"Madison Street (right), at the northeast corner of Nostrand Avenue. The buildings on Nostrand Avenue extend to Monroe Street, 1941."

260 Quincy Street, 1911. Built by a trio of English-born architect brothers, the Parfitt Brothers, the Nostrand Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church was completed in 1881. The parish had been founded here on the corner of Quincy and Nostrand Avenue in 1870. The church building is ostensibly Gothic Revival but also features details of the Shingle and Stick and English Arts and Crafts styles. The architects took advance of the corner plot to play mirrors facades that meet at the corner, rendered in brick, wood trim, terra-cotta, and glass. The current congregation is the John Wesley M.E. Church, a community founded in 1916 of mostly Caribbean parishioners. The parish moved to this location in 1947 from a former Greek Orthodox church on Pacific Street, as much of congregation already lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Tompkins Park, now Herbert Von King Park, was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. It was constructed between 1870 and 1871. The park featured trees at the square center and a flower garden along the perimeter. In 1885, a resident of the neighborhood planted the seed of a Southern Magnolia Tree adjacent to the park. He had brought it from North Carolina. Miraculously, it survived the brisk winters of New York. It was designated a historic landmark in 1970 after activist Hattie Carthan fought developers to ensure the tree's survival.

Saint George’s Protestant Episcopal Church ARCHITECT: Richard M. Upjohn DATE: 1886 STYLE: Victorian Gothic Gravesend was an unusual example of early town planning in America; its village patent was the first land document in New York written in English. Occupying a 1.6-acre lot, this cemetery is one of the smallest in the city. Many of the headstones are brownstone. Among the legible gravestones are those of Revolutionary War veterans, most of the original Gravesend patentees, and many prominent families of the community. The Van Sicklen family maintained their own burial plot in the northwest corner, which is separately fenced

Boys High School, undated postcard. Rendered in a stately Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style, Boys High School was the work of Brooklyn Superintendent of School Buildings, James Naughton (who designed ALL of Brooklyn's schools for nearly two decades). This ornate architecture style of complex massing, repetitive arches, and soaring towers was popular in Brooklyn at the time. The main post office and fire house, social clubs, and private residences were all Richardsonian, though Boys High School is considered the epitome of the style in the city. Fully enrolled by the time it opened in 1892, the school had a number additions in the early 20th century. Famous alum of the school include Norman Mailer, Isaac Asimov, Aaron Copland, Man Ray, and architect Morris Lapidus. Boys and Girls High Schools were combined in 1975 in a new building and this one was left to deteriorate. Through the advocacy of the community and a landmark designation (in 1975) the building was kept from what might have been a likely demolition and eventually restored once again for use. Today it is home to charter schools and recently made a guest appearance as Knickerbocker Hospital in the TV show "The Knick."

As NYC begins to re-open after a prolonged period of quarantine, it’s a fitting moment to look back at these remarkable tenant portraits taken by HPD photographer Larry Racioppo in the late 1980s and 1990s. Archived at the Department of Records, the photos depict residents of distressed apartment buildings where HPD was stepping in to help; whether by conducting inspections, undertaking repairs, overhauling building management, or filling empty units. Through chance encounters, Racioppo was able to capture glimpses of home life that would have otherwise gone unseen. Now during the COVID-19 crisis, the photos feel especially resonant.

The Boy's High School 832 Marcy Avenue Designed by James W. Naughton, 1891–92 The monumental Boys’ School was designed in the Romanesque Revival style and features quintessential design elements, such as rounded-arch windows and doors, dormer windows, gables, terra-cotta ornament, smooth brick façades and a rough-cut ashlar stone foundation. The imposing corner towers create a picturesque silhouette between this massive structure and the sky. Along with the Girls’ High School, it was the first public secondary school in New York City, and both were designated New York City landmarks in 1983.

Central Presbyterian Church, 1909. This site is now the Siloam Presbyterian Church. The structure photographed here is the Central Presbyterian Church. The church was lost in a fire in the 1930s and was rebuilt in 1936, though shortly after the congregation moved to 1200 Dean Street to merge with the Bedford Presbyterian Church. The building sat empty for some years until another congregation moved in. Siloam Presbyterian, a historically Black church, was originally looking to build a new structure in the place of their original worship hall at the intersection of Fulton and Cranberry Streets. However, the construction of the Manhattan Bridge Approach encroached on a portion of the land they were looking to develop. After years of meeting in various congregation halls and community spaces, Siloam Presbyterian Church moved to the former Central Church in 1944. At 260 Jefferson Street, Siloam Presbyterian continued its legacy as a site that pioneered activism and social reform. Its Reverend, Milton Galamison, was a member of the Brooklyn Branch of the NAACP and an outspoken community activist. He founded the Parents' Workshop for Equality in New York Schools, which strived to end racial discrimination and offer all children equal opportunities, namely Black and Puerto Rican students who had been disenfranchised by the New York Public School System. In 1959, Siloam hosted the "Moslem Dinner and Surprise Program," a program run by Malcolm X, a member of the Nation of Islam at the time. Galamison, of Siloam, was the leader of one of the largest Presbyterian congregations in the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Bed-Stuy. By opening his doors to another religious group, Rev. Galamison "situated the Muslims...in a place encoded by a tradition that shared the NOI’s commitment to anti-racist work," according to Zaheer Ali in the African American Intellectual Society's "Black Perspectives." This move united the two leaders and was exemplary of how "local conditions placed different activists and their communities into shared spaces that offered the potential for the exchange and critique of ideas." In later years, Galamison organized two school boycotts: the first in 1964, called "Freedom Day," to pressure the Board of Education to integrate schools, and the second just a month later. In 2019, Siloam Presbyterian Church celebrated its 170th year anniversary.

Puritan Congregational Church, not dated. The history of this church dated 1863 when a group of teachers from the Wallabout Presbyterian Church established a Sabbath school. Within a year the school had grown while located at a storefront space on Myrtle Avenue. Originally named the East Brooklyn Congregational Church, the community broke ground for a place of worship in 1864 at DeKalb Avenue and Walworth Street. The congregation supposedly moved here to the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Marcy Avenue in 1869. Much of the later history of the parish is unknown. A 20th-century newspaper article noted that this building was constructed in 1890. The congregation may have disbanded or merged with another. In 1924, the building was sold to St. Augustine Protestant Episcopal Church. The church and neighboring school were sadly lost to a fire in 1969.

Boy’s High School, Brooklyn Located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and built in 1891-92, this Romanesque Revival building is one of former Superintendent of Buildings for the Board of Education of the City of Brooklyn, James W. Naughton’s masterpieces. Considered to be the one of the most important public schools in Brooklyn, the building was designed to be an architectural statement, richly adorned with terracotta and accented by a round corner tower, gables and dormers. Landmarked in 1975 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, Boy’s High School remains “one of Brooklyn’s finest buildings”.

Townhouse at the northwest corner of Tompkins Park, October 25, 1957. This corner townhouse was built 1888 and 1904, and features intricate cornice detail, decorative terra cotta spandrels, a rock-faced brownstone belt course at the parlor floor, and a rusticated brownstone base. It’s possible that the house was built for John M. Wolf, the owner of a stove repair business, whose address was listed as 660 Lafayette Avenue at the time of his death in 1909.