A look at Brooklyn, then and now.

As long as people have been wealthy enough to have stuff, there have been businesses to store and move it for them. The late 19th century was just as packed with material excesses as we are today, perhaps even more, and the moving and storage companies in Brooklyn were doing lucrative business. The Eagle Warehouse down in DUMBO is the most famous of them, but there were others. Some of the surviving buildings we see all the time are the Pioneer Warehouses on Flatbush Avenue, near Nevins, Peter J. Reilly in Prospect Heights and, over in Bedford Stuyvesant, the large Jenkins Trust and Long Island Storage Company, on the corner of Gates and Nostrand. There were, of course, many more.

In 1892, a group of moneyed investors decided Brooklyn could use one more storage facility, and this one was going to blow the others out of the water in sheer size and impressiveness, as well as central location and variety of services. It was to be called the Brooklyn Warehouse and Storage Company, located on Schermerhorn Street, between Nevins and Third.

The site may be familiar to Walkabout readers, because this was the site of the old Brooklyn Tabernacle, the ill-fated mega-church run by the charismatic Reverend Talmage in the mid to late 1800s. You may recall that the first two Tabernacles in this location burned to the ground, and Rev. Talmage finally got the cosmic hint, and moved his church to Clinton Hill. That one burned down too, by the way. That story starts here, and is quite interesting. Anyway, the empty lot stayed that way for at least 20 years until it became part of the huge site for the Brooklyn Warehouse.

The Storage Company hired one of Brooklyn’s best architects for this project, William B. Tubby. He was a master of the Romanesque Revival Style, best evidenced in his magnificent mansion design for Charles Millard Pratt, son of Charles Pratt, the Standard Oilman of Clinton Avenue. He brought his mastery of brick and archways to this warehouse, with a massive arched main entrance, lined in row upon row of brick, with rays of brick leading to the arch.

You might recall Frank Freeman did a massive archway on the Eagle Warehouse, but Tubby was beyond Freeman’s pure Richardsonian arches, and was channeling Louis Sullivan and the early Prairie School with his design. Two enormous pyramid-shaped roof structures hid massive water tanks. The roofline of the warehouse was capped with crenellation, like a castle fortress, which this really was, a keep to protect people’s precious goods. This was a truly great building.

It took two years for the building to be completed, beginning in 1892, and opening to the public in March of 1894. For anyone storing their property in a warehouse facility, of course they want it to be guaranteed fireproof. Perhaps because of the two church fires in this same location, the advertising for the Warehouse went over the top in assuring potential customers that this was a fire-proof building: “No wood used in construction!” “Not a stick of wood in the entire building,” the ads proclaimed.

The amenities of the huge warehouse were many. The building was 225 feet long and 110 feet deep, offering tons of storage space. There was so much room that a new branch of the Schermerhorn Bank opened on the ground floor of the warehouse. Next to the bank was a ladies’ parlor and reception room, kitted up in the most tasteful and expensive style. The facility had a huge safety deposit vault and 36 rooms where customers could inspect the contents of their boxes in privacy.

The owners bragged this was the largest storage warehouse in the world, and in modern fashion, would be entirely lit by electricity. They offered not only seasonal or yearly storage, but moving services as well, with fleets of wagons and moving carts that could move your belongings between summer and winter homes, or from city to city. They also had an ice machine in the basement that generated cooling power for cold storage.

Over the following years, on into the 20th century, the papers, both the Eagle and the New York Times, featured ads and stories regarding the Storage Company. Their board members changed, they had a public stock offering, and they continued to upgrade and change their facilities. By 1936, when the photograph was taken, they were indeed Brooklyn’s largest moving and storage facility.

The warehouse and storage business had changed, with moving people becoming more important than just storage. Households didn’t have as much stuff as they did in the Victorian Age, and people were moving into Brooklyn, as well as out of it, coming into the borough from Manhattan, mostly, but also from all over the country and the world. It was still a busy time for storage.

But nothing lasts forever, and the magnificent Brooklyn Warehouse and Storage Company building is gone. I was not able to find out when they went out of business, but the building is still there in an aerial map of 1951. According to city records, the bland, and exceedingly banal office building that now stands in its place was built in 1968, so somewhere in there, probably in a rush to “urban renewal,” it was decided that the huge warehouse needed to go. What a shame.

Had it stood, this would probably now be one of downtown Brooklyn’s most popular condo conversions. Cut out some windows, expose some brick walls, utilize those thick walls for keeping the temperature comfortable, and reconfigure the building for the 21st century. It could have been quite cool, and as popular as the Eagle Warehouse. Unfortunately, it was not to be. I would not be surprised if the current building is soon rubble, replaced by, hopefully, something much better. GMAP

1930 Photo: Collection of the Museum of the City of New York. The temple-like building to the left was Public School 47. It too is long gone.
Photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark, 2007
1930 Photo: Entrance of the Warehouse. New York Public Library.
1904 map. New York Public Library.

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