“Vanderbilt Avenue, at the southeast corner of Willoughby Avenue, showing the Chas. E. Pratt Mansion and stables. October 12, 1940.” Charles Pratt, an oil magnate and philanthropist, founded and endowed the Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill in 1887. The stable has since been demolished, but the main house has remained largely unaltered under the stewardship of the sisters of St. Joseph’s College, where it is now known as Founders Hall.

In 1874, Charles Pratt’s Astral Oil Works was acquired by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, making Pratt a very rich man. That same year, he broke ground on a trendsetting mansion on Clinton Avenue, soon to be the most sought-after address for Brooklyn’s burgeoning industrialist class. The first of the Clinton Avenue mansions, Pratt’s home was designed by architect Ebenezer Roberts in a transitional Italianate/Neo-Grec style. The home originally included gardens, stables, and a greenhouse on the property’s Vanderbilt Avenue frontage, but these outbuildings have been lost. Today, the mansion is part of St. Joseph’s College, under whose care many original features have been preserved.

"West side of Clinton Avenue between DeKalb Avenue and Lafayette Avenue, 1974." No. 320 (right) is a Second Empire house built in 1867-8 for John O’Mahony, a liquor dealer. The mansard roof, entranceway, and lintels survived a 1920s-era remodel. No. 324 (left) is a larger and more imposing Second Empire structure, built in 1869 for the willow ware pottery manufacturer Lambert Heyniger.

“143-145 Vanderbilt Ave., east side, north of and near Myrtle Ave. July 22, 1934." Semi-attached wooden frame houses built in 1850 as rental properties for the Brooklyn merchant Henry Rider. Today, these houses are part of the Wallabout Historic District.

Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church, 1934. The Romanesque Revival church was designed by William A. Mundell in 1869. Mundell was a prolific New York architect, responsible for the design of Brooklyn landmarks including the Long Island Safe Deposit Building near Fulton Ferry and armories in Williamsburg, Park Slope, and on Clermont Avenue. Today, his red-brick church is home to the Eglise Baptiste D’Expression Française, a Francophone Baptist congregation.

283 DeKalb Avenue, March 17, 1957.

Clinton Avenue contains some of Brooklyn’s finest 19th century architecture, including the Gilded Age mansions that made it the borough’s most fashionable address. A walk down the length of the avenue tells the story of this transformation: from the provincial farming community shaped by a handful of prominent landowners to a “Gold Coast” boulevard of grand Renaissance Revival buildings, and later to the tension between wartime housing needs, development, and the nascent historic preservation movement.

128 Clinton Avenue ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: 1853-54 STYLE: Greek Revival This unusually well-preserved and rare free-standing Italianate style frame house with Greek Revival style elements was erected for Henry and Susan McDonald in 1853-54. The house’s cubic form, low-hipped roof, strongly projected bracketed eaves, molded window surrounds, wood-and-glass double doors with segmental-arched transom and wood reveal, and columned portico enriched with dentils and paired brackets are characteristic of the Italianate style. Greek Revival style elements include the fluted porch columns with Tower of the Winds Corinthian capitals and first-story windows with eared surrounds.

Some might say that the name, The Graham Home for Old Ladies, is an improvement on its predecessor, the Brooklyn Society for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females. It’s certainly more to the point. When the building at 320 Washington opened in 1851, it housed 90 women from Brooklyn who were over 60 and could “bring satisfactory testimonials of the propriety of her conduct and the respectability of her character.” Eventually, the home ran out of money and sat vacant until it was turned into the Bull Shippers Plaza Motor Inn, an establishment where conduct and respectability, not to mention AARP membership, were no longer a prerequisite. The Inn operated as a brothel by "ladies by the hour who brought only scanty-panty testimonials of propriety.”\* In 2001, the building was bought and turned into condos. The scanty panty line comes courtesy of the now defunct Fort Greene Newsletter.

The two-story light-colored stone building is 183 Vanderbilt Avenue, a stable built between 1886-1908 and marked by the stone bust of a horse’s head above its entrance. Vanderbilt Avenue was home to several turn-of-the-century service buildings, including the row of three carriage houses to the right of the stable. To the left, the shop at 177 Vanderbilt is advertised as Paul F. Bird Machines and Hauling.

“Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn’s Show Street,” from a Brooklyn Eagle postcard series 1905-07. From right to left are: no. 245, the George Dupont Pratt mansion, now Burns hall of St. Joseph’s College; no. 241, the Charles Millard Pratt house, now the residence of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn; and no. 229, the Frederic B. Pratt House. The latter, today known as the Catherine Ladd Pratt House, is a gray brick Georgian/Renaissance Revival mansion designed by Babb, Cook & Willard. Built in 1895, the house is notable for its inventive solution to the adjacent rowhouses at the property’s northern edge: a two-story portico entranceway with a second-level colonnade with pillars carved to look like female figures.

In 1844, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed the following prediction “THE CITY OF CHURCHES — such, in time, will be the distinctive appellation of Brooklyn.” In the ensuing decades, the incorporation of new houses of worship matched the pace of residential development and reflected the diverse ancestry of the immigrant communities who settled there. The buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries express the evolution of American church architecture, as dictated by the pride and prosperity of worshippers from Bushwick to Bay Ridge.

Emmanuel Baptist Church ARCHITECT: Francis H. Kimball DATE: 1887 STYLE: French Gothic With its square twin towers and triple entrance porch, Emmanuel Baptist Church is reminiscent of a small French Gothic cathedral. The somber and solid character of this late nineteenth Century stone edifice is relieved by a varied and fanciful use of carved ornament and structural forms, creating an outstanding example of ecclesiastical architecture

141 Greene Avenue, 1958. The brick house at 141 Greene Avenue dates from circa the 1870s. The Clinton Hill Designation Report stated that the ground floor commercial space likely dates to the construction of the building. In the last nearly 60 years this building has changed very little, including the look of the commercial space; what was once a grocery store is now a dry cleaner. And its neighbor at 373 Waverly Avenue (at left) is no longer a liquor store, but a pizzeria.

“Clermont Avenue, south from Lafayette Avenue, showing St. John's Roman Catholic Chapel (white building) and the Church of the Messiah (cone-shaped Steeple). June 21, 1941.” Today, St. John’s is the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, named for the first Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn. In 1868, Loughlin and the diocese of Brooklyn purchased land on Clermont Avenue with the intention of building a massive cathedral. He was ultimately unable to finance the project, but did build the Bishop’s residence at the northeast corner of Clermont and Greene Avenues. The Church of the Messiah was razed after a five-alarm fire in February 1969. The distinctive “beehive” steeple was added after a previous fire in 1910 destroyed the original steeple and belfry.

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.

Lafayette Avenue, between Waverly and Washington Avenues, 1940. The brick mansion at center right belonged to John Thomas Underwood, the founder of the Underwood Typewriter Company. In the early 1950s, Underwood’s surviving family (he died in 1937) donated the mansion and its outbuildings to the city’s Parks Department. The new Underwood Park was opened to the public in 1956.

Pratt Institute, general view, ca. 1917

The Queen of All Saints Chapel and School at Lafayette and Vanderbilt Avenues, ca. 1913. Designed by Reiley & Steinback, construction of the elaborate Gothic Revival Catholic church began in 1910 and was completed in 1913. When opened it was lauded by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as "one of the two or three most beautiful specimens of Church architecture in the United States."

Clermont Avenue, east side, between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues, viewing south from the former and showing the 52nd Field Artillery Armory, also known as the 105th Regiment Field Armory, 1925. Built in 1873, the William Mundell-designed Clermont Armory was, at the time, the largest hall without pillars or obstructions in the United States. Mundell’s ornate Second Empire facade was rebuilt in comparatively bland "Neo-Medieval" style in 1911, the 23rd regiment having relocated to a new and larger armory at Bedford and Atlantic Avenues in 1895. When the National Guard left in 1964, the Clermont Armory became a storage facility for the Department of Sanitation, falling out of use after 1989. The building has since been redeveloped for residential use.

315 Washington Street, 1957. In the years after the Civil War, the streets of Clinton Hill, particularly Washington Avenue and Clinton Street, saw a construction boom of new, lovely, and large brick and brownstone mansions. This brick home at 315 Washington Avenue was likely completed in the late 1860s. In the 1890s, well-known Brooklyn architects Parfitt Brothers designed an additional story and classic French style mansard roof. At some point in the early 20th century the building's use changed from private residence to a clubhouse (it was the Rankin Post No. 10 of the Grand Army of the Republic) before switching back. Today the home is a multi-unit residence.

Facade detail: Queen of All Saints Roman Catholic Church, 1928.

The Vanderbilt Avenue Station on the Myrtle Avenue El, 1942. The Vanderbilt Paint Co. is at the northwest corner of Myrtle avenue.

The Brooklyn Masonic Temple, from Clermont Avenue, 1927.

“The Pouch Gallery. This building was erected by Robert Graves in 1888 for his home; William A. Mundell was the architect. Alfred J. Pouch, after purchasing it, remodeled it to be suitable for assemblies and public gatherings. 1922.” Pouch was a prominent philanthropist and art collector who, like many of his Clinton Avenue neighbors, made his fortune in oil. After an 1891 gala and gallery show, the Pouch Mansion home became well-known venue in Brooklyn’s elite circles, and continued to host charitable events, lectures, and meetings. Pouch later added a wing to the original structure, where selections from his art collection were available for public viewing. The house was demolished to between 1941-1943, to make room for the Clinton Hill Apartments (today “co-ops”) development for Navy families and war veterans.

“Lafayette Avenue, at the northwest corner of Clermont Avenue. September 19, 1941.” Three 1857 wood-frame houses on Lafayette Avenue and an unusually narrow brick building at the northwest corner of Clermont Avenue.

“DeKalb Avenue, north side, east from Vanderbilt to Clinton Avenues, showing former brownstone private residences. October 12, 1940.” DeKalb Avenue is named after Baron Johann de Kalb, a Bavarian-French military officer who served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and was killed at the battle of Camden.

“The rear of the \[Clermont Avenue] armory on the west side of Vanderbilt Avenue, looking toward Myrtle Avenue, 1925.”

"Myrtle Ave. ‘L’ West from Vanderbilt Ave. Station, ca. 1955." Opened in 1888, the Vanderbilt Avenue Station was a stop on the Myrtle Avenue El, serving trains on the Myrtle and Lexington Avenue lines. This photo was taken from the western edge of the station’s island platform, above Clermont Avenue. 374 Myrtle Avenue is the building at farthest left.

Lefferts-Laidlaw House, July 22, 1934. The temple-fronted Greek Revival house was built in stages, with the main portion completed between 1836-1840, and remained in the Lefferts family until 1854.The Leffertses were prominent Brooklyn landowners whose holdings included much of present day Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, to the east. In late December 1878 the residents of this Brooklyn home began experiencing mysterious happenings: door bells ringing, violently rattling doors and a broken window. According to NY Times reporting the police even got involved and droves of gawkers and spiritualists showed up. After two weeks of the strangeness, the Times notes that the resident, Edward Smith, banished the spirits with "a long and honest prayer." The house was subject to a number of unfortunate “updates” — faux-brick siding, asphalt shingles — during the early 1940s and 1950s, but was later restored to its original appearance. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

George Dupont Pratt House, ca. 1905. The Georgian Revival mansion was designed by the firm Babb, Cook & Willard and completed in 1901. In 1918, the Sisters of St. Joseph bought the building, and today it is Burns Hall of St. Joseph’s College.

Wood-frame row house at 333 Adelphi Street, 1958. This Greek Revival house dates to 1855 and appears in advertisements for boarders in the late 1860s. In the 1880s, it was home to a kindergarten, where “special attention \[was] given to timid or backward children.”

200 Lafayette Avenue (Vanderbilt Avenue facade), 1957. The (now) bright yellow wood-frame house is arguably the most photographed house in Clinton Hill. Purchased in 1903 by the Skinner family, the home was still in their care in 2010 and likely still today.

Willoughby Avenue, looking east from Vanderbilt Avenue. The white wall at left surrounds the site of 210 Clinton Ave, part of the “North Campus” of the Clinton Hill Co-ops. Designed by architect Wallace K. Harrison, the 13-story tower is part of a six-building complex built between 1941-1943 as housing for wartime workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The Joseph Steele house, built around 1850 — likely as an extension of the smaller wing on its east side — is a wooden building in the Greek Revival style. During the 1850s, this part of Brooklyn still had some farmland and open space; the cupola atop its roof would have provided a sweeping downhill view of more-urban Brooklyn Heights, Wallabout Bay, and the land in between.

Richard Wright, author of "Native Son."

The southeast corner of Adelphi Street and Lafayette Avenue, 1941. At the corner is 329 Adelphi, which, along with its near neighbor at 333 Adelphi (third from the corner), are the oldest wooden houses in Fort Greene, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

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

Maybe the nicest of the Pratt family houses, this Romanesque Revival home at 241 Clinton was built for Pratt’s oldest son, Charles Millard Pratt, who became President of the Pratt Institute when his father died in 1891. Today, it is the residence of the Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn.

John Arbuckle House, October 25, 1957. Arbuckle, a Pittsburgh-born coffee magnate, had his factory and roasting operation in today’s DUMBO. He commissioned the young architect Montrose Morris to build his family a new home on the fashionable Clinton Avenue in 1888. Morris, then just 25 years old, designed an elaborate Romanesque Revival brownstone mansion with an open piazza entrance, prominent oriel window, and Tiffany stained-glass windows.

Walt Whitman circa 1890. Whitman lived at 99 Ryerson Street in 1855, the year he published Leaves of Grass. It was here that he received a letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, calling Leaves of Grass the “most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” he wrote. Whitman lived in several buildings in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill for over 28 years, but this is the only home of his still standing. He longed for a more permanent home: “My good daddy used to say: ‘Oh! what a comfort it is to lie down on your own floor, a floor laid with your own hands, in a house which represents your own handiwork—cellar and walls and roof!’”

Edward T. Bedford Mansion, ca. 1905. Bedford was a board member of Standard Oil and a colleague of Charles Pratt, whose family had several mansions on the next block south. Bedford’s stately Renaissance Revival home was designed by Montrose Morris and built around 1900. A 1902 New York Times report of a fire at Bedford’s home begins: “There was much excitement yesterday afternoon in the aristocratic neighborhood of Clinton and Willoughby Avenues, Brooklyn." Like many in the surrounding area, Bedford’s mansion was torn down during World War II, making room for the construction of housing for Navy personnel and families at the Clinton Hill Apartments (built 1941-1943, today the Clinton Hill Co-Ops).

In 1890, the Pratt Institute opened one of the country's first library schools, with the Pratt Free Library as its laboratory. The Daily Eagle reported on January 20, 1895: "Pratt Institute's new library building is gradually nearing completion. When ready for occupancy it will be one of the most imposing structures in this big city." The Pratt library had been earlier located in the main building and opened to the public in 1888 as the first free public library in Brooklyn- not limited to Pratt Students. Excessive demand for it services- it was, said the Daily Eagle in 1895, "thronged with students, literary workers, and bibliomaniacs every afternoon"- lead to the construction of a separate library building, dedicated on May 26, 1896. At the dedication, Pratt President Frederic Bayley Pratt presided; the Reverend John Humpstone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, said a prayer; and the famous Dannreuther Quarter performed Mendelssohn's overtire to Athalie, Anton Rubinstein's Music of the Spheres, and "Walther's Prize Song" From Wagner's Die Meistersinger. And then New York State Librarian Melvil Dewey (of decimal system fame) addressed the assembly, followed by a prayer from the Reverend Samuel McConnel, pastor of the Church of the Holy Trinity on Montague Street. It was a grand event. Architect William B. Tubby's Romanesque Revival building housed reference and circulating collections, including a children's collection, as well as an exhibition room, and classrooms for the library school. (In 1982 architect Giorgio Cavaglieri added the south terrace with views down onto new stacks. After 1940, with the opening of the new central library at Grand Army Plaza, Pratt's library was no longer the much-needed municipal resource it had been for 52 years and was restricted to institute students.

Pratt Institute Library ARCHITECT: William B. Tubby DATE: 1896 STYLE: Renaissance Revival The Pratt Institute Library was the first free public library in the City of Brooklyn. Pratt’s belief in self-help led him to an interest in the public library movement. The free-standing Renaissance Revival structure has slightly projecting end pavilions and a two-story stacks wing at the western end.

The house at 200 Lafayette Avenue is what the landmarks commission calls “the largest and best remaining example, of a wooden suburban mansion in the transitional Greek Revival/Italianate style now standing in any of the five boroughs of New York City.” Throughout its 179-year history, the house has only had three owners. The Skinner family, who currently own the home, have owned it since 1903.

These ten buildings, designed by Harrison, Fouilhoux & Abramovitz, were built during World War II as housing for Navy personnel at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard. The north complex housed enlisted men, while the south was primarily for officers. Several of the large mansions on Clinton Avenue were torn down during construction of the towers. After the war, the buildings became a private development. The availability of affordable housing in the Clinton Hill Coops, and later the St. James Towers, as well as the solidifying presence of large institutions like Pratt and St. Joseph's University, are the reason Clinton Hill was able to stave off much of the urban blight that plagued other Brooklyn neighborhoods in the 60s, 70s and 80s. In 2017, residents of the St. James Towers voted to remain in the Mitchell-Lama program.

We have freedom of speech, religion, press, and assembly. What about freedom of accessibility? The freedom to use public transportation. For anyone to use public transportation. Yet in many of the major cities across the world accessibility is a struggle especially when it comes to subway transportation. New York City in particular is dealing with a huge accessibility crisis. The New York Times reports hust 126 of its 472 stations, or 27 percent are accessible. And to make matters worse many of the stations are extremely far from one another making it difficult for someone with a disability to get to their destination in a reasonable time. A focus upon college students who are trying to navigate the subway system demonstrates the scope of the issue. Pratt Institute, a leading art school in the heart of Brooklyn, is a case in point. Two of the closest nearby subways stations, Classon and Clinton Washington Avenue, are used by many students to get around the busy city. hat's shocking is that neither station is wheelchair accessible. In fact the next closest G train station that is accessible is Greenpoint Avenue which is a 23 minute drive. In 2019 Cheyenne Leonard, a Las Vegas native moved to Manhattan to attend graduate school at NYU. Leonard states, “I quickly realized that my prior visits to the city were filled with tourist activities, all of which were built for a wide variety of people and therefore, offered better accessibility.” Leonard is just one of the many students who struggle with a disability in the city. Blair-Goldensohn, another wheelchair user in the city stated that using the subways are extremely hard for someone with a disability. Why is this still an issue? Why isn't this a priority? NYC’s subway system predates the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. As many of the subway stations were already constructed, it is not easy to rebuild in keeping with contemporary accessiblity standards. “Though there will be progress made to many of the stations. The New York Times states, Under the settlement, the transportation authority will make an additional 81 subway and Staten Island Railway stations accessible by 2025. It will then make another 85 stations accessible by 2035, 90 more by 2045 and then 90 more by 2055.” Stations like Canal Street Station is a major hub in Manhattan yet it’s only partially accessible by certain trains. Will these stations become modified to be fully accessible? At Jay St. Metro-Tech when asking the question, “ what are your opinions on the new york city accessibility and how they affect people with disability?” Student at Pratt Institue, Brooke Miller stated, “I can name a couple locations, Columbus Square, where we are right now. It's a really good point because you never really notice it. I think it's important because how else are people going to get down.” While many who do not have disabilities may not notice, the issues of accessibility are starkly and obvious for those who are trying to navigate the subway stations in NYC. The issue of accessibility is the subject of a settlement with the MTA that would add elevators and ramps to 95 percent of the subway’s stations by 2055 - in 33 years! A more recent class action lawsuit brought by NYPIRG on behalf of wheelchair users and the blind addresses the issue of the gaps between trains and subway platforms . Overall, the accessibility in subway stations is a major problem in NYC that affects not only people with disabilities, but everyone who has a mobility issue, including parents with strollers, for exampleClinton Washington Ave, Canal Street, and Jay Street Metro-Tech subway stations are all examples of how accessibility can vary.

Orthodox Friends Meeting House, 1927. The Rundbogenstil Romanesque Revival Meeting House was completed in 1868, following a design credited to architect Stephen Carpenter Earle (himself a Quaker). (The architectural style is sometimes credited as Lombardian Romanesque, proving that architectural styles are a slippery slope that not even architectural historians can always agree on.) The Brooklyn Daily Eagle called the building “new, neat and tasteful.” The red brick church remained a Quaker Meeting House until the 1950s and was sold to the Apostolic Faith Mission in 1965, who painted it white.

The Brooklyn Masonic Temple at Clermont and Lafayette Avenues, ca. 1910. Built between 1906-1909, the imposing Neo-Classical structure is notable for its polychrome terra cotta ornamentation. The details of the facade are rendered in rich green, yellow, blue, brown, and cream.

Richard Wright Photograph by Carl Van Vechten

Emmanuel Baptist Church Inspired by French Gothic prototypes, this large church, with its twin towers, resembles a small cathedral. Yet the interior is novel in the arrangement, with a semicircular seating arrangement focused on the large baptismal font.

313 Clinton is “one of the finest neo-Grec residences in New York City.” Prominent Brooklyn architect George Morse designed it for lace manufacturer A.G. Jennings. Who knew lace gloves could be so lucrative? The white paint job really raises the hackles of the Clinton Hill Historic District report writers who say it “destroys the romantic intensity of the original deep red hues.” Right next door is 315 Clinton, built in 1888 by famed architect Montrose Morris for John "Mr. Coffee” Arbuckle. The coffee merchant’s big breakthrough was figuring out a way to keep roasted beans fresh by coating them with a sugar and egg glaze to close the pores of the bean. Though it sounds pretty gross, coupled with technology Arbuckle pioneered in automatically packing and sealing bags, it made shipping beans across the country possible. Arbuckle’s real genius, though, was in marketing. Every bag of coffee contained a peppermint stick, a collectible card, and a coupon. The coupons were redeemable for everything from handkerchiefs and straight razors to wedding rings. Arbuckles’ Ariosa Coffee was particularly popular with cowboys who referred to their campfire-brewed beverage as “a cup of Arbuckles.”

Former Graham Home for Old Ladies. Established in 1851. This brownstone had two lives before it was turned into a condo. It began as the "Brooklyn Society for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females," for "gentlewomen...unfitted to accept willingly the public asylum provided by the state" by John B. Graham. Supposedly, admissions were overseen by women representing twenty six Brooklyn churches across many denominations. Women had to be at least 60 years old to take residence, and brought their own furniture. The home was funded by individual donors. The old ladies home was shuttered sometime in the 70's, and was turned over to the Bull Shippers Motor Inn. A Fort Greene Newsletter characterized the new dormers as "ladies by the hour who brought only scanty-panty testimonials of propriety." The brothel was closed, and the building became a cheapo single-room occupancy hotel, a "magnet for crime" in the changing Clinton Hill area. The building was gutted and cleaned up in 2000, when BRP Development Corporation purchased the brownstone. The sign, which reads "The Graham Home for Old Ladies" was added during the renovation to hark back to its less rowdy days.