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Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, last use: Word Abiding Deliverance Tabernacle
Address: 265 Nostrand Avenue, between Lafayette Avenue and Clifton Place
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 1902-1903
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: J. B. McElfatrick and Sons
Other buildings by architect: In Brooklyn: Montauk Theatre, Reynolds mansion (both demolished) in Manhattan: New Victory Theater, and many more, mostly gone.
Landmarked: No

The story: I have been looking for the origins of this building for years, so this entry is a personal milestone for me. I always thought it had originally been a bank, and was pouring over branch offices of various Brooklyn banks for months. I was researching the building behind it, also the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, and finally found what I was looking for. The Brooklyn College of Pharmacy was founded by the Kings County Pharmaceutical Society in 1886. Their first building was at 399 Classon Avenue, in 1891, followed by a larger building at 329 Franklin Ave, which they occupied for 7 years. Outgrowing that, they began this new building in 1902, and it opened its doors the following year.

In 1928, the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy merged with Long Island University, and in 1929, they moved from this facility to a much larger building right around the corner, at 600 Lafayette Ave, the topic of a future BOTD. The school remained there until it moved downtown to the main LIU campus in 1976. This building was designed to hold a large theater-like lecture hall on the first floor, which had a raked (sloped) floor, leading down to a raised stage. The seats were equipped with desktops. There were smaller classrooms behind the auditorium. The second floor had lab space, and the top floor had more labs, these dealing with microscopic research. There was also a 5,000 volume chemical and pharmaceutical library, recreation rooms, rest rooms, etc.

The College of Pharmacy was quite progressive for its day, and admitted women from the very beginning, and also opened their doors to foreign and minority students. The first female graduated was Miss Kitty Rose Owen, in 1893. The building was designed by J. B. McElfatrick, a Manhattan architect who specialized in theaters. His firm designed many NY and other city’s theaters at the turn of the 19th century. In Brooklyn, he designed several theaters, including the long gone Montauk Theater, on Fulton St, for developer William Reynolds. He also built Reynolds’ home on Eastern Parkway, also gone.

The school had a fire in 1922 which destroyed a smaller lecture room, but it reopened later that year. In 1929, this building closed when the college opened its new building. In 1944, it reopened as a branch of the City’s Office of Emergency Management, and remained in city hands until it was sold to the Morning Dew Baptist Church in 1952. They are still on record as the owners, although the name of the church last using it was the Word Abiding Deliverance Tabernacle. Today, HPD has erected a sidewalk shed, and appears to have taken steps to do repairs on the building, which now appears empty. I hope the building can be saved.

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(Photo: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept.10, 1902)


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Believe it or not, Montrose, the first place my parents moved after their bohemian Manhattan haunts was Clifton Place near Nostrand Avenue, where I lived until four years old! I’ll have to dig deep into my memory about this. But according to Mother, I had a good time hanging out on the stoops with the older kids. Apparently back in the 50’s a little guy could entertain himself in the street without fear!

    I do have recollections of the family apartment, much more modest than the digs we eventually got in Crown Heights, and of some of the neighborhood merchants and service people, especially the appliance repairman whose shop was off Nostrand Avenue. His place was packed to the rafters with ungainly TVs, radios and fans, modern at the time but amusing antiques in hindsight. He treated all of our broken toasters and lamps with utmost seriousness, he and Dad (both tall and thin) bent over the metal and plastic patients proffering their prognoses in deep, low tones.

    I must have walked by your BOTD (or been pushed in the stroller by it) many times, but can’t remember it. I do remember a congenial community and a sense of contentment.

    Until my little brother arrived and brought my small world to an end!

    Nostalgic on Park Avenue

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