Past and Present: The Hall of Records
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now. Before “The Great Mistake” of 1898, when Brooklyn became part of greater New York City, it was a premiere city unto itself, with a City Hall, Courthouse, Hall of Records, and other city and civic buildings, all gathered between Court and Boerum, along Fulton Street. These impressive buildings…
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.
Before “The Great Mistake” of 1898, when Brooklyn became part of greater New York City, it was a premiere city unto itself, with a City Hall, Courthouse, Hall of Records, and other city and civic buildings, all gathered between Court and Boerum, along Fulton Street. These impressive buildings formed a civic square that is still exists, albeit very much changed. The largest of these buildings was the Hall of Records.
Gamaliel King, the architect of City Hall, along with Herman Teckritz, designed an impressive domed courthouse, in 1861-65, which like City Hall, was clad in white marble. To its right was Brooklyn’s Municipal Building, designed in 1876-1878 by Ditmars and Mumford, and to the left of the courthouse was the Hall of Records, designed in 1885-87 by William Mundell. The Hall of Records was a large Classically inspired limestone building which stood on the corner of Boerum and Fulton. Well before the Classically inspired White Cities Movement, this row of large, impressive buildings were a familiar sight to the commuters passing by the buildings’ second stories on the elevated train that ran through downtown Brooklyn.
Alas, “Pediment Row”, as Brooklyn architectural historian Francis Morrone calls it, did not last forever. In 1927, the old Municipal Building was replaced by the current building, designed by McKenzie, Voorhees & Gmelin. In 1961, the Brooklyn Law School was built upon the site of the Hall of Records as well as the Brooklyn Court House. There was an uproar about the destruction of the buildings, especially the court house, but in the end, it was doomed by the presence of the new Cadman Plaza, which included a much larger Supreme Court building, built in 1957. Today, the campus of the Brooklyn Law School occupies the space once held by these two great buildings.
The postcard, from 1906, shows the Hall of Records, a temple to hold Brooklyn’s vital information: birth and death records, land and real estate sales, business records, licenses and the like. You can just glimpse the Temple Bar Building and City Hall in the background. As for the strange lines on the building? Those are lines of glitter, a popular way of highlighting details on postcards of this era. I’m sure they never thought postcards would be a valuable record of our architectural past.GMAP
it is as if the planners in the 1950’s purposefully picked the finest buildings to demolish. there was a nasty egomaniacal force at work. They truly despised the monuments of their fathers and grandfathers. Grand buildings would be demolished while right next door tax payers would be untouched.
It was such a demented and destructive period.
The only thing left of this building are the great bronze floorlamps that stand in front of the 1956 courthouse. All of these great buildings bit the dust but the “dental dental” building a block away was unharmed! :-/