Building of the Day: 92 Herkimer Street

The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.

Address: 92 Herkimer Street, between Bedford and Nostrand Avenues
Name: Kismet Temple, now Friendship Baptist Church
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1910
Architectural Style: Eclectic Moorish Revival
Architect: R. Thomas Short

Built for a Shriner chapter called the Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine, this building is a wonderfully surprising piece of Moorish architecture, with its onion domes silhouetted on the horizon.

Upon closer inspection, the domes are sheathed in pressed metal, and the golden brick facade is artfully festooned with terra-cotta Arabic script and ornamentation.

The site of many public and political gatherings, it became a movie theatre in 1932, and was sold to Friendship Baptist Church in 1966. GMAP

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]