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!

In 1832, Neziah Bliss (1790–1876) and Eliphalet Nott (1773–1866), business partners in steamship production, began purchasing acres of farmland in Greenpoint and laying out streets. Spurred by a period of economic growth and an influx of European immigrants during the 1850s, more than a dozen shipbuilding firms moved across the river from Manhattan and turned the neighborhood into a major shipbuilding center. Franklin Street, named after Benjamin Franklin, was established as its commercial strip with shops catering to local industries. During the Civil War, the United States Navy commissioned several major ironclad war ships from the Continental Iron Works, which occupied a seven-acre stretch of the Greenpoint waterfront and employed 1,400 men. The first of these, the Monitor, famously defeated the Merrimac, a Confederate ironclad ship, in a standoff in Virginia in 1862, just a month after its launch. The Monitor was a source of pride for the neighborhood and is commemorated to this day by a monument in Monsignor McGolrick Park. While shipbuilding declined after the Civil War, Greenpoint’s other industrial enterprises, which included porcelain making, glass making and oil refining, continued to thrive. The influential Union Porcelain Works on Eckford Street helped shape American porcelain design. Its owner, Thomas C. Smith, purchased a tract of land on Milton Street in the 1860s and constructed a number of homes there, decorating some of their hearths with blue and white porcelain tiles. It was claimed they were the only tiles manufactured in the United States that could withstand such heat. The Greenpoint Glass Works, another local company, gained such acclaim that Mary Todd Lincoln commissioned table settings for the White House. Greenpoint and Williamsburg also formed a hub for oil refineries. Greenpoint’s residential development was closely aligned with its industrial growth, as workers’ housing was built inland from the waterfront. Large, elaborate rowhouses were constructed for owners and managers, while modest rowhouses, tenements and apartment buildings were built for laborers. Much of this construction occurred during the second half of the 19th century, and the neighborhood still displays a variety of architectural styles popular at that time. Early rowhouses contain elements of the Italianate and Greek Revival styles, while later styles include French Second Empire, neo-Grec, Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival. Some of the neighborhood’s later institutional buildings, such as the Greenpoint Savings Bank and the Mechanics and Traders Bank, were designed in the Classical and Renaissance Revival styles. The neighborhood also boasts many fine churches, designed in the Gothic Revival, Victorian Gothic and Romanesque Revival styles, among others. There are two historic districts in Greenpoint: the Greenpoint Historic District, located in the neighborhood’s core, and the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District, which covers roughly one block. A section of the neighborhood is also a National Register of Historic Places District.