Downtown Brooklyn

Downtown Brooklyn is the civic center of Brooklyn. Within the radius of a few blocks you have Borough Hall, formerly City Hall, The Municipal Building, with its compendium of bureaucratic services, several courts, a law school and a jail, aka house of detention. In short, there is everything you need to govern a city, which many residents still consider Brooklyn to be despite its official status as one of the five boroughs of New York City.

The City of Brooklyn

A hundred years ago, Brooklyn was a separate city. The icon of Brooklyn as a city was its City Hall, now called Borough Hall. It was here that the mayor had his offices and the city council, court and jail were located. The construction of the building began in 1837 but took fourteen years to complete, delayed by the usual fiscal problems. It was just ten years ago that the crowning piece, the statue of justice on the roof, was installed. But the fact that it was completed so recently is a testimony to the continued importance of the building, which is the home of the Borough President.

Brooklyn conscripted into the ranks of NYC

Brooklyn was a city for seventy years before it was absorbed, along with the other boroughs, into New York City. From the very beginning, control and dominance of the area was in Manhattan. Perhaps the first and most important coup was Manhattan's gain of control over the East River. This was granted by the Dongan Charter (see photo of Thomas Dongan) when New York was a colony under British rule. As a result of the charter, Brooklyn had no say about its own waterway.

In the mid 1850's, Brooklyn was a separate and growing city and considered, famously so, in the Emily Lazarus poem inscribed on the Statue Of Liberty,"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free....," which refers to the "air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."

Brooklyn has always maintained a fierce pride in its own separate identity and fought hard to maintain its independence. Brooklynites wanted to preserve the special feeling that characterized Brooklyn culture. But it was no match for Manhattan's determination to become the most powerful and influential city in the country. And Manhattan never seriously regarded Brooklyn as a separate and competing city, seeing it rather as a "suburban bedroom community" for Manhattan middle classes. The next threat to Brooklyn independence came in 1857 when the state of New York combined the police, fire and health departments of the two cities, giving Manhattan another large measure of control over Brooklyn.

As the century moved on, Brooklyn's freedom became precarious. Manhattan's quest for incorporation intensified, fueled by competition with Chicago, which was threatening to overtake Manhattan in size and prestige. Manhattan needed to expand to assure supremacy over Chicago and other challengers and to gain more waterfront property. This meant annexation of Brooklyn and consolidation. Brooklyn, after all, had much to offer in addition to population. It was home to half of the sugar cane industry and all of the Atlantic oil refineries, as well as to the bakeries and breweries. Even so, Brooklyn was running dry, literally running out of water and money.

The consolidation so coveted by Manhattan came to a vote in 1898. The result: 64,744 pro consolidation and 64,467, against. By a margin of 277 votes, Brooklyn as a separate entity --The City Of Brooklyn-- no longer existed. If there were hanging chads or counting irregularities we will never know. Brooklyn, linked by the bridge, is subsumed under the banner of New York.

Pre-consolidation Buildings and Statues

Cadman plaza, a green square, has two interesting statues:

Henry Ward Beecher statue was sculpted by John Quincey Adams Ward, known for his over-sized sculpture of George Washington. Beecher was a local preacher and prominent abolitionist who represents the spirit of Brooklyn.

Christopher Columbus statue was sculpted by Emma Stebbins, best known for her Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

The General Post Office building, now the Bankruptcy Court, is a wonderful structure worth seeing, with an interior that has a beautiful semi-circular balcony that will transport you back in time.
(Beecher & General Post Office)


Post-consolidation Building

The Brooklyn Municipal Building, across from the old City Hall at 10 Joralemon Street, is similar in tone and mood to the Manhattan Municipal Building but smaller in scale. Many government agencies, including the City Clerk's office where marriage licenses are obtained, are located here.

Red Hook, Brooklyn

Red Hook is a scruffy waterfront district, with the new sprouting among the old landmarks. In an area where cargo ships once loaded grain, cruise ships now transport tourists. Landmarks are largely in disrepair, but artists have found the old warehouses hospitable and mega-stores have found the space they crave for expansion. It is a work in progress, an unfinished picture.


Tobacco The Cash Crop
Roode Hoek, Red Hook or the red corner as it was called by the Dutch settlers when they arrived in 1636, became a profitable center for tobacco farming, an enterprise that was begun by the Lenape Indians.

Pre Civil War Period: The Boom Years
The construction of the Erie Canal allowed grain grown in the Midwest to be shipped to New York via the Hudson river and loaded onto ships in Red Hook. The Beard Warehouse is typical of the warehouses that lined the shore here during that time. The Beard Street Warehouse, built in 1860's, is actually many smaller warehouses linked together. There were so many warehouses built on the shores that, when viewed from Manhattan, Red Hook looked like a walled city.

Bust Years
Housing projects were built for the dock workers in the 1930's and amenities included parks and a wonderful pool often used by an after-hours crowd adept at climbing the fence. But the construction of the Expressway cut the area off from the rest of Brooklyn. This, combined with a lack of train service to the area and the shipping industry's migration to New Jersey, dealt Red Hook a fierce blow. Unemployment in the 1950's was running at 30 percent.

The area had acquired a reputation not only as a waterfront but as a mecca for tough, blue collar workers, and the neighborhood was the setting for several blockbuster books, movies and plays. Think of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, the family in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge and the world of Al Capone. This was Red Hook in its heyday.

Back Up Again
It is hard to pinpoint what brought about the changes occurring in the neighborhood, but they have been gaining momentum. The artists, the food vendors at the soccer fields, Fairway Food Market and Ikea are all part of the new equation. There is still much of the past to savor and enjoy. You can walk along the waterfront and see splendid views of the Statue Of Liberty, ponder the boats moving about the harbor, pop into small artisan shops, drop into a pub or, on a weekend, walk over to the soccer fields and enjoy a carnival of food treats from Central America.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Greenpoint is a charming, village-like neighborhood in Brooklyn, where Polish is heard on the streets and restaurants serve traditional Polish cuisine from bilingual menus.

The first families
Greenpoint was originally settled by Christine Vigne, from a French wine making family, and Dirck Volckerten. a Norseman. Because of Native American attacks, Dirck’s hot temper, which brought him to court many times, and the exile of his outspoken daughter Magdalena, the family abandoned Greenpoint for points north. The property was sold to Jacob Hay, and it was his daughter, Maria, her husband, Pieter Praa, and their descendants who farmed the land and kept the verdant quality from which the name Greenpoint derives. For almost two hundred years, Greenpoint remained isolated farmland.


Industrial transformation

Neziah Bliss, who married into the farm family, saw an opportunity. Bliss bought property, carved out streets, opened a public turnpike on what is now Franklin Street, and established a ferry service to Manhattan. With Greenpoint connected to the rest of the city by roads and ferries and miles of waterfront, Greenpoint was set for the influx of industry. Ship building was the primary industry. The first ironclad ship, the USS Monitor, which participated in the Civil War, was built here. Secondary industries such as printing and pottery factories followed, as did housing, churches and schools. Thus a small industrial village was formed.

A walk down Milton Street provides a glimpse of what it was like. The homes and churches are almost untouched on this landmarked block. At the head of the block stands St. Anthony of Padula, built in 1874 by the master church architect, PC Keely. In the center of the block are two churches, the Lutheran Church with its flying buttress and the Greenpoint Reformed Church, once the home of Thomas C. Smith who owned the Union Porcelain Works. Charming 19th century homes line both sides of the street, and at the end of the street is the waterfront with a factory building.



Enter the New York High Rise

The green pasture transformed into a small industrial village is now facing its next transformation. The high rise industry has arrived, attracted by the miles of waterfront that are prime real estate property. There will certainly be a big change from the apartment house built on Franklin Street by Pratt of Astral Oil Works for its workers and from the village as we have come to know it. However, the landmarked clock on Manhattan Street keeps ticking, a remnant and reminder of the industrial past. Greenpoint’s name is itself a remembrance, a tribute to the original farming community.

Cobble Hill: Jennie Jerome House

Winston Churchill’s Brooklyn roots

Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American born in a simple brownstone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn in 1854. Leonard Jerome, her father, was a financier and an avid horse racer. He built a race track in the Bronx and one of the main Bronx arteries, Jerome Avenue, bears his name. Jenny and her sisters were taken abroad where she met Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill when the family was on holiday on the Isle of Wight. They were engaged three days later, which caused some controversy, as did Winston's birth some seven months after their marriage.


One birth, two houses

In 1953 Winston Churchill paid a visit to Cobble Hill to see the home where his mother was born. But did he see it? There are two houses claiming to be the birthplace of Jenny Jerome. Sir Winston visited 426 Henry Street, a plain brick brownstone building that displays a plaque claiming this distinction. However, the historian Francis Morrone and The New York Times state that the birthplace was at 197 Amity Street. Alas, it bears no plaque. But Sir Winston may have been misinformed. What is notable is his regard for his mother that motivated this visit to Cobble Hill.


Who was this short-hair beauty?

Pictures of Jenny Jerome show a shockingly beautiful woman with short dark hair, the darkness attributed by some to Native American blood on her mother's side. By all accounts she was a woman of great energy and determination, with a fine wit, strong opinions and zest for life. She is quoted as saying that "We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand." And extravagant she was, in her behavior most notably. After the death of her husband, Lord Randolph, she had several liaisons and two marriages, both with men who were twenty years her junior. Reportedly among her lovers were King Edward VII of England and King Milan of Serbia.

Her influence on her son, Winston, is of importance. She is thought to have advised him to enter politics and to have been there to lend an ear and helping hand throughout his career. She believed in having a purpose in life and in hard work. In her era, it was the men who had the careers, and her advice to the young men she loved and befriended was that, "…for a man life means work, and hard work if you mean to succeed." Happily for history, her son Winston Churchill both heard and heeded this advice.

P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Hunters Point, Queens

P.S. 1 is an exciting, cutting edge experimental art center, affiliated with MOMA and located in Long Island City, a burgeoning artistic hub. The center is literally an experimental space, not a museum with a permanent collection, and the setting, itself, is unusual. P.S. 1 was a school building in the 19th century, and the original structure remains intact. It is fun to walk the halls and find exhibits tucked away in a boiler room or a swimming pool you can walk under or a former classroom housing a unicorn. The experience and arrangement of space is very much a focus here. The exhibits change frequently and are too new to categorize. One fascinating production, by the auditory artist Janet Cardiff, had visitors walking through the school corridors wearing headphones and listening to Ms. Cardiff whisper directions: 'Now go behind the stairs. Here it is. This is the place. Sit down and wait...Close your eyes." The stimuli are multi-dimensional, and the interpretations are uniquely individual.

The art center emerged in the 1970's when the abandoned school building was saved from oblivion by Alanna Heiss of The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, whose mission it was to convert abandoned buildings into artistic spaces. The history and evolution of the building is itself, colorful. P.S. 1 was constructed during the tenure of Long Island City mayor Patrick J. Gleason and the building was at the center of a fiscal scandal that led to the mayor's being voted out of office. He refused to leave, requiring the court to intercede, but managed to destroy the contracts and documents relating to the school before he stepped down. Consequently, to this day the architect of P.S. 1 is unknown. But Gleason reappeared, regaining office for a brief, one-term period preceding the incorporation of Long Island City into the City of New York in 1898.

During the area's heyday, when Hunters Point was a transportation hub, the school was overcrowded. The building was then enlarged in anticipation of even higher enrollment, which never came to pass. The closing of the ferry lines and the construction of the Queensboro Bridge isolated the area from Manhattan and the rest of Queens. By the 1960's, the residential population had shrunk and the school, no longer needed, was abandoned and its beautiful clock tower was razed.

Happily, the area is no longer isolated and, changing yet again, has become an artistic hub. Not far are the 5 Pointz Graffiti Mecca, Noguchi museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park. The museum is open noon to 6pm, Thursday to Monday.

DUMBO: Gair Buildings

One of the first things you notice in DUMBO is the prevalence of old factory buildings designated as Gair Buildings. Robert Gair, a Scotsman, was at the commercial forefront as well as the waterfront. His innovations are very much a part of our lives today, in the design of our factory buildings and in our food packaging.

Gair discovered a technique for mass producing printed cardboard boxes when his printing press accidentally cut through the cardboard and he realized that printing and cutting could both be done mechanically. He used this technique to create the showy cartons we see on the shelves of our supermarkets.

When he was building his third factory, on the Brooklyn waterfront in the 1890’s, Gair began to use a new building technique employing reinforced concrete. He was persuaded to do so by Dixon and Turner, the engineers and founders of Turner Construction Company, the pioneers of concrete construction and a corporation which, today, has annual revenues of over $4 billion. They convinced Gair that this new material would permit the installation of expansive windows, allowing more light and ventilation in the buildings.

Gair stated that he owed much of his success in life to what he learned as a soldier in the Civil War. He was a member of the 79th New York Highland Regiment, the first to answer Abraham Lincoln's call to defend the union. Gair admired Lincoln's clear vision and business acuity, particularly praising Lincoln's decision to place power in the hands of generals in the battlefield. Speaking of his war experience and insight, Gair said that he learned to "... never duck, stay with it until you are mustered out or you are knocked over.... You hear people talk about what a mule can endure. A man, with a head upon his shoulders, who can say no when tempted, can outwork and outlast a dozen mules if he takes no chances.” Robert Gair’s choices were imbued with his willingness to work and determination to endure.

By the time Gair died in 1927 he had moved his factories to Piermont, and the 10 factory buildings connected by railroads and tunnels were being leased in the area then known as Gairville. The area became an exclusive hub of factory and other commercial interests, which declined in the 1930’s. The rebirth of the area began in the 1970’s when artists moved in. Subsequent conversions of many factories into condominiums gave both the area and the factory buildings a new life.

Bedford-Stuyvesant: Hancock Street

In the 1890's the New York Times called Hancock Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant one of the most attractive residential spots in Brooklyn and so it was and still is. The street is lined with three and four-story homes built for prominent citizens in an array of styles from Queen Anne brick and terracotta structures to a High Renaissance mansion. The original inhabitants, while people of wealth and achievement, were not immune to personal hardships and tragedy.

One of the simplest homes on the street is a brownstone located at 176 Hancock Street, whose owner, Augustus Van Wyck, was one of the first residents on the block. While not an elaborate house, it did have a extensive judicial library. Van Wyck was the 7th generation descendant of Cornelius Van Wyck, who arrived in New York from Holland in 1650. Augustus Van Wyck ran for governor against Teddy Roosevelt and was narrowly defeated. Like Teddy Roosevelt, he married a southern belle who was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy.

At 247 Hancock is a 60 foot-wide mansion, the Queen of Hancock Street. It was designed in the High Renaissance style by the architect Montrose W. Morris and is an emblem of this community of prestige and wealth. Today, it is still a one-family home. It was built for John C. Kelly, who was a leader in the powerful Reform Democrats of Brooklyn. Kelly was born in Ireland and made his fortune manufacturing water meters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 1895 he was appointed by President Cleveland to be the Collector of Internal Revenue. Kelly also served as President of the Board of Education.

At 258 Hancock Street, tragedy struck when the mother, Mrs. Emily Salmon and her daughter, Mrs. Tooker, were out riding in their horse and buggy along Eastern Parkway. The horse was spooked and bolted into the Plaza at Prospect Park. The carriage overturned, killing Mrs. Salmon, while Mrs. Tooker escaped with only a broken ankle. It is interesting to note that, according to The New York Times, both were excellent drivers.


318 Hancock Street has not fared well. The building and its immediate neighbors are, today, in notable disrepair. Ironically, the original inhabitants of this simple brownstone building did not fare well, either. The building was the scene of violence and scandal when in July of 1901 Mr. Albert C. Latimer was killed and the grand jury debated the details of the crime. According to the New York Times, Mrs. Latimer maintained that a burglar shot her husband. However, Mr. Latimer claimed on his deathbed that he knew the gunman, and a private detective testified before the grand jury to having been hired by Mr. Latimer to do surveillance at the home of one Mr. Tuthill, whom Mr. Latimer suspected of having a liaison with his wife. The decision of the grand jury was that the killer was unknown.

Hancock Street, itself, remains the beautiful place it was originally. The grandeur of the architecture is largely intact and reflects the sense of pride and strength of the original and current inhabitants.