Center for Brooklyn History
An 1881 historical society building whose facade shows a Native American, a Viking, Columbus, and Beethoven
The story
Before you is the Center for Brooklyn History. This building was put up by the Long Island Historical Society. The society was founded in 1863, when Brooklyn was a separate city at the western end of Long Island. Its members collected books and papers about their own past. At first the society rented rooms, but the collection kept growing. Its own building went up between 1878 and 1881, designed by the architect George Post. He built the walls of dark red brick and decorated them with terra cotta, which is fired clay. It is one of the first buildings in New York decorated this way. Look at the medallions above the arches. The heads in them were modeled by the sculptor Olin Levi Warner. Over the entrance on Pierrepont Street are a Native American, the first inhabitant of this land, and a Viking, the first European to reach America. Higher up are Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin. Facing Clinton Street are Shakespeare, Gutenberg, Beethoven, and Michelangelo: literature, printing, music, and art. The second and third floors hold a library with a gallery running around the walls. The fourth floor hangs from iron rods, so the reading room has no columns in the middle. Later the society was renamed the Brooklyn Historical Society. In 2020 it merged with the Brooklyn Public Library. In 2023 the building reopened as the Center for Brooklyn History, and admission became free.
Visiting
128 Pierrepont Street, at Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights. Admission is free, and it is open six days a week; hours and exhibitions are on the Brooklyn Public Library website, bklynlibrary.org. To work with the archive’s books and papers, it is best to book an appointment.
Sources
- National Park Service — National Historic Landmark Nomination: The Brooklyn Historical Society
- Wikipedia — Center for Brooklyn History
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