What's Up With Downtown Brooklyn? (Rewind)

Ghost Stories at Joe's Pub

0:00We interrupt this important broadcast to announce that our hit Halloween tradition, Ghost Stories of Old New York, is returning in 2026 to Joe's Pub. Two shows a night, October 28th through October 31st. And this year, for the first time, we have a special theme. Haunted Circus!

0:24That's Haunted Circus. Go to Joe'sPub.com and get your tickets. That's the Bowery Boys, Ghost Stories of Old New York. And we'll see you ringside.

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Downtown Brooklyn's 21st century skyline

0:52Hi there, welcome to the Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young. And this is Tom Myers, back again, this time with part two of our special end of the summer miniseries, in which we are revisiting three Bowery Boys episodes that celebrate New York City's neighborhoods, while we're looking specifically at how those neighborhoods came to terms with their own histories. Now, last episode, we went to Soho, south of Houston, and visited its beautiful cast iron 19th century architecture, walking along streets that in many places look virtually identical to how they looked 100, 125 years ago.

1:34So, well, that minus the high-end boutiques. We'll be contrasting that neighborhood's history today as we head to busy downtown Brooklyn, which is the borough's governmental, business, and commercial center. And where, unlike Soho, very little looks the same as it did a century ago. Because in downtown Brooklyn, history has very often been erased and rewritten, or reconstructed. For the most part, that is.

2:05There are still some very important historical landmarks in downtown Brooklyn that are preserved. A historic church, a few Art Deco skyscrapers, and even a post office. There are also businesses like Junior's Cheesecake and Gage and Tolner's that define themselves in the traditions of the past. Both of them Brooklyn classics. But Gage and Tolner's, not only did they reopen in 2021 in their original location, which is at 372 Fulton Street, but that spot also happens to be landmarked.

2:40Which might suggest that the neighborhood is throwing its all into recapturing the past. However, that is not the case. In fact, the area could probably be described as one of the city's most transformed neighborhoods of the 21st century. Now, traditionally, downtown Brooklyn has been known for two purposes. The first is bureaucratic and governmental, right? It's the home of Borough Hall and a whole cluster of courthouses, including that Grand Historic Post Office that you mentioned.

3:18This is sort of the jury duty side of downtown Brooklyn. And that part, for the most part, is unchanged from how it was several decades ago. But downtown Brooklyn has also been known as Brooklyn's Central Shopping District. And department stores once lined Fulton Street. In particular, that stretch of Fulton between Borough Hall and Flatbush Avenue. That has changed significantly due to a great number of factors, including changes to how people shop, which have affected retail situations everywhere.

3:56There still is some good shopping on Fulton Street. So, you know, it's not all gone, especially if you like apparel, athletic wear, tennis shoes, things like that. But for the most part, its department store glory days are long gone. Which was only underscored just last year in 2025, when the Fulton Street Macy's department store closed its doors. But in recent years, downtown Brooklyn has taken on another personality.

4:27It has become far more residential, thanks to a new spate, gaggle of skyscraper apartment buildings. Several of which, yes, we definitely refer to as towers, right? These towers have really transformed Brooklyn's skyline. And that is the biggest change to downtown Brooklyn, because now you can see the neighborhood from all over the city, from several boroughs.

4:58You can see it from Inwood. Tom, you can even see it from Elizabeth, New Jersey. We recorded our downtown Brooklyn show in 2019, at which point that transformation was already underway. Although, clearly, it was not as far along as it is today, seven years later. This aggressive residential development is permitted, it's lawful, because of a 2004 change in the neighborhood zoning laws. So, since we recorded this, there have been big, big changes.

5:31I mean, some of the blocks have been completely redeveloped. And, you know, as you mentioned, its skyline has grown dramatically. I'd even argued that it didn't really have too much of a skyline before, like, 20, 25 years ago, excepting a few buildings surrounding Borough Hall. Today, downtown Brooklyn currently, however, has nine of the ten tallest buildings in the entire borough. All of them topping out between the years of 2014 and 2025.

6:04And to really underscore our story here today, the tallest building in Brooklyn is the Brooklyn Tower, which opened in 2022 and includes, at its base, the exterior, the facade of the landmarked Dime Savings Bank building at 9 DeKalb Avenue, which itself dates back to 1908. So, from the street level, it looks kind of like this new skyscraper is just shooting out, right, of this original building like a rocket.

6:37In other words, there is a historical footprint of the old days of Brooklyn, of old Brooklyn, and around it, there are even a few sites that date back to before 1898 to, you know, when Brooklyn was its very own independent city. But it's all in the shadow of this building, of what residents affectionately call the Lord of the Rings building, or the Eye of Sauron building. Thousands of people, thousands of new residents, in fact, are today living in these new condos and rushing by many of the neighborhood's oldest landmarks every day.

7:17So we encourage everybody to take a moment and stop and allow yourself to be transported back to another time. A time when, in almost every way, downtown Brooklyn was the true center of Brooklyn. So join us as we explore the now towering history of downtown Brooklyn.

Four quadrants of downtown Brooklyn

7:43Downtown Brooklyn is a proper neighborhood. It is the main business and commercial area of the borough of Brooklyn, highly accessible by mass transit, highways, and bridges. But hold on. Thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not more, people in Brooklyn live south of downtown, right? They live downtown from downtown. So downtown is actually uptown for them. It's downtown in spirit, Tom, if not in actuality on a map. It's unique in that it is a civic and retail area that is almost entirely surrounded by residential neighborhoods.

8:20You have the neighborhoods of Fort Greene on the east, Borum Hill to the south, Brooklyn Heights to the west, and Dumbo to the north. Although sometimes bits and pieces of those neighborhoods are actually incorporated into what they call downtown Brooklyn. Yeah, it's a catch-all name sometimes. And anyway, Dumbo didn't even really exist as a residential neighborhood or as its own neighborhood until recently. Yeah. And we have a show from last year that details the history of the Dumbo area.

8:55Now, what we're going to talk about today, the area of downtown Brooklyn, can be divided into four quadrants, I would say. This is getting very technical. Well, yeah, I just want you to visualize this because it's got so many functions that we need to kind of lay this out. The first quadrant is what I would call Borough Hall or Old Brooklyn City Hall and the handful of older skyscrapers which surrounds it. Okay? Number one. And this is the western section of downtown Brooklyn. Yes.

9:25Now, stretching north from there is Cadman Plaza, which is a large open public space. And along the plaza's eastern edge are government buildings of various ages. There's a district court building and a post office. That's right. And the northern end of the plaza kind of gives access to the Brooklyn Bridge. So the northern edge of Cadman Plaza is pretty busy with automobiles. Yeah. I mean, there's lots of traffic. I mean, that is very different from a lot of Brooklyn neighborhoods.

9:57There's a lot of hustle and bustle and a lot of people, many of whom are headed toward the other two quadrants of downtown Brooklyn. The third one being the Fulton Street retail area, which has largely been defined by shops for well over 120 years. And then finally, this fourth quadrant is known as the Metro Tech area, which is a region which is a largely redeveloped super block crafted in the 1980s and 1990s to become a business and education center for Brooklyn.

10:29Okay. So if the Fulton Street Mall is at the southern end, the southern quadrant here, that puts Metro Tech north of that. Yes. So these quadrants then give people reason to be here for government business, for shopping, for education, even to access the Brooklyn Bridge. This neighborhood means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Yes. And I would say it is the considered the center of Brooklyn, or at least for over 150 years.

Becoming the city of Brooklyn

10:57I'm going to begin our story here in the year 1834, where that was the year that the village of Brooklyn. Okay. This old village that traces itself back to the old Dutch days. That is the year that it was granted a city charter and became the city of Brooklyn. Now, this village, this Brooklyn village, had been situated around a ferry terminal on the water that had transformed into a hugely important vital link between Long Island and the city of New York.

11:32Now, this link, this village that developed around it was now its own city. And by becoming then a city, the city of Brooklyn in 1834, I assume that there are advantages, like it could grow more easily, it could incorporate new land. Yeah. In fact, this area becomes the hottest real estate market 185 years ago. Within just 10 years of getting that charter, the farms and estates around this area were chopped up to become more like residential properties to develop row houses and townhouses.

12:07And the city began properly expanding its borders. They took advantage of every possible means of growth, from the creation of a massive industrial area in the areas of Gowanus and Red Hook to even the first rural cemetery. They scooped up this idea and developed it further south of the city, naming it Greenwood Cemetery. So the city is expanding into Kings County and incorporating new lands south of the ferry.

12:39But the center of that city was still up where it was formed, around the ferry area. Yes. Or was it? Well, it was until 1848 when Brooklyn City Hall was completed on property that was owned by two local families, the Remsons and the Pierponts. Those names sound familiar. Yeah, there's streets that are named for both of those families around this area today. Because they gave the land to the city. This land was chosen because it was about one mile in from the ferry district.

13:12And because of its placement, this became the new center of the new city. It's a beautiful structure, Greek revival style, designed actually by two different architects. The winning design in the 1830s of a competition, because of course they held a competition for this, was by Calvin Pollard. However, you know, they had to stop the construction for financial reasons and then scale back the designs. And they brought in the second place finisher, Gamaliel King's designs, which had to be kind of retrofitted because they had already laid the foundations for the building.

13:47So it's an interesting kind of mashup of two different designs. So this was the most beautiful building in Brooklyn. And it was because of the because of its prominence was the new city center. And of course, now that they're setting up government within the building, they have their own mayors, aldermen. They have they've set up wards, you know, in an echo of that big city across the river. Now, in the next few decades, unprecedented prosperity would turn this little old village by 1870 into the third largest city in the United States with almost 400,000 people.

14:28That's incredible. And how many people were living in New York at the time? Right. So in comparison, not to take away this huge growth in Brooklyn. I don't mean to diminish what you just said. But in New York at the same time, there were nine hundred and fifty thousand. So almost one million people. So Brooklyn's still big, but less than half the population of New York. And so quickly, I mean, from the 1840s, when only forty seven thousand people lived there. The fact that 30 years later, you'd have almost 10 times as many. It's a it's a wonderful growth for the city.

14:59And because of this around City Hall in these in these years, a great many of the fineries of high society, the many destinations, restaurants and hotels and things would be developed on the streets along and around City Hall at this time. Which is really interesting that that these upscale stores and restaurants and things would develop near City Hall in Brooklyn. And yet at the same time in New York City, they were marching up Broadway, getting away from City Hall. Yeah. And that's for a lot of different reasons here in Brooklyn, for instance.

15:33There's just more land area to develop and there's actually fewer people than in New York. So that allowed for today's downtown Brooklyn to become a center of society, government, retail and even media all at once and also all contained in this area. And this is the mid 19th century. Yeah. I mean, for instance, the Brooklyn Academy of Music opened on Montague Street in 1861, which is just a couple blocks west of City Hall, many significant churches would develop around this area.

16:06Many of them that are still standing and would give the borough its nickname, the City of Churches. It was so ripe for growth that during the era of railroad construction, this area also became a transportation hub, sending the population of Brooklyn by horse cars and railroad eastward to districts later known as Park Slope and to seaside destinations such as Rockaway Beach and Coney Island. And those people would get on the railroads here in downtown Brooklyn. It was like a terminus.

16:36Yes, there would be a terminus here in downtown Brooklyn. So then in 1860, when Brooklyn annexed the neighboring communities of Greenpoint and Williamsburg and Bushwick, resulting in the third largest city in the United States, even with those annexations and the geographical borders expanding, the heart of the city, largely because of City Hall, stayed right here.

Fulton Street retail and dining

17:00Yeah. Now, things would change for Brooklyn even more, starting in 1869 with the announcement of the construction of a bridge that would link the city of Brooklyn with the city of New York. This bridge would take 14 years, but finally, when it finished in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge would spill traffic directly into this area of the city, into downtown Brooklyn, turning what was a merrily busy district into an insanely kinetic district.

17:32That, of course, would inspire the construction of elevated railroads during the 1880s and 1890s, which would connect that bridge to the far reaches of the city. And a very important thoroughfare into the development of downtown Brooklyn as a traffic hub would be the street known as Fulton Street. Fulton Street, which would start down, I'm assuming, at the Fulton Ferry. Yeah, naturally. Right. And then it would continue up along today's Cabinet Plaza West, hook around City Hall, and then continue eastward.

18:07And today it continues into Queens. I mean, it's a very long, it's a very long stretch. Much of it around this area would be covered by an elevated railroad. So hold on. You've got these new elevated railroads that are stretching out into Brooklyn, but they're bringing people downtown near City Hall, where passengers would disembark and then walk across the platform and get on another trolley to head over the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in 1883. And all of that would happen right here, right in front, in sight of City Hall.

18:42So before the Elevateds are here, it's an area transportation-wise that has been dominated by that Fulton Ferry, because that's how people were, that and other ferries were the way that people were getting to Lower Manhattan, where many people still worked. But now, with the opening of the bridge and with the Elevateds and that cable car that takes you across the bridge, it kind of changes the equation and it changes sort of where the crowds are going. Yeah. It is largely responsible for Brooklyn's first official shopping district, which happens on Fulton Street.

19:16Now, Tom, you know the story of Manhattan's Ladies' Mile. We've covered it on a show here a few years ago. It's premier shopping district, yes. Yes, on Fifth Avenue and on Sixth Avenue. On Sixth Avenue, there was that elevated train that brought thousands of shoppers into that area, making it the busiest shopping area in the United States. Well, the same thing was kind of happening here, just east of City Hall on Fulton Street. This essentially became Brooklyn's Ladies' Mile, because it also had this elevated train.

19:49Many of the beautiful architectural palaces, these department stores that would open along Fulton Street that would come and entice shoppers, they would have large show windows on the second and third floors of their buildings because they were arriving on those elevated trains. Wow. So you also had that cast iron architecture and people gliding 20 feet in the air above them on elevators. Yeah. I mean, it's a glorious thought. And today, of course, we don't have that elevated anymore, but when you are on Fulton Street in this shopping area,

20:24I recommend that you just kind of stand, just be careful of the buses and the traffic, but you can stroll the street up and down and say, many of these buildings are still around. It's just that on the ground floor, they've been modified so much that you can't really tell there's any historical aspect to them. But if you were just to stare at the third and fourth floors of many of these buildings, you'll see some glorious Gilded Age architecture that still exists today. And you're saying that many of those structures incorporated large windows to entice passengers even passing by on the train.

21:00Yeah, it was one way to distinguish yourself to a literal captive audience. A couple of buildings I want to point out today on Fulton Street, the Abraham and Strauss Department Store, which was one of the finest shops in America in the 19th century. They actually had a series of buildings in this area over the decades. The most beautiful one that exists today is at 422 Fulton Street. In 1995, this became a Macy's. But even more beautiful, I would suggest, actually, is a gorgeous Romanesque revival structure at 503-513 Fulton Street,

21:36a building that is known today as the Offerman Building. It has been a series of department stores since it opened in the early 1890s, so around the period of the elevated train coming here. Most famously, this was the Martin's Department Store for much of the 20th century. And what's there today? Well, it's actually still a thriving retail spot. I mean, most of the street is, actually. And I will go on record, by the way, as saying this is one of the most beautiful buildings in Brooklyn. Whoa, that is quite a statement.

22:08And those are just department stores. I mean, there were also fine dining establishments. Oh, in fact, I'm going to direct your attention to a rather modest-looking building today at 372 Fulton Street, which was once the home of Brooklyn's most famous restaurant named Gage & Tolner, which began operation in another location in 1879, but moved here to Fulton Street in 1892, again with the Elevated Railroad.

22:39So the Elevateds start operating in this whole area in the 1880s and 1890s, and it's fun to think that these department stores and the restaurants are all opening at almost the same time in the 1880s and 90s. They're all brand new, right? That they're, like, theoretically, you could go into Abraham & Strauss and do a day of shopping, and then go for dinner at Gage & Tolner's, and they were both brand new, pretty new, right? Although, I mean, Gage & Tolner was actually a very exclusive eatery and a favorite of all the old families of Brooklyn Heights.

23:12Charles M. Gage and Eugene Tolner were toasts of the borough during the Gilded Age and would eventually remind many of Brooklyn's independent days. When they retired in 1910, the Brooklyn Eagles said, For over 30 years, the two veterans have together tickled the palates of many of the best-known Brooklynites with steaks and chops and luscious oysters, clams, and the freshest of fresh lobsters.

23:42Oh, wouldn't you love to just go for some chops today, Greg, for lunch? No, but how long did Gage & Tolner stay in business? Well, they did retire in 1910, but the name remained on the restaurant for many, many, many decades. It operated under that name, Gage & Tolner's, until 2004, believe it or not, when it closed and became another famous restaurant, TGI Fridays. Oh, God. A chain universally recognized for its cast-iron architecture and red awnings.

24:17Then in recent years, TGI Fridays moved out, and the building, for a brief time, became an Arby's, replacing lobster with delicious folds of roast beef. Okay. Tell me that's not the end of the story. No, no, no, because there's been no occupant for some time in that building, but there are some local entrepreneurs who are attempting to bring back the Gage & Tolner name. So, some local Brooklyn restaurant owners are going to reopen it in 2019.

24:51So, stay tuned. I think that they should name it TGI GT. Thank God it's Gage & Tolner. Okay, so, to kind of summarize, by the 1890s, you have one of the biggest urban centers in the country, right here. Civic and commercial activity swirling around this beautiful city hall, and just loads of mass transit options. But then, there's a plot twist to the story here, with the drive to consolidate all the areas around the city of New York,

25:28which is still a bigger city, and a more powerful city. This drive to consolidate the metro area around it, and to create something that would be known as Greater New York. And Greg, you and I recorded a podcast many years ago on the consolidation of New York and the creation of Greater New York. And that goes through some of the details of this dramatic tale. And of the creation of the five boroughs. Long story short, on January 1st, 1898, the city of Brooklyn became the borough of Brooklyn.

26:03Which, for many, perhaps for even more Brooklynites, this is actually seen as a demotion. They had voted for it. They had voted for it. Well, this was a very contentious, controversial decision. And for many people in Brooklyn, this was considered a demotion. The Great Mistake of 98. It's what it's often called. But what does this specifically do to downtown Brooklyn? What does this do to Brooklyn's city hall, and to the center of what was a growing city?

26:37We'll explore downtown Brooklyn in the 20th century, after this.

Consolidation into Greater New York

26:45So, Greg, you just left us at this consolidation in 1898, from city government to borough government. Dawn of the New Day, although many were disappointed. But, you know, you couldn't just go back and have a second referendum, no matter how obvious it was that it was a mistake. Brooke's it? Brooke's it. It was Brooke's it. But seriously, imagine how strange this was for city leaders, because Brooklyn was this major city, right, with autonomous control and authority over, like, every aspect of its self-governance.

27:22It had police and fire department, public education, sanitation, water supply. Library. Well, it did keep its own library, okay? But many of the other things I just mentioned were handed over, in some ways, to authorities that were often based in the municipal buildings over in Manhattan. Imagine the restructuring that took place. Imagine all the headaches. It also meant just that there was a change in names. City hall in Brooklyn became borough hall.

27:54The mayor of Brooklyn became the borough president of Brooklyn. But consolidation actually brought a lot of benefits into Brooklyn. Yes, there were obviously benefits. There were tax dollars now flowing into Brooklyn. There was new infrastructure, not just new bridges like the Williamsburg and the Manhattan Bridge, but there were subways that could now be built between the two former neighboring cities. Now they were one in the same city. So that opened up all these opportunities to build these new big projects that link these boroughs.

28:29The same with the school system, government, streamlining, you know, other projects, including like the water, things that we don't really think about. So there were many people who were not complaining about this new change. Right. Least of all those in the real estate, real estate and development business. Because just when you thought that Brooklyn had changed a lot during the 19th century, the early 20th century saw another giant population boom. And much of this was caused or facilitated by consolidation.

29:01There were these new bridges, you know, like the Williamsburg in 1903, the Manhattan Bridge, which opened on the last day of 1909. These made it easier to travel back and forth between the boroughs, of course. It also meant that it was easier for Manhattanites to relocate and live in Brooklyn. As we mentioned in our recent Williamsburg Bridge show from last year. That's right. It sort of benefited both ways. And those new elevated rail lines. And then later, soon afterwards, the subway lines could now grow, you know, more easily and stretch farther into Brooklyn, into land that had been farmlands.

29:41And entire new neighborhoods would develop very quickly. And all of this would result in the population of Brooklyn swelling from 1.16 million people to two and a half million people between 1900 and 1930. An increase of well over a million people. That's incredible, not just because these are residential developments, but at the same time, these industrial districts are expanding hugely during this period. Both the piers, the old Dumbo area, down by Red Hook.

30:14All along the waterfront. The Navy Yard was hiring. The docks were employing thousands of people. You and I have been loving this film clip, actually, from 1948. Mm-hmm. This travelogue that just extols, you know, all of the virtues of Brooklyn and the benefits of Brooklyn and the fact that its products that it produces are known the world round. Brooklyn, across the river, the city of friendly people sometimes called Dodgerville.

30:45Brooklyn keeps on growing with a population of almost three million people. For Brooklyn is also a great industrial city with miles upon miles of waterfront. Brooklyn buys what the world has to sell and sells to the world about everything under the sun. Made in Brooklyn. The Made in Brooklyn trademark is known in every corner of the civilized world. Ships that move made in Brooklyn products across the seven seas to lands beyond the horizon. I mean, that's the city I want to live in. Yes. That Brooklyn.

31:16And that was in 1948 or 1949. So that's decades into my story here. But by the mid-century, you know, Brooklyn was prospering. And the borough is also becoming more diverse, especially as the, quote, great migration of African-Americans were heading up from the south in the years between World War I and the Great Depression. So the African-American population in Brooklyn was booming, as was the Puerto Rican population as well.

31:47So that is a great grand picture of Brooklyn as a whole during the first half of the 20th century. How are these changes specifically affecting our subject here, downtown Brooklyn?

Bridges and skyscrapers in the 1920s

32:00Well, the new bridges that were being constructed helped define downtown, helped define the borders of downtown. You had the Brooklyn Bridge, basically, on its western edge, and then the new Manhattan Bridge, which opened in 1909. And at around the time of its opening, the city was building a new stretch of road from the bridge's Brooklyn approach down to meet up with Flatbush Avenue, which was one of Brooklyn's main thoroughfares. That new roadway was called the Flatbush Avenue Extension.

32:31That project took many years to complete, but when you look at photos, and I'm sure you'll be posting these on the website, BoweryBoysHistory.com, but you see that Flatbush Extension under construction in 1909. The land is being graded by horses, workhorses. And then another photo a few years later, 1912, it's still under construction. The whole neighborhood is out watching. Horses are around. A 1913 photo shows it actually opened for business with a trolley down the middle of it and horse-drawn carriages going both ways on the street.

33:09And I was reminded, of course, that these bridges were being crossed by thousands of horses every day. Right. This is right before the era of the automobile arrives into New York City, starting in the late 1910s. And, of course, the period in which horses and automobiles are crossing the bridge together. Uncomfortably. Uncomfortably. So the construction of the Manhattan Bridge and this Flatbush Avenue Extension helps define the eastern border of downtown Brooklyn.

33:40Yes, and it also makes it easier to access the neighborhood as well. And at around this time, the 1910s and 20s, several theaters, live theaters and also then movie theaters, would be built around this area. There was the Crescent Theater, which opened on the east side of Flatbush, just north of Fulton in about 1910. Fulton Street itself was home to eight movie theaters in the 1920s between Flatbush and Borham Place. And, of course, we can't forget about the other major entertainment center that moves over to this area, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which was once over on Montague Street.

34:19Right, which you mentioned. That location burned down in 1903, leading them to construct a new Brooklyn Academy of Music very near downtown Brooklyn over on Lafayette Avenue. And that location opened in 1908. So up here by Fulton Street, you've got all these brand new theaters that are now showing silent films. You have these thriving shops and people are getting to this area on these elevated, which is still running in the 1920s. So let's take it down a couple stops down to the now named Borough Hall.

34:53So what is actually going on in that area during this period? Well, if you actually stay on the Fulton Street Elevated, you're going to it looks like you're going to hit Borough Hall, but then you veer south of it and kind of go around it. It's very dramatic. Well, behind Borough Hall in the 1920s, you'll find the new Brooklyn Municipal Building. It's the building with still there today with columns and the entryway and kind of office towers around it. That was constructed in the 1920s, but it replaced the old municipal building from the 1870s.

35:26However, check out its massive size and check out the fact that it's not alone, because if you look up and around, you will note, Greg, that we are now in downtown Brooklyn's skyscraper district. Well, yeah, the same thing is happening over in New York, of course, with hundreds of new skyscrapers. And although we don't often think of Brooklyn as a place, as a destination for skyscrapers, indeed, around Borough Hall is a whole cluster of beautiful, tall buildings. And those skyscrapers, they were constructed during an office tower boom, you know, that resulted again from the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge and later consolidation.

36:05And in fact, in 2011, the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the creation of the Borough Hall skyscraper district that includes 21 of these old, tall office buildings in the area. They're mostly on Court, Montague, Remsen, Livingston, and Duraliman streets. And, you know, up until like 2000, this is where you went in Brooklyn if you wanted to see a tall building. I mean, today there are many different areas that have many different kinds of skyscrapers, but this is where you went in the 20th century.

36:38Well, to check out the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce building at 75 Livingston or the Temple Bar building at 44 Courts or 19 others. Or, Greg, obviously, if you were in Brooklyn and you wanted to check out a tall building, you could also head over to the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower. Now, well, that is certainly not in this district. It's adjacent to downtown Brooklyn. Right. It's located at 1 Hanson Place at the intersection of Flatbush and Hanson and 4th Avenue. It's near Atlantic Center and today's Barclays Center.

37:11It was constructed between 1927 and 1929, and it was the tallest building in the borough of Brooklyn for many, many years at 512 feet tall, 37 stories, topped by a tower and clock on four sides. It was and still is today one of the most recognizable structures in Brooklyn. So lots of exciting things being built up in this area during the 1920s, before the Great Depression. That's right. Things are being built up.

37:42Things are also notably being torn down. In 1924, the Fulton Ferry ceased operations. It was really totally obsolete. You could now take a subway one stop from Brooklyn Heights to lower Manhattan, or you could take the bridge. It was not the it was not the most convenient way to travel, perhaps picturesque, but it just didn't make any sense. And people weren't into that kind of picturesque. No, no. It was pre Instagram.

38:13So in 1926, a year after ceasing operations, the beautiful old Belle Epoque Ferry House, which had been completed in 1871, was demolished. And I mentioned that because it's a beautiful structure that was torn down, but also because I think it kind of signifies a change as well. New York just didn't see these buildings in the same way that we do now. They didn't imagine that we would want to preserve something like this old timey Fulton Ferry Landing.

38:44We see them today as, you know, a beautiful Belle Epoque masterpiece, right? But people at the time saw them as dated, and this was an era of progress. And in many cases, the city considered old buildings to be what they called blight. You know, they were outdated and in need of clearing.

Cadman Plaza and the Civic Center

39:05By the 1930s, outdated, quote unquote, buildings all over downtown and really all over the city were starting to be demolished and replaced with more modern structures, be they housing developments or schools, municipal buildings. And here in downtown Brooklyn, a gaggle of buildings in the 1930s in the blocks north of Borough Hall would be condemned and demolished in order to make way for a new park, which was called Cadman Plaza, which opened in 1939 and was named after the Reverend Dr. Samuel Parks Cadman, who was a congregational minister in Brooklyn.

39:47Did you say his middle name was Parks? He had it coming. He should have known. So Cadman Park is named after a man whose middle name is Parks. It's like little. Well, no, his middle name was not Plaza. That would have been really strange had his name been the Reverend Dr. Samuel Plaza Cadman.

40:09So this is a good thing, right? Because there's not a lot of open space. It's a very densely packed area, downtown Brooklyn. So this plaza must have been a welcome new component. Did you work for Robert Moses? Because you're selling his case, correct? Oh, OK. That was that was sort of a city line. Yeah. And actually, in constructing Cadman Plaza, we should mention that they renamed some some streets. So Fulton Street, which had started down at the now defunct Fulton Ferry, went up the hill and then it continued on past Borough Hall and then it made its way.

40:44Well, that stretch of Fulton Street was renamed Cadman Plaza West. Washington Street on the eastern edge of Cadman Plaza became Cadman Plaza East. And, you know, it is a lovely it is a lovely wide open park today. You're wrinkling your brow at me. It is a it is a wide open park. And there is, as you approach the bridge, actually a huge field, a huge open field. Yes. And the plaza also contains the Brooklyn War Memorial, which was dedicated later in 1951.

41:16But to get back to the opening of Cadman Plaza here in 1939. Now, aren't there still elevated trains kind of going along around this? Oh, yeah. Making it a rather not peaceful kind of a plaza. And you can imagine that Robert Moses and others consider those elevated trains to be blight as well. I mean, when you see photos of Cadman Plaza under construction, you cannot help but notice the tracks of the elevated trains encircling it and heading south toward Borough Hall and Fulton Street.

41:50Well, for many years, all of this was a big spectacular mess because of the construction. And then you had the shadows being cast down because of those railroad tracks. And so it just became a very unpleasant place. Right. And there was still the big change yard, the terminal of some of the elevators at the base of the bridge as well. So there was just a lot of elevated railroad infrastructure clogging up many, many of these blocks and roadways. And so the Fulton Street elevated ran its last train on May 31st, 1940, and the structure was demolished, which actually resulted in a strangely brand new looking Fulton Street.

42:32You know, it's like Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. When they took down the elevated, you looked at those cast iron structures in a new way because now you could really see them. So here on Fulton Street, the city claimed that actually by taking down the elevated, one of the unintended benefits was that some of those department stores decided to renovate and to modernize because now people could see them. But the city had a little bit more work to do in this area, right? But the city had bigger plans to develop what they called a civic center over here.

43:04They had actually been planning this since the 1930s to modernize, to pull back some of the government institutions that were located in other neighborhoods. You know, Brooklyn Heights had some courts. They wanted to centralize them here, kind of in sight of Burrell Hall. It just made sense symbolically. And along this beautiful new plaza, one way to do that was by condemning structures and by building giant new roadways, including the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the new on and off ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, because up to this point, traffic was just getting clogged up around Cadman Plaza, trying to get onto the bridge.

43:44So there were many different master plans that were developed in the 1930s. They got pushed off by the Great Depression, continued into the 1940s. They got pushed off because of the war. But once the war was over, and especially when federal funds were opened up for plans like this and new highways, Robert Moses and city leaders were on it. They plowed into Brooklyn with great zeal. I spent a fascinating afternoon at the Brooklyn Historical Society in the library reading over a 1944 study for Brooklyn Civic Center and Downtown Improvements.

44:23Page-turner. For some of us, it was, Greg. I was texting you. I was very excited. But in that report, they said that the answer to all of these woes that were plaguing, you know, the congestion and the blight that was in downtown Brooklyn, one of the answers was the BQE. Quote, An immediate effect of the new peripheral highway will be to change the character and uses of Cadman Plaza and the surrounding blocks. With the construction of the new express highway, Cadman Plaza itself will cease to be an approach to Brooklyn Bridge and will become a city park of unusual shape and size.

45:02So back to the creation of the Civic Center. Now, you mean these government buildings that are along Cadman Plaza, mostly on the east side. Obviously, to construct all these different kinds of buildings, they had to demolish countless other structures. Yeah. In fact, they really only kept the federal building at Washington and Tillery Streets. That would remain with the post office there. But otherwise, all of the structures between Washington and Adams Street from Willoughby to below Sands would be demolished.

45:38And Adams Street itself would be widened on the east side to 160 feet in order to make a better approach to Brooklyn Bridge. So they were basically wiping out almost all of the blocks north of Borough Hall. All of this sounds like signature Robert Moses. Kind of like that Supreme Court building, Greg, that was constructed at Fulton and Willoughby and Adams. Just north of Borough Hall, replacing an old courthouse in the 1940s.

46:09I mean, that is an enormous, not so beautiful structure. It gets the job done. So all of these things were being developed into the 1950s when Brooklyn is starting to feel some of the other challenges that are affecting other areas of New York City. Right. Because as with other urban areas, businesses, manufacturing, even shipping are leaving for cheaper and more automobile friendly cities.

46:43And the national highway construction and the home loans that are being offered were luring many, especially white, middle class residents away from Brooklyn to the suburbs. And then in terms of shopping, well, Fulton Street was losing a little bit of its luster because, well, many shoppers were taking off. But also you could just take the subway another stop or two and be in Manhattan, where there were plenty of shops to choose from. And there were there were other symbols of a diminished Brooklyn that were that were happening as well, such as the Brooklyn Eagle, which in 1955 ceased normal publication.

47:21And they had been located in downtown Brooklyn and now they were gone. And of course, we did an entire show on how Brooklyn was stung in 1957 with the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to Los Angeles. So put in that kind of a context, you know, a city's plan to sort of redevelop downtown and make it more automobile friendly and more modern. Well, I mean, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and say that it was good intentioned. Yeah. And finally, along the western side of Kedman Plaza, the giant residential high rises would go up in the late 60s.

47:59They were constructed between 1969 and 71. One, those were met with considerable opposition from neighborhood groups and activists living in Brooklyn Heights. And the city sort of, you know, redeveloped its plans and included 50 small duplexes, you know, in order to sweeten the deal a little bit. If you've ever wondered why those duplexes are there. There's rather unusual housing options are there. Right. Those were meant to make the whole Kedman Towers project more appealing.

48:29I mean, the Kedman Towers, by the way, required the demolition of structures along Fulton Street there, now renamed Kedman Plaza West, that included, among other things, the old Rome Brothers print shop at the corner of Cranberry and Fulton. The print shop that Walt Whitman used to self-publish his first edition in 1855 of Leaves of Grass. Now, the city of New York made a gallant attempt to rescue that old retail district over on Fulton.

49:04Many shops, restaurants, and movie theaters were closed by the 1970s. The city made a gallant attempt to rescue some of the retail that was here in 1977 by creating the Fulton Street Mall Shopping District. One way of bailing out this area that had undergone hard times. Now, retailers had always been here, as we described, since the late 19th century. But by 1977, to encourage people to come here and to encourage shopping, they decided to make the area a little bit more friendly to shoppers.

49:41They actually widened the sidewalks, meaning that they narrowed the street so that it was only available for buses. So even today, when you go there, there's not a lot of, like, back-and-forth traffic. It's not, strictly speaking, a pedestrian mall in the way that other areas of New York are, meaning no vehicular traffic. There are still buses that go through here. But as you'll note, the sidewalks are very wide, and because of that, there are people that sell books and jewelry on tables alongside the street today.

Metropolitan Technology Center

50:17But the most important attempt to rehabilitate the neighborhood north of the Fulton Street shopping area came with a project called the Metropolitan Technology Center, which was developed—actually, they started talking about it in the late 70s. It was developed in the 1980s and opened in the early 90s. And this required the demolition of hundreds of small buildings on several blocks here, just north of the Fulton Street shopping district, to create a super block of academic and industrial occupants.

50:52A Metropolitan Technology Center. Mm-hmm. A technology hub of sorts. Did they even call it a—they didn't use the phrase tech hub back in the day. Yeah, it was a 1980s tech hub. The New York Daily News in 1982, in describing it, called it a space-age idea that would create thousands of jobs. And another newspaper during this period called it Silicon Apple, New York's answer to Silicon Valley, quote, a futuristic landscape of computer laboratories, research space, and business towers.

51:29And that was in the 1980s, pre-internet. Yeah, yes. Like, still dot matrix era. Still Commodore 64-ing, if you will, here. Oh, I will. But in the process, they destroyed homes. Hundreds of residents were displaced. And a great number of structures that we might consider landmarks today, actually, were demolished. Although, there were a few buildings that were actually moved out of the way, such as four structures that are today on Duffield between Myrtle and Willoughby.

52:01They were moved here, and so were saved from destruction. However, so in this, we have this huge development here today. The centerpiece is Metro Tech Commons, which is an open public space, very modern district, reflecting the 1980s, 1990s. But even here, if you go to the northeast corner of the park, you will actually witness a piece of mid-19th century forgotten history. Oh? You will find an old church called the Bridge Street Church.

52:35Today, it's a student center for NYU Polytechnic, but it was the center of African-American worship in the mid-19th century. Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman spoke here, and it was the scene of a huge three-day celebration following Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Last year, in our Underground Railroad show, we actually identified a small house here on Duffield Street, here in downtown Brooklyn, that had been a stop on the Underground Railroad.

53:09This church at Bridge Street was also an Underground Railroad stop. And so, because of the church and because of this house, the corner of Fulton and Duffield today has been renamed Abolitionist Place.

The 2004 rezoning and Junior's cheesecake

53:22Another major 21st century development in downtown Brooklyn was the 2004 rezoning of downtown Brooklyn that was passed by the city council. Now, according to a report that was issued in 2015 by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, the report summed up the objectives of that rezoning law in a number of points. The rezoning was meant to encourage more business and residential development.

53:53It was meant to create new offices, attract new businesses and jobs, create new retail establishments for both residents and also visitors to downtown Brooklyn. It was meant to develop new cultural and educational offerings. And then specifically, an area along Flatbush Extension and Willoughby Streets and adjacent side streets were meant to be redeveloped. And looking back on that, 11 years later in 2015, the Brooklyn Borough President stated that the rezoning was, in many ways, a success.

54:28What this has done has turned downtown Brooklyn, which had all these different functions. People had always lived in downtown Brooklyn, but it wasn't primarily considered a residential district. Now, because of this rezoning, there's a brand new focus on residential life in downtown Brooklyn in the form of many of these brand new tower developments. Right. Including in the new City Point development that opened in 2015 and has included several different residential towers.

55:00What's interesting is that for decades and decades, the tallest building in Brooklyn was the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower. And, you know, for decades, you would never built higher than that structure. Today, there are several buildings in Brooklyn that are taller than that old classic. And many of them are located here in downtown Brooklyn. But, Greg, we can't leave downtown Brooklyn without stopping along Flatbush Avenue Extension to one of our favorite restaurants. No, I mean, this is, well, this is my favorite part of downtown Brooklyn.

55:33I'm not going to hide it. That would be at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb, Junior's Restaurant, which has been here on this original location since 1950, opened by restaurateur Harry Rosen. It actually made its reputation in the 1950s. It's famous for its cheesecake. But, I mean, really, it's just a very deluxe diner. Oh, yeah. Very brightly colored inside. Its reputation was made largely because of the Dodgers. You could take the Flatbush Avenue trolley from Ebbets Field here to Junior's.

56:06And so it was always a very lively place after games. It was called the Cheesecake Express. When Harry Rosen died in 1996, the New York Times said of him, The lively, brassy restaurant whose orange booths and chairs could seat nearly 400 people has been a magnet for politicians who came to make deals, journalists who came to meet politicians, and moviegoers who came for refreshment. But above all, everyone came for the cheesecake.

56:37Well, as you know, we both ate there very recently doing a little research on the neighborhood. I mean, I'm always at Junior's doing research. Even though I'm not actually talking about Junior's or the neighborhood, I'm researching other things. But you can always find me at the counter. Next week on The Bowery Boys. The riots of smells and sights. There are games. There are all kinds of food stands. A lot of sausage vendors. A lot of fried cheese. A lot of fried everything, really.

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57:41Yeah, you're paying for that, folks. Thank you so much for a small monthly contribution. You will also, patrons also get access to a Bowery Boys classic podcast every month. Plus, dibs on tickets to live events on top of our other podcast, which is called Side Streets, which is exclusive to those of you who support the show. And Side Streets is also available on video. So join the fun over at Patreon.com slash Bowery Boys.

58:11And thank you for supporting the Bowery Boys podcast. We would also love for you to join us in the streets at BoweryBoysWalks.com. Our professional tour guides lead small walking tours in historic neighborhoods all over the city, including in Brooklyn Heights and Victorian Flatbush, along with a Revolutionary War tour of Lower Manhattan, a Brooklyn Bridge History tour, of course, the Gilded Age mansions at Fifth Avenue, and so many more. You can join a public tour or book a private tour for your business, family, or group of friends.

58:45Join the fun and walk through time with us at BoweryBoysWalks.com. This episode was re-edited and remastered by Kieran Gannon. And we'll see you all next week for the third part of our Neighborhood Miniseries. So thank you very much for listening. Have a great New York week, whether you live here or not. See you real soon.

59:09Bye.