St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, October 19, 1958. This German-Gothic style church was designed by the Brooklyn-born architect Theobald Engelhardt and completed in 1897 (some records list an earlier date of completion). Engelhardt was a prolific in the late 19th century, designing breweries, banks, factories, and mansions across Brooklyn, especially in neighborhoods with established German populations.

144 Franklin Street Alonzo B. Jones, ca. 1895 This Renaissance Revival structure features a rich texture comprised of rough-cut brownstone at the base and brick and red terra cotta on the upper floors. Its bays consist of impressively scaled arches separated by equally monumental pilasters with Corinthian capitals. Separating the arched bays from the bracketed cornice is an ornate frieze. Attention is drawn to the Greenpoint Avenue façade, whose central bay is flanked by oval windows that further accentuate the building’s Renaissance inspiration.

While much of this view had changed (namely the disappearance of the wood-frame structures at right), two large buildings in this circa 1915 view remain. They are the four-story wood-frame at left (no. 688) and the ornate brick and terra cotta five-story building (no. 680) next door. While the plots at right are now home to more modern buildings, just down the block at 702-708 Manhattan Avenue, one can see surviving building much like those lost here.

The American Manufacturing Company was an important part of North Brooklyn's rope industry. Like other rope manufacturers in the area, it supplied nearby shipbuilders with marine rope in is early years and later produced rope for both World Wars. Neighboring factories of the then-industrial portion of Brooklyn included the Chelsea Fiber Mill, the Knickerbocker Ice Company, and Continental Iron Works. Originally, the American Manufacturing Company occupied the single block between Franklin, West, Noble, and Oak Streets. The facilities quickly grew to occupy buildings facing the waterfront, expanding to cover a total of six blocks with a total of 16 buildings. The factory employed thousands of workers who lived nearby: primarily women of Polish descent. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle's description of the plant's workers in 1910 is as follows: "The employees of these mills are Pole and Lithuanians. They came to this country through friends who preceded them. With but a few exceptions, they went to work on their arrival at Ellis Island at these mills and have never worked elsewhere. Year after year, they have plodded on, working industriously, saving a little and sending it back home...Very few of them know any English even after eight years of residence, because they do not need it. They live in little Poland set down in the midst of Brooklyn and with a long workday, can have little energy, even if they have the opportunity to Americanize themselves. And yet, judging from the abundance of the American flags in their rooms, they count themselves not foreigners, but Americans." This article came out on June 13rd as an introduction to news of the worker's strike. Faced with increasing prices and stagnant wages, the workers banded together to form a union. The company ignored their demands, leaving them no choice but to strike. The strike led to violence when the company chose not to close its doors but instead employ hundreds of Sicilian women as scabs. One morning, strikers pelted police and scabs with sticks, rocks, and coal. The scabs retaliated by coming at the strikers with clubs wrapped in newspaper. In October of the same year, a boiler explosion was blamed on the strikers. A reported over-accumulation of gas blew six-men out of windows onto the street and into the river. The Brooklyn Standard Union wrote that "some of the girls who had seen the bodies...fainted and there was a wild scramble." Despite the gruesome incident, the business carried on. The American Manufacturing Company would supply the Navy with 15,000 miles of rope during World War I. A shortage of workers following the strike forced the American Manufacturing Company to look elsewhere for laborers. Long-time Polish residents of Greenpoint were unwilling to accept the 56-hour work weeks and low wages, and the new restrictive immigration laws that passed in 1920 slowed the influx of new immigrants from Eastern Europe who would typically be willing to take on such work. However, a new law would bring a new wave of hardworking immigrants to New York: The Jones-Shafroth Act. The Jones-Shafroth Act, passed in 1917, gave Puerto Ricans living in the territory U.S. citizenship, albeit with very limited rights. This change meant the American Manufacturing Company could sponsor the migration of hundreds of Puerto Rican laborers with relative ease. One migrant recounted his voyage to the states, "when I reached seventeen years of age I went to San Juan, borrowed twenty-five dollars for the fare and disembarked on one of the steamships that sailed weekly." One account reported that at one time, 130 Puerto Ricans were brought over by steamship to work at the American Manufacturing Corporation. Puerto Rican laborers were housed near the factory, had transportation to work paid for, and were put in contact with "chaperones" - already-establish Puerto-Rican families already living in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Greenpoint became one of the earliest Latino hubs in New York City. The company transitioned to making shoelaces before going out of business in the 1960s. From then on, the building was left mostly abandoned, save for a warehouse for storing used clothes and a small shipping facility. In the early 2000s, developers looked for options to convert the massive structure while preservationists worked to devise a plan to save the building and commemorate the North Brooklyn waterfront's industrial legacy. But in 2006, a ten-alarm fire, at the time the fourth largest in New York City history, razed most of the complex. The buildings' owner quickly came under suspicion of having set the blaze himself as the Brooklyn Market Terminal, what it was called at the time, wasn't his first property to burn. Others thought the cause of the incident was a homeless man melting down wiring scrap. However, neither theory was proven and the cause remains a mystery to this day. Of the remains of the American Manufacturing Company, the most visible i...

This 1895 Neo-Classical building was the headquarters of the Mechanics and Traders Bank, founded in 1867 by Archibald Meserole, of the prominent Greenpoint family. Architect Alonzo B. Jones incorporated a variety of building materials and architectural styles: a rusticated brownstone base; arched, palladian, and oval windows with terra cotta detail; full-height (second and third stories) red brick pilasters with Corinthian capitals; and a wavy stemlike motif frieze beneath the cornice.

This building once had a lovely corner entrance to the ground floor commercial space. That retail location is long gone, and the first-floor facade shows the obvious and clumsy infill.

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA CHURCH 862 Manhattan Avenue Patrick Charles Keely, 1875 With its 240-foot spire, St. Anthony of Padua is a dramatic neighborhood centerpiece, especially when viewed from Milton Street. Designed in the Victorian Gothic style, it is the most impressive of the many churches in Brooklyn designed by Patrick C. Keely, a prolific ecclesiastical architect whose works spanned the country. Decorative features include original carved tympana in the three arched entrances, keyed stone enframements, carved stone and Minton tile bandcourses and diamond panels, and pediments with clock faces at the base of the spire. Flanking the church is the modest convent at 878 Manhattan Avenue and the Gothic Revival rectory at number 862, which features pointed-arch windows with carved tympana and a cornice with iron cresting.

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, October 19, 1958. The church is adorned with black and purple fabric as a gesture of mourning for Pope Pius XII. Construction on St. Anthony of Padua, designed in Gothic Revival style by prolific church architect Patrick Keely, commenced in 1873. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s 1982 Designation Report calls St. Anthony “the most impressive of Keely’s Brooklyn churches,” noting its 240-foot spire and polychrome limestone and brick facade. In 1975, the church merged St. Alphonsus Church, and is today known as St. Anthony — St. Alphonsus.

What happens when two Urban Archive staff members are practically neighbors? They go on a walk capturing as many then-and-now pictures as they can! If you’re in North Brooklyn sometime soon, see if you can take some of your own!

GREENPOINT SAVINGS BANK HQ 807 Manhattan Avenue Helmle & Huberty, 1906–08 The Greenpoint Savings Bank, established in 1868, was housed in four different buildings in the neighborhood prior to commissioning this grand structure. Designed by the same firm responsible for the Shelter Pavilion in Monsignor McGolrick Park, this neo-Classical, Roman-style limestone bank features a granite base, a recessed portico with four Doric columns topped with a triangular pediment, a large dome, and patterned slate shingles.

North side of Milton Street, Greenpoint, October 19, 1958. At right Nos. 131 and 133 form a pair of Second Empire townhouses, each with floor length parlor windows, and mansard roofs with round “bullseye” windows. By 1982, when Milton Street was included in the Greenpoint Historic District, the 1870s houses had been modified, with No. 131 losing its bullseye.

This triangular lot at the northern edge of McCarren Park is named for Father Jerzy Popieluszko (1947-1984), a priest, martyr, and champion of the Polish Solidarity Movement. The square, though divided by Bedford Avenue, was originally part of McCarren Park. It was built in 1930 on land purchased by the city between 1903 and 1905 and named for Father Popieluszko in 1985. Jerzy Popieluszko was a Polish nationalist who spoke openly against the Soviet-controlled government in Poland from his small church, Saint Stanislav Kosta, in North Warsaw. His messages were amplified to the masses via Radio Free Europe where he encouraged "peaceful resistance to Communism," and utilized his position in the Catholic church to speak out openly during a time when the country was under martial law. Authorities arrested Popieluszko several times for opposing the communist regime. He later took part in the Solidarity Worker's strike in Warsaw on March 27, 1981, the largest strike in the Soviet Bloc. Reportedly, the priest crossed police lines to deliver communion to steelworkers on strike. Father Popieluszko couldn't speak so openly for very long. He was quickly considered one of the most dangerous enemies of the government. After dodging various assassination attempts, Popieluszko was kidnapped by Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) in 1984 and murdered. The priest's death caused a massive uproar throughout the country. Solidarity leader and friend of Popieluszko Lech Walesa said: "The worst has happened. Someone wanted to kill and he killed not only a man, not a Pole, not only a priest. Someone wanted to kill the hope that it is possible to avoid violence in Polish political life." Over 25,000 people attended Popieluszko's funeral and, after public pressure, President General Wojciech Jaruzelski arrested those directly responsible for his killing. Monuments in Chicago, Illinois; Trenton, New Jersey; Hartford, Connecticut; Rome, Italy; Budapest, Hungary; and Beziers, France commemorate his legacy. Father Popieluszko Square was dedicated in 1985. The square features both a bust of Father Popieluszko and a sculpture of Bound Hands Rising, a symbol of Poland's struggle for freedom.

“Blue House,” 1958. 119 Milton Street is one half of a pair of Neo-Grec rowhouses designed by Thomas C. Smith and completed in 1876. Curiously, the 1982 Historic District Designation Report makes no mention of no. 119’s bold color scheme.

“Exterior view of Manhattan Furrier, a family-owned business located at 685 Manhattan Avenue in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. The business opened in 1916 and closed permanently in 2011. This photograph is part of an ongoing project by photographers James and Karla Murray to document storefronts in Brooklyn and New York City.”

They were built over the first half of the 20th century. They dotted (some might say dominated) the landscape from Alphabet City to Harlem, Greenpoint to Elmhurst to Coney Island. Most were more than 200 feet in diameter and more than 200 feet tall. The ones on Maspeth Avenue in Greenpoint were more than 400 feet tall. They most often came in pairs. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of them in movies filmed in New York. The natural gas tanks of New York City were the large storage facilities for local utility companies, including the massive Brooklyn Union Gas Company, Consolidated Edison, and a number of smaller companies. In the very late 19th and early 20th century these utility companies began building facilities all over the city, some in areas already densely populated, others on land surrounded by potato fields. Generally speaking each tank or "holder" was constructed of riveted steel plates that inside looked like five face-down cups or levels. The levels telescoped up as natural gas was pumped in by engine-driven compressors. The bottom of the tank was a shallow pool of water, which, is some cases, was used to float a small rowboat for internal inspections. The holders provided constant pressure in residential gas lines during high demand. In 1992 the entire Brooklyn Union Gas system used 906 million cubic feet of gas on its busiest day. The few holders that remained functioning at that time (all in Brooklyn or Queens) were able to hold less than one percent of that total. They had outlived their usefulness. Most of the holders in more densely populated neighborhoods had been dismantled in the previous decades, but a few remained. They were decommissioned and then deconstructed piece by piece. The final two tanks, the twin, red-and-white checkered, 400-foot-tall ones, in Greenpoint along the Newtown Creek, had quite a different send off. On the morning of July 8, 2001, a Sunday, at 7:00 A.M., with the nearby Brooklyn-Queens Expressway closed down, the towers were imploded and in less than 10 seconds came crumbling down, with tens of thousands of New Yorkers watching.

106-112 Noble Street, September 1, 1936. This photo shows two synagogues: Beth El (at left) and Ahawath Israel, now known as Greenpoint Shul (at right). The Greenpoint Shul is the only remaining synagogue in the neighborhood. According to public records, the building was originally a Congregationalist Church that dates back to 1871. In the late 1880s, it became a German-Jewish Reform synagogue, Temple Beth El. The congregation that worships at Greenpoint Shul today (2018) is the result of a merger of three of five synagogues that have served Greenpoint since the late 19th century.

Formerly Public School 126.

From hip little coffee shops, beautiful street art, and spacious parks, Brooklyn is known as a bastion for community, creativity, and excitement. Its history spans back over 350 years and has its roots in New Amsterdam—it’s named after the Dutch town Breukelen after all, and each neighborhood has a unique cultural identity complete with great food. As you explore the borough, we’ve highlighted a few of Brooklyn’s numerous delicious restaurants. These local Brooklyn businesses all have a little slice of Brooklyn history to them and you will surely learn something new while enjoying a local meal.