29 Fort Greene Place: A Modern High School With Its Own Mini Skyscraper

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Brooklyn Technical High School
Address: 29 Fort Greene Place
Cross Streets: Between DeKalb and Lafayette Avenues
Neighborhood: Fort Greene
Year Built: 1930-33
Architectural Style: Collegiate Gothic meets Deco skyscraper
Architect: Walter C. Martin
Other Buildings by Architect: Franklin K. Lane HS, Bklyn; Samuel Gompers Vocational HS, Bronx; Andrew Jackson HS, Jamaica HS, Queens; George Washington HS, Manhattan, and more
Landmarked: No

The story: After World War I, educators began to realize that the world was rapidly changing, with technology becoming more and more important to everyday life, as well as in employment. The technologies made real for war were moving into the marketplace.

It was very similar to today, in that respect.

At the end of the 19th century, educators had introduced “manual training” into the high school curriculum. Girls were directed into the “domestic arts,” but boys were taught skills in carpentry, metalworking, engineering, drafting, building skills and the like, preparing some of them for higher education, and most of them for the job market.

Dr. Albert Colston was the head of the Mathematics Departmment at Brooklyn’s Manual Training School, later called John Jay High School, in Park Slope. He had a vision of a new technical high school that would train boys in the new technologies of the 20th century.

He drew up a complete curriculum for a school that concentrated on math, science and engineering, with drafting skills. Parallel courses would lead a student on to college or well prepared for a technical career in industry.

In 1919, his new curriculum was adapted for the Manual Training School. It was so successful that three years later, the Board of Ed approved the building of a new technical high school in Brooklyn.

The first Brooklyn Technical School was established in 1922 in a converted warehouse at 49 Flatbush Avenue Extension. The Westinghouse HS is there today. Dr. Colston was named principal, and he took 40 of the Manual Training School’s teachers with him to start the school.

They opened with 2,400 students, and within a few years, had over 6,000 students. The school had spread out with annexes in several local schools. The Board of Ed finally approved the building of a new Technical High School.

Land was purchased at DeKalb Avenue and Fort Green Place in Fort Greene. The architect of the new school was the current Superintendent of Buildings for the Board of Education, Walter C. Martin.

Martin was following in the footsteps of great school architects. His predecessor at the job had been William H. Gompert, who had followed in the footsteps of the great C. B. J. Snyder. Snyder had revolutionized school architecture, introducing the “H” plan of construction, new construction materials and engineering, and a love for the Collegiate Gothic style of architecture.

Gompert had continued that tradition, adding Colonial Revival and Spanish Gothic styles into the mix. He presided over a period of great school construction, as the numbers of students in NYC schools continued to grow. Martin had taken over in 1928, just as the nation was about to plunge into the Great Depression.

Martin was in charge for ten years, from 1928 to 1938. During that time, he built some of the city’s largest high schools, along with many other school buildings. He was building during the time of NYC’s great skyscraper boom, and the technology and styles used in those buildings made their way into his designs.

Brooklyn Tech is a mini skyscraper. It is twelve stories tall, minus the radio tower. It towers over the four story brownstones it sits amongst. From a distance, the massing of a typical 1920s skyscraper is quite evident.

It was also built like a skyscraper, with steel girders, reinforced concrete, and all of the features that are familiar in such construction. It cost $33 million, and took almost three years to build. All while the American economy floundered.

Between its history and architecture, this building has so much going on, that I’m going to take a rare turn at a two-day BOTD. Tomorrow – the conclusion of the story of the building and establishment of Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city’s most elite public high schools.

Top photo:Jim Henderson for Wikipedia