Jehovah's Witnesses dormitory and library facility, ca. 1975.

A somewhat foreign sight among the bricks and brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, the building at 119 Columbia Heights was designed to "relate" to its rowhouse neighbors. In 1970 when the Jehovah's Witnesses wished to construct a new building on one of their many real estate holdings in the historic district, they allowed the Brooklyn Heights Association to pick the architect. BHA choice Ulrich Franzen, who was tasked with creating a modern structure that was sensitive to the historic neighbors. The result was an almost Brutalist structure, which was faced in bricks of a similar reddish-brown color to the rowhouses and also included its own "bay windows," a call out to a common rowhouse feature. Additional stories were set back so that the blockfront seemed to be the same height as well.

Praised by some and disdained by others, the building had at least one uber fan when completed. Peter Blake, an architect, critic, MoMA curator (who didn't think Brooklyn Heights was all that special) said of the building, "…What has happened here, really, is this: because somebody decided to declare Brooklyn Heights a special place, a very good architect was sought to reinforce that specialness. The resulting building, in fact, enhances the Heights."