more skills-based classes such as sewing, millinery, and office skills. This building was the second purpose-built YWCA in the area, the first was a 1892 Montrose Morris structure on Flatbush Avenue. This building was planned when the need for more residential space became apparent. Named for the first president of the YWCA, the building could house more than 200 women, and did for more than 50 year. The proximity to mass transportation was critical to the working women who lived in and used the services here. The YWCA sold the building in 1969. In 1998 it was purchased by the Institute for Community Living, a supportive housing organization, which continues to used the building as a residence today.

Some readers might remember this building as the Sharon Hall Hotel. Prior to its revamping however, it was an apartment building known as the Montrose. This magnificent structure was designed, sometime between the 1860s and 1880s, by Montrose W. Morris, the Brooklyn based architect best known for designing some of the earliest multi-unit apartment buildings in New York City. The design of the Montrose is very similar in style to the Alhambra, another larger apartment building in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, also designed by Morris. The Montrose stood on the corner of State Street and Hoyt Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Boreum Hill. It was a five-story building with fifteen apartments and seemingly quite fancy for the time. Each apartment included its own private reception hall in which you could exit through two sets of sliding doors leading into a dining room and parlor on one side and a library on the other. Although the exact year when the Montrose became the Sharon Hall Hotel is unknown, based on John D. Morrell’s photograph above, we do know it was already a hotel in the year 1960. The building seems to have been demolished soon after Morrell photographed it, sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. A more modern townhouse now resides on the corner of State and Hoyt. Thankfully not suffering the same fate as the Sharon Hall Hotel, the city designated the Alhambra a historic landmark in 1986. I suggest if one wants to travel back in time for a glimpse of the Sharon Hall Hotel, all one has to do is visit the Alhambra and admire the beauty of a time past.

The Brooklyn community of Gowanus, centered around the Gowanus Canal, is largely made up of historic architecture directly related to the water route. Located between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, it is considered part of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront. The canal itself is 2.5 miles long, 100 feet wide, and stretches from Gowanus Bay in New York Harbor to Douglass Street. Unlike other industrial areas of the city, Gowanus was never densely built up, and much open space remains today. The structures that surround the canal are generally six stories or fewer, lending a low-scale, 19th-century character. This area continues to be mixed-use manufacturing with peripheral residential enclaves. Before the Gowanus Canal, there was Gowanus Creek. By 1840, industry was growing in Brooklyn, and the creek was enlarged and straightened for barge access to New York Harbor. New York State officially approved plans for the completion of the Gowanus Canal in 1866. The canal became the center of industrial growth in Brooklyn, and by 1880 there were 31 firms operating in different industries such as lumber, coal, hay, grain, oil and building materials along the canal. A decade later these industries expanded to include gas and electric utilities, which required coal and coke. Industrial development spurred residential housing surrounding the canal basin for canal workers. The Gowanus Canal was most heavily used between 1900 and 1930. As industry and traffic increased, so did pollution. A flush tunnel was incorporated into the canal in 1911 in efforts to mitigate the heavy pollution caused by industry. Regardless, after World War I the Gowanus was the busiest—and most polluted—canal in the United States. The canal’s peak was in the 1920s, with an annual rate of 25,000 vessels per year serving more than 50 different manufacturers. After World War II, use of the Gowanus Canal significantly declined. A drop-off in housing development after the war decreased the demand for building materials, a major industry of the canal, and the declining use of coal as an energy source also adversely affected business. Further, the completion of the Gowanus Expressway in 1964 replaced water transportation. As a result, active waterway sites at Gowanus decreased by 50% during this time period. In its day, the Gowanus Canal was the center of industrial growth in Brooklyn and remains a spectacular piece of commercial infrastructure. It was the main reason that Brooklyn transformed from farmland to an industrial giant in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today the main canal remains completely intact, and over two-thirds of its walls are timber, dating to its initial construction. The design and materials of this waterway are remarkable, surviving examples of 19th-century engineering and construction. Additionally, remnants of industry dot the banks of the water, with much vernacular workers’ housing surviving as well. Historically one of New York’s most contaminated waterways, the Gowanus Canal area was designated as a Superfund Site in 2010. To protect the historic character of the neighborhood, the local community is currently working to place the Gowanus Canal Corridor on the National Register of Historic Places so that its urban industrial character is preserved.

Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street, looking west along Atlantic, May 17, 1945. Belgian blocks once lined the streets of New York (and still do in some small sections of DUMBO and Red Hook). Atlantic Avenue was once one of those streets. In the 18th century the road that became Atlantic Avenue (so named between 1855 and 1870) was a private street in the Dutch settlement near to the East River. As the settlement turned into village, the road became the village's southernmost boundary. As the City of Brooklyn grew, the street developed into a busy thoroughfare that stretched from the East River to Nassau County. In the 1830s the Long Island Railroad laid their fenced in tracks down the middle of Atlantic Avenue from Boerum Place all the way to Jamaica, on the strip of land they actually owned. (West of Boerum Place the railroad went through the Cobble Hill or Atlantic Avenue Tunnel to the waterfront.) Because most of the street was occupied by the railroad tracks, the rest remained unpaved by most accounts. The section of the LIRR line between the East River and East New York became grade level horsecar and later streetcar service after the City of Brooklyn banned steam locomotives in the late 1850s. It was likely during this transition that the pavers seen here were laid and here they remained for decades. Once again as transportation changed, so, too, did the look of the street. In the 1950s after the discontinuation of trolley service and the removal of the trolley tracks, Atlantic Avenue was paved over smooth. It is unknown what remains of the pavers under the current asphalt of the Avenue.

In 1917, a New England Society committee organized the Colony House Guild in order to take care of the children of factory girls and women. First renting a house on Atlantic Avenue and then purchasing a home on Dean Street, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle documented the Colony House’s work with the borough’s children. The facilities of the colony house included classrooms, a gymnasium, an infirmary, a billiards room, and a library, and more. The directors and volunteers would teach classes, lead activities, and organize clubs. This included everything from cooking classes to dance to violin lessons. Students from nearby universities like Pratt would lend a hand and older children would set up basketball games. Serving children from kindergarten through high school, each child would initially bring a cent every day for admission. While this would later grow, the vast majority of the Colony House’s budget came from donations as well as some from state and federal funding. A Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from 1943 described glowingly what happened when a young child entered the center: “A visit to Colony House will answer the question, “what happens to the child when of a working mother when she leaves him at the door of the child care center?” The answer is that the child has wonderful care, sometimes better care than he gets at home. After the child’s arrival at Colony House he is given a serving of fruit juice or perhaps if he needs building up cod liver oil. Some of the nursery children will rest a bit before the supervised period of play. The period is always out of doors if the weather permits. Colony House has an excellent roof, carefully screened for younger children to play in, and there is an adjoining school yard ideal for school-age youngsters. Luncheon is a complete meal and is followed by one to two-hour naps. Freshened by their sleep the children will be given fruit juice or milk, after which they again play out of doors. Shortly after 4 o’clock they are brought inside for a quiet time, which means music, story-telling, or a quiet game. In the very hot weather they will have a shower on the roof. From 5 o’clock on the parents start arriving to take their children home.” “At Colony House the children learn useful habits, such as hanging up their clothes, neatly putting away their toys after play, washing up before meals. They have dancing, singing, games, dramatics and all kinds of craft work to amuse them. Colony House provides the children with weekday excursions, such as a trip to the Brooklyn Museum or a picnic to Prospect Park. IN pre-war days this settlement sent Is children to its own camp, but because of difficulties in procuring proper supplies in a small town, other agencies are used to give the youngsters of the settlement days in the country.”

Public School 613 on State Street, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn; March 6, 1960. The school building dates to around 1930, having replaced the previous P.S. 15 at State Street and Third Avenue. P.S. 15 closed in 1942, following declining enrollment. During the 1950s, it became P.S. 613, one of the city's so-called "600 schools" — programs for disabled, mentally ill, violent, or pupils otherwise considered unfit for enrollment in the public school system. The system operated into the 1970s, and was decried as a "dumping ground" for children from poor families who might have otherwise benefitted from specialized instruction.

Hoyt Street, north from Douglass Street, Carroll Gardens. 1942. The building at extreme left is 244 Hoyt Street. Buildings along the east side of Hoyt Street would soon be razed for the construction of the NYCHA Gowanus Houses, completed in 1949.

401 Atlantic Avenue ca. 1942 The Church on this corner is St. Cyril’s of Turau Parish of the Belarussian Autocephalic Orthodox Church. The Gothic-inspired building features pointed arch windows, intricate brickwork and buttresses. The church was originally home to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

Workshops and storefronts on Atlantic Avenue and Nevins Streets, ca. 1940s. The view is northward along Nevins Street. The large advertisements at left promote the "home of Ex-Lax." The laxative was, in fact, produced in that very building on Atlantic Avenue. In the era of animal testing, monkeys used to test the product were housed in an enclosed structure on the roof. The building was sold for condo conversion in 1979.

Our Lady of Mercy Church, ca. 1915. This circa 1915 photograph depicts the third structure that housed Brooklyn Height's Our Lady of Mercy Church. In 1904 the parish was informed that their church building on Debevoise Street (constructed 1869) was to be demolished for the approach to the new Manhattan Bridge. In 1906 the cornerstone was laid for a new building with frontages on Schermerhorn and State Streets. The new church, dedicated in 1908, was designed as a mixture of Romanesque and Renaissance styles. The construction included not only the church but also a school, rectory, and a residence for the nuns, who were the school's educators. Once again the parish found itself in the path of the city's infrastructure process, this time the construction of a subway station and the widening of the street. The church closed and was demolished in 1930.

Southward view of Smith Street, crossing Atlantic Avenue, September 23, 1928. The photo was taken in preparation for the construction of the South Brooklyn segment of the IND Culver Line (today's F/G), which would connect to the Eighth Avenue Line at Jay Street. At right is the F. Figge Provisions wholesale market. Today, the market site is occupied by the Brooklyn Detention Complex.

Some readers might remember this building as the Sharon Hall Hotel. Prior to its revamping, however, it was an apartment building known as the Montrose.

In 1893 the August Busch Bottling Company called this building (nos. 435-443) on Atlantic Avenue home. During this period beer was shipped in barrels to defray freight charges and needed to be bottled near where it was sold. This facility bottled Budweiser for the decade between 1893 and 1903. Years later the building (and its slightly taller addition) became "the Home of Ex-Lax," the chocolate-flavored laxative developed in the early 20th century. Today, the newer building at no. 423 (left of this shot) houses 57 co-op residences, while the building seen here still stands (sans most of its ornamentation) and had commercial tenants.

Industrial building at the corner of Butler and Nevins Streets, February 28, 1960. The mansard-roofed corner building appears to have been incorporated into a later industrial building — termed a "strange marriage" in a 1977 Archaeological Report prepared ahead of the construction of a new sewage pipe. The report further ventures that the structure "appears to be the oldest building along the length of the proposed sewer construction." The 1977 report also included the following remark from John H. Lindenbush of the Long Island Historical Society: "Men fought and died here as part of our American Revolution. To date, we have honored them with our sewage. We can as a nation do better than that and I sincerely hope that this subcommittee will give serious consideration to including at least a few hundred acres of land around the former creek bed in the Gateway National Recreational Area." (His proposal did not come to pass.) The building, later the site of a Consolidated Edison sub-station, was demolished prior to 2009.

End of the Gowanus Canal, from Douglass Street, west of the canal, 1960.

Shoveling snow from the entrance to the Ex-Lax Building, December 30, 1947. Though 423-443 Atlantic Avenue seems quietly residential, the "Ex-Lax" written above its entrance reveals its original purpose. In 1906, Max Kiss invented and started producing a chocolate laxative so palatable that he named it Ex-Lax. (Excellent Laxative) By 1925, the product was selling so well that he built a new factory and headquarters on Atlantic Avenue between Bond and Nevins. This proved a good investment, the following year, Ex-Lax became America's favorite over-the-counter laxative. Though Ex-Lax still serves those in need to this very day, the factory does not; it was converted to loft co-ops in 1983.

View of termination of Gowanus Canal taken from Degraw Street, west of the canal, 1960. The light-colored building beyond the canal’s end is the 1914 R.G. Dun & Co. building, a commercial reporting publisher. Further in the distance at right is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at 1 Hanson Place. Completed around 1869, the Gowanus Canal was an important transportation link for Brooklyn’s booming industrial economy — and a catch point for the sewage overflow and toxic runoff produced in its watershed. After decades of unsuccessful remediation projects, the Environmental Protection Agency added the Gowanus to its list of Superfund sites in 2010, making cleanup efforts eligible for federal funding.

Swedish Evangelic Pilgrim Church ca. 1930 This church was commissioned by the Svenska Evangeliska Pilgrimskyrkan (Pilgrim Swedish Evangelical Congregational Church) in 1893, another reminder of Atlantic Avenue’s once vibrant Swedish community. The beige brick structure was designed in the Romanesque Revival style with banded brick arches and a square tower with a pyramidal turret. It is now home to the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church.

Bar at the corner of Hoyt and Bergen Streets, June 5, 1961. 148 Hoyt Street, today known as the Brooklyn Inn, is one of the oldest bars in Brooklyn. Anton Ziener opened the German tavern in 1885, with furnishings and financing from Bushwick’s Otto Huber Brewery, owners of several of the borough’s beer halls. It continued to be a German establishment through 1956, including clandestine operations during Prohibition. Since then, the bar has had several owners, but much of its original woodwork and tin ceiling remain intact. (It’s also still cash only.)

The northern end of the Gowanus Canal, February 28, 1960. The Brooklyn chapter of the ASPCA is visible across Butler Street.