A Dodger’s Memorial Disappears and Then Reappears in Brooklyn Heights

A bit of history has popped back up in Brooklyn Heights.

After being chiseled off in 2019, a plaque commemorating the former front office of the Brooklyn Dodgers has returned to its home on the front of 205 Montague Street.

The plaque has hung on the corner since it was installed in 1998 by the European American Bank and Brooklyn Historical Society. A worker removing the plaque on December 10 of last year told Brownstoner at the time that it was a temporary removal, but the plaque failed to reappear.

After being alerted to the missing memorial, the Brooklyn Heights Association worked with Midtown Equities to reinstall it last month. “Making sure the plaque was reinstalled might seem like a small thing during a time when the city was struggling with a public health and economic crisis,” BHA Executive Director Lara Birnback told Brownstoner. “But the fact that a plaque honoring Jackie Robinson had gone missing at the same time as protests focused on racial equity were happening literally across the street from the plaque’s home was not lost on us. In this case, we were happy to play the role of the ‘nudge’ to make sure it found its way back to Montague Street.”

The baseball team’s front office was located in the Mechanics Bank building from the 1930s until their departure from Brooklyn in 1957. Fans once lined up outside to purchase tickets and in 1945 Jackie Robinson signed his record-making contract in the office. The building, known as 215 Montague Street, was demolished in 1958.

The removal of the plaque actually made a bit of modern history temporarily visible. Etched into the stone underneath the marker was “The Brooklyn Savings Bank 1962,” the original name and construction date of the current building.

[Photos by Susan De Vries]

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