Past and Present: Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now. Brooklyn Heights was the center of Brooklyn’s civic and social life at the turn of the 20th century. The imposing French Renaissance Hotel Touraine and its neighbor, the Middle Eastern styled Crescent Athletic Club, along with other businesses and homes, once stood on Clinton, between Pierrepont and Fulton…
A Look at Brooklyn, then and now.
Brooklyn Heights was the center of Brooklyn’s civic and social life at the turn of the 20th century. The imposing French Renaissance Hotel Touraine and its neighbor, the Middle Eastern styled Crescent Athletic Club, along with other businesses and homes, once stood on Clinton, between Pierrepont and Fulton Street, right behind where the Cadman Plaza townhouses and the Public Library now stand. The hotel was a high end residential hotel, with a restaurant and palm court, and was home to a permanent guest list of well-to-do people. The Crescent Club was the premiere men’s club with a membership roster of many of Brooklyn Heights wealthiest and most influential movers and shakers and their athletically minded sons. Some of the Crescent’s teams competed with college and professional sports teams, and did quite well. The Crescent would move in 1906 to the building now housing St. Ann’s School, on the corner of Pierrepont and Clinton, and then to Bay Ridge. Both buildings were torn down in 1960 in the development of the Cadman Plaza area, which included the library and the housing. Today, the back of the library and parking lots are all that remain.
(Postcard from early 20th century)
(Google Maps)
The photo of what’s there now does NOT show the high-rise office building that now occupies much of the site, right next to the library building. There are NO parking lots there. There is a small parking area for workers at the library.
Mookie, there’s a plaque on the wall of the building at Clinton and Livingston, which details this history.
Always enjoy your pieces, MM.
But if you’re going to talk about athletic clubs on Clinton St, you might want to give a nod to the other end of the street, Clinton at Livingstone, where the Brooklyn Excelsiors baseball team (started by the Jolly Young Bachelors) had their clubhouse pre-Civil War—and allegedly home of the first curveball.
Love that green onion dome!
bx: I’m not crazy about that hotel, pretty standard-issue. there was a great bank on the corner of Pierrepont that was a real loss and also the Lafever church on the corner of Monroe and Clark. Losses for sure but there is a lot left.
But damn! minard- those were some beautiful buildings.
the report of the death of Brooklyn Heights is highly exaggerated.
the huge urban renewal project undertaken around cadman plaza not only changed the look and function of the civic center it also produced something called the brownstone movement. for the first time, faced with the government’s bleak vision of the future, brooklynites sought to preserve rather than tear down the old houses inherited from the 19th century. The movement started in the Heights and spread pretty quickly to other nabes.
what was lost was not as great as what was gained imo.
LOL, ditto. Touche’.
CGar is quite right, BH is still the center of Brooklyn’s civic and social life for those residents born at the turn of the 20th century.
Nice post, MM. Loitering in the Heights again without calling???
😉