Kent Avenue, west side, between Myrtle and Park Avenues, showing Public School No. 157, 1929. Constructed in 1906, P.S. 157 is elaborate Gothic Revival-style building designed by C.B. J. Snyder. The school suffered neglect, water damage, and misguided alterations throughout the 20th century. The original structure included an ornate parapet with 40 terra cotta “learned” owls attached. In the early 21st century, an architectural firm undertook an extensive renovation that recreated more than 5,000 units of terra cotta, including the parapet and owls.

“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.

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.

The Mergenthaler Linotype Company set the standard for printing companies in the late 19th century and early 20th century with a design so robust it remained unchanged for almost a century. Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German-born clock designer, invented the linotype machine to replace the arduous process of hand-setting individual characters lines for printing newspapers, books, magazines, and posters. Linotype, or "line-o-type," cast a line, or "slug," of characters which were entered by a typist on a 90-character keyboard. The line, or "matrix," would serve as the mold for a molten metal alloy to be cast into it. The final result of the process was a metal slug, ready print on a letterpress. Mergenthaler built his company's factory in the neighborhood of Wallabout, in proximity to both the Brooklyn Harbor and the newly minted Myrtle Avenue El. The original factory building, on Ryerson Street between Flushing Avenue and Park Avenue, was updated in 1906 for an Albert Kahn design reinforced-concrete structure. By 1916, Mergenthaler's factories grew to take over the blocks spanning Hall and Grand Streets to the east and west and Vanderbilt and Park Avenue to the north and south. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company's buildings still exist, though the linotype company was pushed into oblivion by the invention of phototypesetting, and later, computerized typesetting programs.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church ARCHITECT: Richard T. Auchmuty DATE: 1858-59 STYLE: Gothic Revival St. Mary’s Church is a beautiful Gothic Revival structure reminiscent of an English rural parish church. Built in 1858, it was designed by a relatively unknown architect, Richard T. Auchmuty, in accordance with the religious philosophy of ecclesiology. This movement laid out a strict set of rules for the design of Episcopal churches, which required the honest use of the best materials, the orientation of the church on an east-west axis, and the exterior design to reflect the plan and construction of the interior. In addition to its handsome form, St. Mary’s has beautiful ornamentation and attractive pointed-arched and rose windows.

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.

P.S. 157, The Benjamin Franklin 850 Kent Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn 1909 Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, architect C.B.J. Snyder’s goal was to build a world-class public school system for New York City. Constructed in 1909, P.S. 157, an “H” design pioneered by Snyder, is a fine example of the Colligate Gothic style of architecture reminiscent of the classical architecture of Oxford, Bryn Mawr, and Princeton. The building’s parapets are accentuated with 40 terracotta owls, representing “wisdom.”

Pratt Institute, general view, ca. 1917

275 Park Avenue, ca. 1918. This building was erected in 1890 as home to The Van Glahn Brothers, one of several large wholesale grocery supply businesses located in Brooklyn that developed at the end of the 19th century. In 1907, the brothers sold the property to their growing neighbor, Rockwood & Co. Chocolate Company, whose factories were located just behind this building on Waverly and Park. The company produced Tootsie Rolls, among other candies, in this plant until 1967. Like many properties located along Brookyn's waterfront between 1960 and 2000, this building sat empty for more than 20 years before converted into a rental property in 2002.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Engine #209 Taaffe Place, 1957. The Brooklyn Fire Department Engine 9 was organized in 1869 at 159 Taaffe Place (formerly Graham Street) in a building that had formerly housed the volunteer Engine 12. In 1892, Engine 9 was called to a massive fire at a series of buildings on Nostrand Avenue, and its firefighters performed a number of daring rescues. The engine company moved into a different building in 1966, and was eventually disbanded in 2003. The building at 159 Taaffe Place still stands and has a faded sign "American Refractories" above the large rolling metal gate. The top floor looks to be a residence.

Drake's Cake Building, ca. 1915. Constructed in 1913 for the Drake Bakeries, this factory structure with an Arts and Craft style facade was designed by the firm of Dodge & Morrison. One of the largest commercial cake bakeries in the region, Drake was producing 15 tons of pound cake a day by 1914 and was becoming well known for their ring dings, yodels, devil-dogs and coffee cakes. The business was so successful that they expanded this factory building all the way to Waverly Avenue in 1925. In 1960 the company was sold to a large food conglomerate. Today it is part of Hostess, who still make some of the Drake favorites and the building on Clinton Avenue is a charter school.