451 Clarkson Ave, KCH, ABC unit, Google Maps 2

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally Nurses Training School, now ABC Building at Kings County Hospital
Address: 451 Clarkson Avenue
Cross Streets: New York and Albany Avenues
Neighborhood: Wingate/East Flatbush
Year Built: 1930-32
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival with strong Art Deco influences
Architect: Leroy P. Ward
Other Buildings by Architect: mostly mansions on Gold Coast of Long Island and Hamptons
Landmarked: No

The story: Kings County Hospital started out as the Kings County Almshouse in 1831. Located at the time, far out on a farm, far away from everyone else, the almshouse was a Dickensian work house and farm for the poor and indigent on 70 acres of Flatbush farming land, with 40 acres dedicated to farmland. As the 19th century progressed, the dormitories and work houses of the Almshouse were joined by the Lunatic Asylum, a place where those with developmental problems, mental illness and other disabilities such as blindness could also be removed from society. Both institutions were early forms of public care, supported not by private charities, but public tax funds. As can be imagined, life here was pretty awful, too.

By the turn of the 20th century, almshouses were dying out, and the hospital wing of the facility was growing, becoming the Kings County Hospital. One by one, the old almshouse and lunatic asylum buildings were torn down and replaced with newer, larger hospital building. Some of the city’s finest architectural firms contributed buildings to the complex, including Helmle & Huberty, the architects of the Bossert Hotel and the Prospect Park Boathouse.

By the 1930s, more expansion was needed. Helme & Huberty had designed a nurse’s residence in 1909, and it was already way too small. A new building, or buildings were needed, and architect Leroy P. Ward was chosen to design new buildings for the nurses, as well as a new hospital building for the complex. Ward’s career needs some more investigating, as his name generally turns up only in the context of the large mansions he designed for rich clients on Long Island’s Gold Coast, as well as in the Hamptons.

Here, he designed a complex of buildings consisting of two nine-story towers with a low three-story connecting wing. The center of the connecting wing is in front of a third central tower made even taller with a commanding peaked roof, capped with a tall weather vane. The center of the connecting wing was a perfect place for a large elaborate entrance to the hospital building. Today, this whole thing is called the A B C Building.

Architecture critics of the day didn’t know what to make of the design. Ward cherry picked from Colonial Revival, Art Deco, Gothic and Romanesque Revivals, Mediterranean, Georgian and other influences, and put together an interesting building.

I find it rather forbidding and gloomy. In the right light, this group looks like a set from Tim Burton’s “Batman”, with that severe Deco look that can be really oppressive in its massing and use of metal elements. Amusingly, most photographs I found of the building, even those taken by the hospital itself, have dark clouds hovering over it, making it look even more gloomy than it really is.

That’s not to say there aren’t some great details here. Ward worked with famed Art Deco-era sculptor Rene Paul Chambellan here, the creator of the ornament on the Williamsburg Bank Building on Hanson Place, and the fantastic etched designs on the Chanin Building in Manhattan, among others. Chambellan designed the signage and some embossed bronze plaques for the building. He placed the names of famous scientists in panels on either side of the entrance, using the same great Deco font that also graces the Savings Bank building.

I like the tower in the central building, with its Mediterranean feel, and the really fine brickwork using decorative colored brick in patterns and alternating colors. I also like Chambellan’s work. In really looking at it, I think it’s the metal clad bays I don’t like. They give the exterior a very prison-like feel. I don’t think nurses would want to feel they were in prison, but since they worked long hours and lived here too, they probably did, anyway.

The old photographs show nothing around the buildings, but as time passed, the hospital grew up and around this complex. There is so much to Kings County and Downstate just across the street, that it’s hard to keep it all straight. Some of the new buildings echo the designs of the older ones; some are just out there in their modernity. People like modern looking hospital buildings, even people who generally prefer older buildings. There is something about a new hospital building that says that modern state of the art care goes on inside, and the building is clean and sterilized. That’s not always true, of course, but that’s the emotional response that architecture can illicit.

(Photo: Google Maps)

GMAP

1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
1932 photograph: Museum of the City of New York
Photograph: Pixel23 on eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 via eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 on eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 via eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 on eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 via eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 on eur.ca
Photograph: Pixel23 via eur.ca

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