Building of the Day: 53-83 Water Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Empire Stores
Address: 53-83 Water Street
Cross Streets: New Dock Street and Main Street
Neighborhood: DUMBO
Year Built: Western warehouses, 1870, eastern warehouses, 1885
Architectural Style: Classic 19th century Romanesque warehouses
Architect: Western end, unknown; Thomas Stone, eastern end
Landmarked: Yes

The story: The Empire Stores are actually seven brick warehouses that stretch between New Dock Street and Main Street, built in two sections, one fifteen years after the other. In 1856, James Nesmith, a wealthy Brooklyn shipping merchant, purchased most of the land upon which the warehouses stand. There were already warehouses here, built early in the 19th century, but they burned down in a fire in 1869. Nesmith had new four story warehouses built on the Dock Street end of the site, and in 1870, these opened as Nesmith & Sons’ Empire Stores. Fifteen years later, one of the sons, Henry Nesmith, commissioned Thomas Stone to build the other buildings, these at five stories, on the Main St side.

Stone wisely kept the basic style of the first buildings, providing continuity to the design. He varied the windows a bit, but built in the same dark brick, with arched windows that were shuttered with heavy iron shutters, and star-shaped metal tie rod caps which are especially evident on the Main St façade. Private loading docks on the waterfront, and on Plymouth Street, which used to extend past the buildings, provided entry for goods unloading from the river.

The Empire Stores were primarily a warehouse for raw materials such as coffee beans, animal hides, raw sugar and molasses, brought in on ships from Africa, Cuba and South America. In the 1890’s, the Customs Inspection Office for the 14th and 15th Districts of Brooklyn were located here. But as commercialization took over the surrounding area now called DUMBO, the warehouse facilities on the old Fulton Landing found themselves without use. The buildings began to languish from disuse.

In 1963, Consolidated Edison became the owners of the Stores. They sat on them until the State of New York established the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, in 1978. They bought the buildings from Con Ed, as the centerpiece of the park. In the 1980’s DUMBO developer David Walentas received the rights to develop the Stores, but in 2002, the State handed over the site to rival Shaya Boymelgreen. He was on record as planning a Chelsea Market-type development there, but he too, sat on the property, and the State took it back in 2006. In 2007, cracks were seen in the façade of one of the buildings, and scaffolding went up, seemingly forever. There are still plans for these buildings to be incorporated, somehow, into Brooklyn Bridge Park. In the meantime, they sit and wait. GMAP