Brooklyn Technical High School, ca. 1933.

The Brooklyn Technical High School building at Fort Greene Place and DeKalb Avenue was built between 1930-33, and is today home to over 5,000 enrolled students.

Brooklyn Tech was founded in 1922, after the educator Dr. Albert L. Colston designed a specialized math and science-oriented curriculum to prepare for students for modern, technical professions or collegiate instruction. The school first operated from a converted warehouse at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, before moving to the purpose-built Fort Greene campus.

The twelve-story Collegiate Gothic school building by Walter C. Martin, the Superintendent of School Buildings who succeeded William H. Gompert, incorporates elements of skyscraper construction, including its steel and reinforced concrete structure.

While Martin’s building materials of choice were becoming more common, the Brooklyn Tech’s amenities were far from ordinary: the vertical campus included two gymnasia, a radio production studio, an aeronautical lab, and an operational metal foundry (which has since ceased operation). A 456-foot tall rooftop broadcast antenna makes Brooklyn Tech the tallest structure in the borough.

Brooklyn Tech has produced numerous distinguished graduates who went on to careers in the sciences, including Arno Allan Penzias (‘51), the 1978 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for research instrumental in the development of the Big Bang Theory.

In more local matters, Tech has also produced prominent political figures, including US Representatives Matthew McHugh (‘56), Gary Ackerman (‘60), and Anthony Weiner (‘81).