Brooklyn Trust Company Building ARCHITECT: York & Sawyer DATE: 1913-16 STYLE: Roman & Italian Renaissance The Brooklyn Trust Company building, designed by the prominent firm of York & Sawyer, was constructed in 1913-16 in a style modeled after the palazzi of the sixteenth-century Italian High Renaissance. The building and interior, gracefully adapted to the imagery and functions of American banking in the early twentieth century, continues to project an image of tradition, stability, and security. The Brooklyn Trust Company played an important historic role in Brooklyn, from its founding during the aftermath of the Civil War until its consolidation with larger banks beginning in the mid-twentieth century. The banking hall of the Brooklyn Trust Company building is designed based on Academic Classic principles and is clearly indebted to the architecture of the Italian High Renaissance. The vaulted banking hall is seven bays in length, and the monochrome walls revetted with burnished yellow-beige marble harmonize with the polychromy of the elaborately coffered ceiling and the intricate marble mosaic floor. Fine materials and craftsmanship abound.

National Title Guaranty Company Building ARCHITECT: Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray DATE: 1929-30 STYLE: Art Deco The limestone and brick National Title Guaranty Company Building is notable for its strong massing and unusual details. The 16-story Art Deco style building was designed in 1929-30 by Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, led by senior partner Harvey Wiley Corbett, a major proponent of the skyscraper as a modern urban form. Interspersed among the buttresses is a pierced limestone screen designed by the noted sculptor Rene Chambellan, which features stylized eagles, helmeted warriors and other elements. The building is a notable example of Art Deco commercial architecture, particularly with its strong vertical expression and unusual details.

This bloodied man is a product of a melee that disrupted the normally calm streets of Brooklyn Heights. In 1947, the workers of the Brooklyn Trust Company went on strike to secure a pay raise and other demands from the bank. 300 picketers gathered around the main branch of Brooklyn Trust and began to surround the building. They allowed non-striking workers to enter without harassment, but four patrolmen attempted to prevent the picketing. The melee that ensued left a number of picketers bloody and injured and three union members were arrested. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle recorded the bank president's response, who claimed that "not a single employee of the bank" was on the picket line and that strike was "Communist-inspired" and that the "untrue union statements followed a communistic pattern." At the time, the New York Times described it as the first walkout against a major US bank. The strike would end later that year with a negotiated settlement with the bank that increased wages.

185 Montague, ca. 1995. Built for the National Title Guarantee Company, the 1930 Art Deco building at no. 185 is a more modern standout among the Beaux Arts banking buildings that line this street. Designed by Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, who also created Rockefeller Center, this Deco tower has sleek ziggurat towers at the top and delicate, but angular, tracery at the ground level. Some of the ornamentation has Aztec motifs and influence. Given these decorative features, it is almost appropriate that the former banking building is now a location of the Mexican-themed restaurant, Chipotle.