Brick house with wooden colonnade, 1941. During the 1950s, Hicks Street was transformed by the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway trench, to the south. These buildings have since been demolished. Ironically, the lot is now occupied by a seven-story parking garage.

Side view of No. 46 Willow Place from State Street, December 7, 1958. This mid-19th century column-fronted house is the only\* surviving structure of a former row of four, opposite the extant "colonnade row" on the block's east side. \*No. 42 retains parts of the original structure, but its columns have been removed while other elements have been substantially altered.

Row houses on Willow Place, October 19, 1959.

St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church and School, 1934. Designed by Patrick Charles Keeley, the Romanesque Revival church was dedicated in 1860. The St. Peter’s School at 101 Warren Street was added in 1866. The church closed in 1975 and was converted into condominiums, retaining much of its exterior features.

The New York City Housing Authority was founded in 1934. Today it owns approximately 178,895 apartments. Before NYCHA, low and middle-income housing was constructed and operated by private entities, including philanthropists and worker's unions. This collection highlights some of the unique affordable housing projects built prior to NYCHA.

Willow Place, nos. 43-49, May 14, 1936. Built in 1846 by an unknown architect, Colonnade Row is a series of Greek Revival houses. Four structures remain on this side of the street, while the across the street, one colonnade home survives. The surrounding three structures have been renovated in a 20th century modern style. The homes at nos. 43-49, with their single long porch and tall columns, have been painstakingly preserved.

Colonnade Row ca. 1936 This Greek Revival residential row between Joralemon and State Streets in Brooklyn, dating perhaps to the mid 1840s, had a single occupant in each house, all of Irish descent: Meehan at No 43, Sullivan at No. 45, McKenna at No. 47, and Dowling at No. 49. In a decrepit state at the time of Abbott's photograph, all the houses have been rehabilitated and survive today.

Colonnaded Row Houses ca. 1970 Collectively impressive, these very small two-story houses would have had a mean, undistinguished appearance had they not been united by their colonnade. This was an early instance of town planning and was doubtless inspired by Underhill's grander Greek Revival colonnade- long since vanished- on Brooklyn Heights overlooking the harbor.

Commercial strip on the east side of Columbia Street, 1934. In the first half of the 20th century, prior to the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway's South Brooklyn segment, the docks to the west of Cobble Hill were a major employer and Columbia Street was one of a few vibrant commercial areas serving the community.

In the late 19th-century housing conditions for the poor in Brooklyn were crowded, unsafe, poorly ventilated, and lacked amenities. This story shows one of the first efforts in our borough to create affordable and pleasant housing for those who struggled to pay the rent.

North side of Atlantic Avenue, center building, is Montero's Bar and Grill, 1958 Opened in 1939 in a space across Atlantic Avenue, Montero's is the last of the longshoreman bars in a neighborhood once filled with them. An iconic Brooklyn dive, it has a classic neon sign out front, and the dark interior is decorated with model ships and other maritime trinkets.

The Riverside apartments were built in 1890 by William Field & Son and financed by philanthropist Alfred Tredway White, whose motto was “philanthropy plus five percent. ” White accepted a limited return on his investment in exchange for building affordable housing for Brooklyn’s poor and working-class families. The Riverside buildings occupied only 49 percent of the lot, which allowed space for an internal courtyard. White’s progressive ideas about housing were years ahead of the law, and more generous as well: in 1895 the New York Tenement House Law was changed to require that a new tenement occupy no more than 65 percent of its lot. The Riverside received praise from Jacob Riis, who wrote in his 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives: “Its chief merit is that it gathers three hundred real homes, not simply three hundred families, under one roof.” Although four of the nine buildings in the Riverside complex were demolished to build the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the LPC nonetheless included the Riverside apartments in the 1965 Brooklyn Heights Historic District designation. What survives looks much like it did in the 1890s, red brick, arched windows, terra-cotta accents, and black wrought-iron balconies.

Long Island College Hospital, ca. 1908. Founded in 1858, LICH was a pioneering institution in many regards: the first medical school to employ bedside teaching (1860), Brooklyn’s first ambulance service (1873), and the first medical school to use cadavers in its anatomy curriculum (1875).