The St. Felix Street entrace of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, ca. 1931.

Fulton Street El, Brooklyn, at Lafayette Street, May 27-28, 1941. View looking east.

At the turn of the 20th century, Downtown Brooklyn had a theater district to rival Manhattan’s. In the space of a few blocks near the Flatbush Avenue Extension, a collection of grand multi-use ballrooms and smaller vaudeville stages proliferated. Just a few decades later, most had fallen into disuse and disrepair, but in many cases, the buildings themselves survive. Here’s a look at a thriving entertainment district of days gone by — and the contemporary adaptive reuse projects reinvigorating its legacy.

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower under construction, 1929. At the busy intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush stands the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, dividing the low-rise Brooklyn neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, and Park Slope. At 512 feet, the building is the tallest in Brooklyn; once the tallest structure between Manhattan and Paris. Built between 1927 and 1929 for the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the building boasts a four-sided clock face, the largest in the world until 1962. (It was surpassed by the Allen-Bradley Clocktower in Milwaukee.) Against the architect’s wishes, the client insisted on a golden dome, meant as a nod to the Bank’s pre-existing building in Williamsburg (the neighborhood is spelled without the ‘h’). Along with the copper dome, the Spanish detail gives the art-deco style a neo-Moorish flavor. Ownership of the building changed over the years through mergers and acquisitions, as Williamsburgh Savings first became a part of the Republic National Bank and was later acquired by Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Company (HSBC). “The Willie”, as it is affectionately known, has been converted into luxury condominiums by co-developers The Dermot Companies and Magic Johnson. The ornamented hall, with a mosaic mural of Brooklyn, 63-foot ceilings and 40-foot windows, was vacated on September 30, 2005 as new ownership took over and now serves as an event space. Although still the tallest building in Brooklyn (though perhaps not for long with the planned conversion of the Atlantic Yards), the Williamsburgh Savings Bank is not the tallest structure. This honor belongs to a 597-foot radio and television tower at nearby Brooklyn Tech High School.

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.

In this excerpt from the Brooklyn Historical Society's audio tour, host Nelson George and historian Francis Morrone discuss the communities and architecture of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn — including interviews with longtime neighborhood residents.

“Myrtle Ave. 'L' from Fort Greene Park.” Originally the site of a fort built for the Revolutionary War and reoccupied during the War of 1812, the community surrounding the land started using it as public space shortly after the threat of the War of 1812 passed. By 1847, it was designated Washington Park, and twenty years later, famed landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux began designing its new layout. In 1897, the new Olmsted and Vaux’s landscape was renamed Fort Greene Park.

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.

“Lafayette Avenue, north side, east from St. Felix Street to Fulton Street, showing a row of old houses, Nos. 39 to 53. The second building bears the inscription: ‘Morrison Dining Saloon.’ 1922." The rowhouses on this site were demolished between 1982-1986, creating a small green space known as “BAM Park” for the Brooklyn Academy of Music campus nearby. A 2012 study showed high levels of contaminants in the park’s soil, and it is currently slated for remediation and redevelopment.

Underneath the tracks of the Fifth Avenue El, over Flatbush Avenue, south of Fulton Street, August 1941. Elevated service on the Fifth Avenue line was discontinued in June 1940, but the remaining tracks weren’t demolished until September 1941. In the background is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at 1 Hanson Place, completed in 1929, and until 2010 the tallest building in Brooklyn. At left is the Corn Exchange Bank Trust Co. at 19 Flatbush Avenue.

Restaurants on Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, October 25, 1959. The buildings at left (Sherry's Cross Roads, Esquire Cafe) have been replaced. Albergo's restaurant has since closed at No. 63 Lafayette, but in 2017 another Italian eatery has taken its place.

“Fulton Street, east from and across Flatbush Avenue Extension, underneath the B. M. T. elevated. The four-story building (center) is the Witteman Building and is on the east side of Flatbush Avenue Extension. April 27, 1940.” Service on the Fulton Street El was discontinued on June 1, 1940, just weeks after this photograph was taken . At street level is an East New York-bound Fulton Street Line streetcar. Today, the B25 bus replaces the Fulton streetcar line.

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.

In November of 1950, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle visited Barton's Bonbonniere, Brooklyn's fastest-growing candy chain. The article captures a 50's candy factory in full swing.

147 St. Felix Street, April 17, 1917.

“Ashland Place, south from and across DeKalb Avenue. On the left is a corner of Fort Greene Park and in the background is the Fulton Street elevated structure. The buildings in the center of the photograph are on the south side of DeKalb Avenue, extending to St. Felix Place, 1927."

"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.

The Brooklyn Strand, a 1918 vaudeville theater on Fulton Street at Rockwell Place, 1941. Next door (right) is the Majestic Theater, vacant and listed for rent. Today, the Majestic building is home to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater (which maintains many interior details of the original theatre), while the Strand is now the BRIC house, a non-profit arts performance space.

“145 Ashland Place, between De Kalb Ave., and Willoughby Street, showing the City Prison, as seen from Lafayette Street. July 10, 1932.” The Raymond Street Jail, later the Brooklyn City Prison, was built in 1836 to hold the city’s male prisoners (an annex for female prisoners was added in 1839). In an oversight emblematic of the building’s purpose, the prison was constructed without a front door (an entranceway was later carved out of the completed facade). The facility was closed in 1963 and razed ahead of the construction of the Brooklyn Hospital Center.

Brooklyn Hospital, founded in 1845. The Brooklyn Hospital was founded as the "Brooklyn City Hospital" in May of 1845, supposedly following an incident in which a man from Buffalo, New York broke his leg at Fulton Street, in proximity to nearby Brooklyn City Hall. The hospital played a major part in providing treatment and aid for soldiers of the Union Army during the Civil War. It continued to play the role of carrying for sick and wounded soldiers in the Spanish-American War and both World Wars. In 1880, the hospital established the first nursing school in Brooklyn and the first in the State of New York. This was made possible by a generous donation by the women of the Fruit and Flower Mission. The hospital also installed the second Electrocardiograph in Brooklyn in the year 1926.

“Flatbush Avenue Extension, at the northeast corner of DeKalb Avenue, showing the Paramount Theatre Building, the view being south toward the latter avenue, 1932.” Opened in 1928, the Paramount Theatre building has been owned by Long Island University since 1962. In addition to film screenings, the theater hosted jazz, rock and roll, and Yiddish music performances. Despite its conversion for use as classroom space and a gymnasium, the building retains much of the theatre's original decorative detail.

Fulton Street El, Brooklyn, at Lafayette Street, May 27-28, 1941. View looking west.

For this story, we'd like to share our personal picks from our combined collections, that represent what this time of year means to us, and to introduce the team of Librarians, Archivists, Collection Managers, Educators and Administrators, who make up the fantastic staff at the Center for Brooklyn History.

Behrens Pharmacy at the northwest corner of DeKalb and Clermont Avenues, 1942. The sign has changed, but the pharmacy continues to operate at this address.

Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, undated postcard. During the Revolutionary War, more than 11,500 prisoners of war died aboard British ships anchored in nearby Wallabout Bay. The prisoners died of overcrowding, contaminated water, starvation, and disease, and either had their bodies thrown overboard or were hastily (and poorly) buried at the shoreline. Because of this callousness, thousands of body parts and bones washed up on Brooklyn’s waterfront for years to come. In 1808 the remains were first entombed in a crypt on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 1873 the prison ship martyrs remains were moved from their location to a vault in the park that was created at the site of a former Revolutionary War fort (then Washington Park, today Fort Greene Park). In the late 19th century various constituencies advocated for a permanent memorial. In 1905 McKim, Mead and White created the design for a new entrance to the crypt, including a wide staircase leading to a plaza from which a massive Doric column rose. The Stanford White-designed monument was 149-foot-tall and crowned with a bronze lantern, created by sculptor Alexander Weinmann (who also designed four bronze eagles for the base). It was dedicated in 1908 with the President-elect William Howard Taft in attendance. Between 1937 and 1948 an elevator allowed visitors to ascend the column. Over the last century, the monument has undergone a series of vandalization and restorations. The eagles were removed in the 1960s due to continual defacement. After smaller restoration efforts in the 1940s and 1970s, a major effort was undertaken to repair, clean and conserve the monument, the crypt, and the surrounding plaza. The newly restored plaza (with modern lighting and two original and two replica eagles) was unveiled in 2008, a century after its original dedication.

In 1902, the first Farm Garden was opened to provide city children the invaluable experience of cultivating and caring for the land. Its founder said of her creation: "I assure you that all the virtues can be taught from a little patch of ground, not eight feet square." Read on to learn of this history and legacy of New York's Farm Gardens.

Subway construction on Ashland Place, north of Lafayette Avenue, January 30, 1911. The excavation underway was for the BMT Fourth Avenue line, which runs under Ashland Place between Fulton Street and the start of Fourth Avenue at Flatbush Avenue. The elevated line in the middle ground is the Fulton Street El.

91 Lafayette Avenue, 1940. The building at the northeast corner of South Portland Avenue and Lafayette Avenue is the only remaining house of what was once a row of old brownstones. Addresses 93-99 were demolished in 1936 to building a new 10 story apartment building, which still stands.

Fulton Street El, Brooklyn, at Lafayette Street, May 27-28, 1941. View looking east.

Myrtle Ave. ‘L’ at Cumberland Street, ca. 1955. Interrupted by the Whitman Houses between Park and Myrtle Avenues, Cumberland Street continues as Washington Park on the eastern edge of Fort Greene Park (right).

Schermerhorn Street, north side, between Third and Flatbush Avenues, 1920. Who knew that dentistry could be such a cut throat business! Here at the corner of Schermerhorn Street, Third Avenue, and Flatbush Avenue, the Ritter Painless Dental Company doled out "painless" teeth extraction. In the same era, another "painless" dentist, a Dr. Parker, located around the corner at 124 Flatbush Avenue, offered similar services. The Ritter building included attention-grabbing, bold signage, akin more to an amusement venue than a doctor's office. Brooklyn historian Suzanne Spellen has suggested that the Painless Parker signage, while oversized, was more tasteful and sedate, in response to the gaudy display of his competitor.

Cultural Medallions are porcelainized enamel plaques affixed to the exterior of buildings, in order to commemorate an individual (or occurrence) that has made a significant contribution to New York City’s rich cultural heritage. These are the Cultural Medallions in Brooklyn. See more from the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center here.

“North on St. Edwards Street, across Myrtle Avenue, from Fort Greene Park, 1940.”

Marianne Moore was born on November 15, 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri. She attended Bryn Mawr College in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1909 with an A.B. in history, economics, and political science. As a student, she wrote poetry and short stories for the campus literary magazine Tipyn O’Bob, inspiring her later career as a poet and writer. Moore published extensively throughout her career, establishing herself as one of America’s most renowned poets alongside the likes of Ezra Pound, H.D., and T.S. Eliot. In 1915, her poems appeared in both The Egoist, a literary journal based in London, and the Chicago-based Poetry journal. Her first book of poetry, aptly titled Poems, was published in 1916. In 1924, her second book of poetry Observations, won the Dial Award. In the late 1920s, Moore became editor of The Dial, a well-established, yet sporadically published, literary magazine which focused on a variety of subject matter throughout its tenure. Moore came on as editor in 1925 and would serve as until the journal’s final year in 1929. After publication of The Dial ended, Moore and her mother moved to 260 Cumberland Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Greene where they lived for the next thirty-six years. For nearly half of that time spent in Brooklyn, Moore tended to her elderly mother who passed away in 1955. Moore remained in Fort Greene until 1965 before moving to Greenwich Village in Manhattan. In 1951, she won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for her fifth book of poetry Collected Poems, forever solidifying her legacy. In her later years, Moore became synonymous with her eccentric attire of donning a black cape and tricorn hat, as seen above from a reception at the Gage & Tollner’s restaurant in Brooklyn Heights. She passed away in 1972 at the age of eighty-four. Moore’s time spent in Brooklyn lives on to this day. Her house on Cumberland Street still exists and her papers and ephemera are open to researchers at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.

Recently while digging through the BPL Archives, an archivist found a really outstanding clipping about the Fox Theatre. "Wired Seats at the Fox Help Deaf Hear Talkies"; assisted listening devices in 1930! And how cutting edge! “A number of choice seats in the mezzanine,” reads the article, “have been equipped with the device, which consists of a telephone headpiece and receiver and an adjustable hand switch by which the person using it can control the volume of the sound coming through the instrument.” What other innovations did the Fox champion? What other cool stuff was showing at the Fox?

The 19th century saw Fort Greene develop from farmland held by a few families to a residential neighborhood, populated by a mix of Brooklyn’s working, merchant, and upper classes. Today, much of the neighborhood has been well preserved, including several blocks of brownstone and rowhouse architecture, churches, parkland, and civic institutions dating to the 19th century. Even in areas transformed by postwar urban renewal and commercial development traces of an earlier era remain.

Horse-powered excavation for the BMT Fourth Avenue line on Ashland Place, north of Lafayette Avenue, January 10, 1911. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is visible at the edge of the frame, upper left.

Subway construction for the BMT Brighton Line at DeKalb Avenue Station, May 15, 1919. The station opened June 22, 1915 with service available on the Fourth Avenue Line (today's D/N/R trains). Construction continued for five years, culminating with the opening of Brighton Line (B/Q) service on August 1, 1920.

View west on Fulton Street, beneath the Fulton Street El, during construction of the IRT Eastern Parkway Line (2/3), April 30, 1908.

“Nevins Street, south from Flatbush Ave. Also Flatbush Ave., west side, east from Nevins Street. This view is no longer existent. The buildings were razed, to make way for the new Fox Theatre, a motion picture house. June 1926.” The Cowperthwait Furniture Company building was demolished in 1927, along with the rest of the buildings on the triangular block between Flatbush Avenue, Nevins Street, and Livingston Street.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the coolest cat of all? We're actually not quite sure we're fully qualified to award that title...but here is a collection of our favorite historic photos of felines from our partners!

The Majestic Theater and storefronts on Fulton Street, 1959. The Majestic marquee lists two current showings: The Black Shield of Falworth (1954) and The Mole People (1956). Fulton Street restaurants include Lotus Inn Chow Mein (no. 655) and Cafe Copa Bananas Cocktail Lounge (no. 659).

Hudson Avenue, south from DeKalb Avenue, 1942. Buildings on the south side of Fulton Street are visible in the background. Until 1940, Hudson Avenue carried the northernmost section of the BMT Fifth Avenue El. Like many blocks near Atlantic Terminal, Hudson Avenue’s tenement buildings and brick warehouses have been replaced by new construction.

Richard Wright, author of "Native Son."

View of Ashland Place, looking north toward the Brooklyn Academy of Music (center-right, in the distance), October 19, 1910. This photograph was taken as part of a survey ahead of the construction of the BMT Fourth Avenue Line, which today runs beneath Ashland Place. The photographer's vantage point is outside the former No. 149 Ashland Place (Ashland Place has since been extended to include the former Raymond Street, at which point addresses were renumbered). At left, on the west side of Ashland Place are storefronts for the Long Island Bird Store — advertising poultry and pigeons — and a hay and grain supplier. Today, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower (One Hanson Place) stands immediately to the right of this vantage point.

Subway construction beneath elevated trains on Fulton Street (left) and Flatbush Avenue (right), September 10, 1907. This photo captures the past and present of Brooklyn public transit: the Fulton and Fifth Avenue elevated trains (the latter over Flatbush Avenue); streetcars running on both streets; and reinforcements in place to brace the elevated trestles for excavation associated with the IRT Eastern Parkway line, beneath Flatbush.

The Crescent Theatre (formerly Montauk Theatre), pictured one year after its re-opening on Flatbush Avenue Extension, December 21, 1909. The theater would go on to operate under several names before its demolition in 1940.

The southeast corner of Fort Greene Park, DeKalb Avenue and homes on the east side of Washington Park.

Commercial strip on the north side of Fulton Street, east of Ashland Place, 1941. Tenants include a barbershop, Italian restaurant, hardware store, and “permanent linoleum floors.”

On January 11th, 1940, Workers went to work demolishing Werba's Theatre. Under the names of Montauk, The Crescent and Schubert-Crescent, it was once the proud citadel of Brooklyn's Social and Political Elite.

Fulton Street, looking east across Flatbush Avenue Extension. June 21, 1941. One year after service was discontinued, the Fulton Street El is being dismantled.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, from St. Felix Street, ca. 1931. Founded in 1861 in Brooklyn Heights as the Philharmonic Society of Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s original building was destroyed in a 1903 fire. The present building was designed by Herts & Tallant and opened in the fall of 1908 with a Metropolitan Opera performance of Faust.

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.

“South Elliott Place, north from Lafayette Avenue, showing the Brooklyn Technical High School in the background, 1941.”

Bandstand in Washington Park, now Fort Greene Park, at the future site of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, ca. 1895.

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.

The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is a memorial to the more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died while detained aboard sixteen British prison ships during the American Revolutionary War. The remains of a small portion of those who died on the ships are interred in a crypt beneath its base. The monument, designed by architect Stanford White, is topped with an eight-ton brazier (funeral urn) by sculptor Adolph Weinman. This photo is undated, but may depict the November 1908 dedication ceremony, when a crowd of 15,000 gathered for President William Howard Taft’s address.

"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.

Fulton Street, west from St. Felix Street. In the background is the tower of the Smith, Gray & Company Building, August 1941.

Orpheum Theater, 1941. The Orpheum Theatre opened on December 31, 1900, and presented live performances to an auditorium that sat nearly 2000 people. The B.F. Keith-Albee chain took over the venue between 1912 and 1929 and hosted mostly vaudeville. For the last 24 years, RKO operated the theatre. This photograph captures the marquee in June 1947 as the nearby elevated train infrastructure was being removed. In 1953 the theatre closed and the building demolished. After decades of functioning as a parking lot, a new building was erected on the site in the mid-2010s.

260 Cumberland Street is the tall building visible down the block. Poet Marianne Moore moved here with her mother in 1918. Moore worked at the New York Public Library and published her first volume of poetry "Poems" in 1921. Moore was highly regarded as a poet during her lifetime and even became somewhat of a celebrity, famous for her tricorn hat and cape and featured in magazines such as Life, the New York Times, and The New Yorker. Ford Motor Company even asked her to come up with names for a new series of cars, though they rejected her suggestions.

Billed as the first movie theater built for talkies, the Paramount on Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues opened in 1928 with the movie Manhattan Cocktail. Alan Freed, who coined the term "rock and roll" in 1951, staged revues here while working for radio station WINS. Following its purchase by Long Island University, the movie house showed its last feature, Hatari, with John Wayne, in August 1962. The next year it was converted to a gym, though its famous Wurlitzer organ still played on.

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

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.

Corn Exchange Bank, 1937. Constructed sometime between 1910 and 1930 the Corn Exchange Bank was one of a number of branches of the highly successful bank its most well-known branch is on 125th Street at Park Avenue). Like most NYC-based banks, the institution cycled through a number of names. Called Chemical Bank by the 1960s and Chase by the 1990s, the building has been owned by environmental designer and activist, Al Atarra, since the 1970s. The bank vacated the building around the turn of the 21st century and it remained largely empty, though was used for occasional film shoots. One of those shoots changed the name on the facade to Metropolitan Exchange Bank (a fictional institution) and Atarra kept the name, creating a business called M Ex, the Metropolitan Exchange, which was a start-up incubator for creative ventures. One of his wishes, according to a 2010 New York Times article, was to rename the project: "I want to rename it the Brooklyn Arts and Design Area or BADA. Since we're in the BAM District, it'll be BADA-BAM." Though the creative hub is still housed in the building, it seems that his syllabic abbreviation has not caught on.

Brooklyn Technical High School, ca. 1933. The Brooklyn Technical High School building at Fort Greene Place and DeKalb Avenue was built between 1930-33, and is today home to over 5,000 enrolled students. Brooklyn Tech was founded in 1922, after the educator Dr. Albert L. Colston designed a specialized math and science-oriented curriculum to prepare for students for modern, technical professions or collegiate instruction. The school first operated from a converted warehouse at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, before moving to the purpose-built Fort Greene campus. The twelve-story Collegiate Gothic school building by Walter C. Martin, the Superintendent of School Buildings who succeeded William H. Gompert, incorporates elements of skyscraper construction, including its steel and reinforced concrete structure. While Martin’s building materials of choice were becoming more common, the Brooklyn Tech’s amenities were far from ordinary: the vertical campus included two gymnasia, a radio production studio, an aeronautical lab, and an operational metal foundry (which has since ceased operation). A 456-foot tall rooftop broadcast antenna makes Brooklyn Tech the tallest structure in the borough. Brooklyn Tech has produced numerous distinguished graduates who went on to careers in the sciences, including Arno Allan Penzias (‘51), the 1978 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for research instrumental in the development of the Big Bang Theory. In more local matters, Tech has also produced prominent political figures, including US Representatives Matthew McHugh (‘56), Gary Ackerman (‘60), and Anthony Weiner (‘81).

Richard Wright Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

“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.

The Smith, Gray & Company Building at the intersection of Nevins Street, Fulton Street, and Flatbush Avenue. Completed in 1888, the building featured two 210 foot towers, one which housed a large illuminated clock. In 1892, a fire destroyed much of the building, causing the clock tower to collapse on the Flatbush Avenue Station of the Fulton St El. Pictured here in 1941, the rebuilt clock tower is being scaled down to its current seven story height, sans clock. At left is the Fox Theater at 20 Flatbush Avenue.

“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.”

The east side of South Portland Avenue, just south of Fort Greene Park, 1958. The buildings on this block provide a fascinating snapshot of the architectural elements that came in and out of fashion during the latter half of the 19th century. At left is no. 29A, one of a pair of 1878 Neo-Grec brownstones by architect Charles Mushlet. At right are a row of Italianate brownstones built around 1867. In between, a 20th century apartment building with mixed brownstone, brick, and terra cotta facade and a distinctive curved, full-height swell-bay window common to more recent tenement construction.

“Myrtle Avenue (El, thereon), west from North Portland Avenue to Leo Place, showing extensive demolition for the erection of Fort Greene Houses. The view is from Fort Greene Park. In the background is St. Edwards \[sic] Roman Catholic Church.”

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, from Atlantic and Fourth Avenues, 1929. The tower was designed by Halsey, McCormack and Helmer and opened in April 1929. The original plans had not included a dome at its top, but the dome was added at the insistence of the bank’s owners, and over the objections of the architects.

Majestic Theater ca 1940 The Majestic Theater opened in 1904 and was known for a variety of theatrical performances, including opera, musicals, and vaudeville. By 1942, the Majestic Theater became a first-run movie theater, and later a church. Not long after this photograph was taken (in 1968), the Majestic Theater closed its doors permanently and remained that way for two decades. Harvey Lichtenstein, Brooklyn Academy of Music President and Executive Producer, raised funds to renovate the theater and it re-opened in 1987 with many of the original elements and details. Today, the former Majestic Theater is the Harvey Theater at BAM, showcasing a variety of creative performances and productions.

The Montauk Theatre, a 1,750-capacity venue built in 1895, sat in the way of the Flatbush Avenue Extension, a 1907 project to widen and extend Flatbush Avenue to carry traffic to and from the Manhattan Bridge, then under construction. Rather than raze the structure, the city bought the building and its site for $230,000, then sold it for just $11,500 to a company who undertook to move the theater to a site on the new Flatbush Extension. (The terms of the deal rose eyebrows at the time, as the company who re-purchased the building shared an executive with its original owners.) An August 1907 report in Harper’s Weekly described the move: “The remarkable engineering feat of moving the Montauk Theater in Brooklyn forty-five feet backwards from its foundations, turn it half around, and then slide it at a right angle, sixty-five feet more to front on another street has not only aroused the interests of engineers and architects, but vividly recalled the strange circumstances which prefaced the feat.” The relocated building reopened in 1908 as the Crescent Theatre.

1 Hanson Place, the future site of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, in 1927. Construction on the 37-story building would begin later that year.