Bed Stuy's Roosevelt Savings Bank on Way to Becoming Apartments

The 1906 Beaux-Arts bank building on Gates Avenue near Broadway on the Bed-Stuy, Bushwick border will soon be converted to apartments. As first reported by Curbed, a developer has received the go ahead to begin work on the Roosevelt Savings Bank building at 1024 Gates Avenue.

The plan calls for adding four stories inside the existing 50 foot tall building which originally contained a single open space with a rotunda. The owner, Aron Kapelyus of Kai Construction, also plans to add 20 feet to the top of the building making it 70 feet high and six stories tall. When completed the building will have 50 apartments and 25 parking spaces. Kapelyus, under the name 1024 Gates LLC, bought the property for $1.9 million in May of 2012–about the price of two brownstones in the neighborhood these days.

The bank was a Building of the Day back in 2012. It was designed by Helmle, Huberty & Hudswell who also designed the Boat House in Prospect Park and St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in Bushwick among others in the borough.

In the post, Montrose Morrise wrote, “The firm specialized in interesting interpretations of Classical architecture, a key component in the White Cities/City Beautiful Movement of the turn of the 20th century. Frank Helmle was a student of L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and had worked for McKim, Mead & White, who excelled in this style. This bank fits right in that mold, a fine example of a bank designed to encourage thrift, as well as to impart a sense of financial strength. Your money looked safe in here.”

Montrose took a home improvement class taught by a vice president at the bank many years ago and wrote, “Our ‘graduation’ took place in the bank proper, under the central dome in the rotunda, at night, with all of the bank’s lights on. It was all quite splendid. I still have the level that was my graduation gift. The VP took us to the exact part of the floor in the rotunda that was acoustically perfect. You could literally hear a whisper on the other side of the room. He loved that, loved architecture, and home improvement. He also was understandably proud of his bank’s involvement with improving the community. Now THAT’S what a community bank should be”

Lets hope its new owner has the same love of the building and concern for its place in the community.

Bed-Stuy’s Beautiful Beaux-Arts Bank to Become Apartments [Curbed]
Building of the Day: 1024 Gates Avenue [Brownstoner] GMAP

Photo: Gregg Snodgrass via PropertShark