Brooklyn Savings Bank This bank commands immediate attention with its skillful massing, beautiful fenestration, and imposing entrance door. When we enter this rectangular building, the large oval banking room comes as a complete surprise, but it is functionally effective and is ingeniously reconciled to its rectilinear enclosure. Frank Freeman, champion of the Romanesque Revival, was the architect. It was built in 1893, the year of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Brooklyn Savings Bank, April 26, 1961. This temple of finance replaced an actual temple when the reluctant congregation of the First Baptist Church was tempted by the Brooklyn Savings Bank's offer of $200,000 to buy its church. Designed by architect Frank Freeman (who also designed the Crescent Athletic Club, now St Ann's School, directly across Clinton Street) and described as "of classic design with modern Italian Renaissance embellishments," the bank featured the largest main banking room in Brooklyn, a huge 75 foot high domed space supported by columns of Numidian marble with clerestory windows lighting walls paneled in onyx. Completed in 1894, the bank operated for 70 years before it met the wrecking ball in 1964. Two years later, Brooklyn Heights became New York City's first Historic District, a designation which likely would have afforded the building protection for its contribution to the neighborhood’s historic character.

Bonfire on Fulton Street, underneath the elevated train, melts piles of snow that has been cleared after the blizzard, as horse-drawn carriage travels past, 1888. Did you know that Brooklyn used to burn its snow piles? In March of 1888 after a massive snowstorm that devastated New York, Brooklyn piled snow here under the elevated train on Fulton Street and set a bonfire that melted the snow. The address here was originally 303 Fulton and it was the original location of the well-known restaurant Gage and Tollner, but by 1888, it was the John W. Smith shoe store.

Brooklyn Savings Bank, Clinton and Pierrepont Streets, Brooklyn Heights. The bank was demolished in 1964, narrowly missing the establishment of New York City’s first Historic District in Brooklyn Heights.

Fulton Street entrance the Brooklyn Savings Bank, April 4, 1958. The entrance funneled bank customers to the main branch at Pierrepont and Clinton Streets.