How Brooklyn’s First Free Library Became the Brooklyn Museum
Many of the great museums of the world started out as the private collections of very wealthy people...
Suzanne Spellen
Suzanne Spellen is a longtime Brownstoner contributor. She is an architectural historian, researcher, and writer with a special love for Bedford Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and local African American history. She loves old houses, architectural detail, and enjoys exploring new places, camera in hand.
The Lost Crown Heights Mansion of a Typewriter Tycoon
Editor’s note: This story originally ran in 2014 and has been updated. You can read the previous p...
City Pride: The Making of Brooklyn Borough Hall
From modest beginnings, the building we know today as Brooklyn Borough Hall is the result of years o...
How Charles Pratt’s Morris Building Company Beautified Brooklyn
A side project of the richest man in Brooklyn in the 19th century, the Morris Building Company devel...
Parties, Gossip and Too Much Brew: How 19th Century Brooklynites Celebrated the New Year
Editor's note: This post has been updated. Read the original post here. For those following the ...
Celebrating Christmas in 1899: A Tale of Two Brooklyns
Editor’s note: This story is an update of one that ran in 2013. Read the original here. Many of...
Brownstone Revival: The Rebirth of the Brooklyn Townhouse
For many, the brownstone is the quintessential symbol of Brooklyn, as much an icon as the Brooklyn B...
A Masterpiece of Education: Flatbush’s Erasmus Hall Academy and High School
When the Dutch and then the English established settlements and towns in Brooklyn in the late 1600s,...
How Innovator Robert Gair Built an Empire of Boxes in Dumbo
When asked to list the important inventors in our history, we generally forget the people who came u...
Cohn Brothers: Prolific Architects of Brooklyn’s Jazz Age Apartment Buildings
By the beginning of the 1920s, it was clear to those interested in New York City's housing patterns ...
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