Building of the Day: 1050 Atlantic Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.
(Photo from 2010)

Name: former Packard Automobile Showroom
Address: 1050 Atlantic Avenue
Cross Streets: Corner of Classon Avenue
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: Unknown
Architectural Style: Renaissance style showroom
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: I’ve wondered about this building for years, and always thought it was an important facility for which ever company had it built. But information on almost anything on Atlantic Avenue is hard to come by. The architects of factories often aren’t lauded, and the newspapers rarely run features on industrial buildings, unless there is another story along with them. And the newer the buildings are, as in the middle of the 20th century, the harder it is to find anything. But when Brownstoner announced a while back that this building would become another storage facility for Storage Deluxe, one could only hope that the beautiful details on this mystery building would be preserved. Up until a few weeks ago, the façade read “Select Paper and Tablet.” But the sign covered the building’s true identity.

My on-line building source, the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide only goes up to 1922, and while this building could have been built before that time, I was not able to find it. I was always intrigued by the fine white glazed terra-cotta tiles on the façade, as well as the almost delicate classical pilasters, and the beguiling cherub sea creatures flanking a shield with a honeycomb and a stylized “P”. I didn’t think this had anything to do with Select Paper, but what was it?

I guess I should have been a car person, because I probably would have immediately recognized that the shield was, in fact, a grille, and the “P” was for “Packard”. Duh. Packard Motor Car Company built cars from an amazing 1899 through 1958. They produced lines of very popular and distinctive luxury cars, with some of the industry’s biggest innovations, including the modern steering wheel. A car company like that would have a showroom like this.

A search yielded me an on-line group of Packard aficionados, one of which had an old postcard of this building when it was a showroom. The quality of the image is pretty bad, but it shows the building as it was originally, with large windows on both the first and second floors on the Atlantic Avenue façade, and a fully equipped service station and garage on the back of the building, which faces Pacific Street. The Packard showroom first shows up on a city directory in 1925.

Packard bought Studebaker after World War II, but the smaller luxury car makers couldn’t compete with the Big Three, and one by one they went out of business. Packard found itself making a car that wasn’t up to its old standards, and soon relinquished its status as America’s luxury brand to Cadillac. By 1958, they were no longer producing assembly line cars. The Packard was gone, and the need for this opulent showroom was gone as well.

I don’t know when it became the Select Paper and Tablet Company, but when Storage Deluxe bought the building recently, they began to excavate the interior, and trim the exterior, probably in advance of covering the building in their hideous plastic sheathing. Only one good thing happened from that – the original Packard signage is once more revealed in its glory, on Atlantic Avenue. Go by there and see it, quickly. It will soon be covered, but hopefully not destroyed. Hopefully. GMAP

Lots of photos on the jump…