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.

Grace Church, ca. 1975. As the City of Brooklyn’s population swelled in the mid-19th century, Grace Church was built to serve the needs of Brooklyn Heights-based Episcopalians who found the East River ferry journey to James Renwick’s Grace Church on Broadway too arduous. For the Brooklyn Grace, congregants enlisted Richard Upjohn, the architect of Manhattan’s Trinity Church and the nearby Church of the Pilgrims on Remsen Street, among others. Construction on the Gothic structure was completed in 1848, with the first service held on December 10. In 2013, the church leadership made a stunning discovery as workers began refurbishment work on the sanctuary ceiling: bold, bright, and hand-painted star motifs dating to about 1866. At some point in the intervening years, the stars were painted over by a more sedate faux bois (fake wood) motif. Today, the striking 19th century painted ceiling has been restored.

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.

274 Hicks, 1959. Founded in 1886 as Engine 24 of the City of Brooklyn, the firefighters originally fought blazes in a horse-drawn engine. The current building was constructed in 1903 (five years after the fire company had become part of the New York citywide department following consolidation). Described as a "Gilded Age mansion for NY’s Bravest," the building is a Renaissance Revival structure. It was designed by the firm of Adams & Warren, who largely built massive mansions for well-heeled Long Islanders. The copper-clad dormers and roof tiles, green with age, are especially eye-catching on a block with older and very attractive townhouses.

Grace Church ca. 1974 Located in a quiet backwater of the most fashionable section of the Heights, this Gothic church is unusually low, long, and narrow. However, the nave and side aisles, spanned by trusses, are well suited to the Episcopal service. The apse is well expressed on the exterior, and its traceried window is a prominent feature of the east end.

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.

No. 260 Hicks Street (red door) at Joralemon Street, June 17, 1974.

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.

Engine 224 firehouse and carriage houses next door, Hicks Street, June 18, 1962.

124-128 Atlantic Avenue Built in 1854, this Italianate commercial building was originally home to the area’s largest dry-goods store, Journeay & Burnham. The business was known for stocking fine quality fabrics and fashionable clothing. The business moved to Flatbush Avenue near Fulton Street in 1892, and closed in 1907. The building was subsequently home to the Atlantic-Pacific Chandlery Manufacturing Company, suppliers of ship provisions. The company’s name remains above the storefront, providing a reminder of Atlantic Avenue’s nautical past and its link to New York City’s bustling harbor. These buildings are located in the Cobble Hill Historic District.

The four wood-frame houses at 7-13 Columbia Place were originally called "Cottage Row." A series of nine homes were built in the 1840s and of the original nine these four remain. In the late 1840s, these homes were occupied by the families of a milkman, a fur merchant, a painter, and a boat pilot at South Ferry. By the late 19th century, no. 9 was occupied by Michael Allen, a local Democratic politician who survived an assassination attempt by a disgruntled Republican opponent. Despite several questionable exterior alterations (in the photo from 1959 nos. 7, 9, and 13 are clad in asphalt shingles), the homes today likely look closer to their original design and construction than at any point in the last century.

Bay window and garden on the Congress Street side of 367 Henry Street, Cobble Hill; December 15, 1958. This Italianate brownstone was one of three constructed between 1850-1853 for merchant Charles F.A. Hinrichs. The sheetmetal bay window, painted black, was a later addition.

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.

260 Hicks Street, 1958. Originally built in 1847 as one in a row of 21 homes by William and Harriet Packer, 260 Hicks originally matched the style of its immediate neighbors west on Joralemon Street. The building was expanded and made into a mansion in Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival styles in 1887. The brick home has been drastically and unfortunately altered, since the late 1880s work. The architectural details at the third story have been removed and the fourth floor has been expanded to a flat roof with brick and mortar that does not match the original materials. Given the historic photographic evidence seen in the collection of photographer John Morrell the alterations happened between 1958 and 1964, perhaps when the building was converted from a single family to multi-unit residence.

Joralemon Street, Brooklyn Heights, November 9, 1959. Some things are not as they seem: the Greek Revival townhouse at No. 58 Joralemon Street (center, with dark windows) was once a residence, but is now the site of a subway ventilation system and emergency exit from the Joralemon Street Tunnel.

Joralemon Street, north side, west from Hicks Street, to the East River. 260 Hicks Street is the corner building, at right, with the double chimney, 1935.

Gothic Revival Houses (2-8 Willow Place) ca. 1975 Despite their individual porches, these charming town houses have a remarkable feeling of unity and coherence. This is due to the very original window treatment, where the recessed spandrels with their chevron patterns lend a vertical emphasis, foreshadowing the spandrel panel arrangement later employed on high buildings.

The townhouse at 31 Grace Court housed two of the country's most illustrious writers and thinkers. Playwright Arthur Miller lived there in the 1940s when he wrote "Death of a Salesman" and "All My Sons." In 1951, Miller sold the house to W. E. B. Du Bois, the great author, intellectual and co-founder of the NAACP. At the time, Du Bois' political activism placed him under McCarthy-era scrutiny and he was soon the subject of a federal indictment for failing to register the Peace Information Center as an agent of a foreign government. Miller, whose own politics led to his being blacklisted, sold Du Bois the house just before the trial commenced. Charges were ultimately dismissed after the defense attorney told the judge that "Dr. Albert Einstein has offered to appear as character witness for Dr. Du Bois". During the decade that Du Bois and his wife Shirley Graham lived here, the house became gathering place for progressive politics and cultural icons, Paul Robeson would regularly drop in and play their piano. To the great annoyance of the US government, diplomats would regularly visit the Du Bois household, until after the Russian foreign minister's visit, when the State Department ruled 31 Grace Court off-limits for UN delegations.

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.

Letters on the facade of this low brick structure spell out "High-Pressure Fire Service: Main Pumping Station." This building was constructed in 1902 as part of New York's High-Pressure Fire Service. At this time, fire hydrants were either high or low pressure. Low-pressure pumps could churn out water at 30 pounds of pressure, though larger flames required a more powerful system. These hydrants called, "H.P. hydrants" were fed by pumping stations like these, and could unleash up to 125 pounds of pressure. When a call for a fire came in that would require the H.P. system, the fire alarm headquarters would notify both the pumping station, who would turn on the pumps to feed nearby hydrants and firehouses. In the firehouse, a gong would signify the use of H.P. hydrants. If a fire needed H.P. hydrants mid-fight, the chief officer would be able to "either radio in a request or send it...by Morse code from the firebox on the scene," according to George Robinson in the F.Y.I. column of the New York Times. Once the engineer in charge of the station was signaled to turn on the pumps, high-pressure water would be fed to the hydrants in roughly one minute. As technology progressed and pumper trucks were invented, these stations were put out of use. The High-Pressure Fire Service became obsolete by 1954. The facility has since been converted into a series of luxury condos called "Pumphouse Mews," a fitting name for the former station.

Tug Boat "Watuppa," August 10, 1936. By the late 1920s, more than 700 tug boats crowded New York Harbor, assisting in the movement of massive amounts of freight. The steam tugboat Watuppa, seen here, was owned by McCarren Towing Line, a company which dates to 1864 and continues to own and operate New York Harbor tugs. Taken from Pier 5 in Brooklyn Heights, the view in the distance is of the Financial District and Lower Manhattan.

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).

Three Neo-Grec townhouses on Amity Street, February 28, 1960. These townhouses, Nos. 129-133 Amity Street, were originally part of a row of ten built between 1875-81.

Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights, 1922.

Nos. 2-8 Willow Place, ca. 1975. 2, 4, 6 and 8 Willow Place are a group of four residential brick buildings located in what is known as the "Willowtown" section of Brooklyn Heights. The area is bounded by Joralemon Street and Atlantic Avenue at its north and south, and Furman and Hicks Streets at its east and west. As seen in the picture, the buildings look like they might have original fences and railings. Note the metal panels that unite the second and third floors. These are known as “Davisean” windows: multistoried, recessed and paneled at floor levels. Named after the architect Alexander Jackson Davis, who made good use of them, they are popular in Willowtown and have the effect of making buildings appear much taller than they actually are.

Brooklyn V. 2, Double Page Plate No. 31 \[Map bounded by Clark St., Hicks St., Joralemon St., East River], 1887.

Joralemon Street, west from Hicks Street, towards the East River, 1926.

Underwater Tunneling, the third type of construction, occurs underneath the river. This photo shows construction of the Joralemon Street tunnel. Subway water tunnels are built approximately 30 feet below the riverbed. Because of the immense pressure exerted by 30 feet of rock, sand, and silt, plus 50 feet of water, such tunnels were in danger of collapsing. To counteract this force, tunnels underwater were pumped full of pressurized air, which pressed out against the walls of the tunnel and kept it in place. However, this pressurized air made for difficult working conditions for sandhogs. When working in pressurized air, workers were in danger of developing decompression sickness, similar to what divers might experience. Because of this, workers could only spend three hours under water before needing to spend several hours above ground. Before exiting or entering the tunnel, sandhogs would adjust to the pressurized air in a decompression chamber, also called an air-lock or a man-lock.

Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lebanon and St. Mary's Catholic School, Hicks Street, August, 1935. Our Lady of Lebanon was incorporated in February, 1903, in the townhouse at No. 295 Hicks Street. As the parish grew, the converted brownstone could no longer accommodate worshippers and a new church was built on the adjacent lot. In 1944, the Maronite church moved into the former Church of the Pilgrims, a Richard Upjohn-designed church on Remsen and Henry Streets.