Sunset Park

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Address: 4917 4th Avenue
Cross Streets: 49th and 50th Streets
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1893
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: L.B. Valk & Son
Other Work by Architect: Several churches in Brooklyn, plus the Lillian Ward house and adjoining row in Park Slope
Landmarked: No. Listed with Sunset Park neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places (1988)

The story: This is the oldest church in Sunset Park, built when the neighborhood was just beginning to undergo a transformation from randomly scattered wood framed houses to masonry rows of brownstones and limestones. It’s an interesting church building, designed by one of the most prolific and important church architects in the country at the time, Lawrence B. Valk.

Lawrence B. Valk, who designed under the firm name of L.B. Valk and Son, knew his way around churches. His designs for ecclesiastical buildings can be found from the New York/Long Island area through Michigan, New Orleans, and on to California, where he and his son eventually located. He specialized in Protestant Churches, and literally wrote the book on them, in 1873, titled “Church Architecture,” in which he stated, ““Churches are for the salvation of souls, not the architectural display at the sacrifice of comfort.” (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Tenement buildings
Address: 442-472 40th Street
Cross Streets: 4th and 5th avenues
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1912-1913
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Eisenla & Carlson
Other Work by Architect: Row houses, tenements and flats buildings in Park Slope, row house blocks such as the 600 block of 76th Street, also Senator Street in Bay Ridge.
Landmarked: No, but on National Register of Historic Places (1988)

The story: Sunset Park was one of the last of Brooklyn’s brownstone neighborhoods to develop, and most of this large neighborhood’s building stock dates to the beginning of the 20th century. Several factors contributed to the neighborhood’s rise, chief among them the building of the 4th Avenue subway line, and the jobs available at the huge Sunset Park industrial park of Bush Terminal, its adjacent industries and, later, the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

In 1906, a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle noted that the Sunset Park area had gone from farm land to urban city in the space of only a few years. The 4th Avenue subway line was announced in 1905. It was designed to connect South Brooklyn with Downtown Brooklyn, and on to Manhattan, via the new Manhattan Bridge. By 1908, the blocks between the avenues in Sunset Park were a hive of building activity, with foundations being dug and buildings going up on every block. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Originally the Coliseum Theater, now Templo De La Alabanza
Address: 5205 Fourth Avenue
Cross Streets: 52nd and 53rd Streets
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1920
Architectural Style: 20th century movie house, with vaguely Moorish detail
Architect: Matthew W. Del Gaudio
Other Work by Architect: Four other theaters in Brooklyn – two in Dyker Heights, two in Bay Ridge. Also on the architectural advisory board of the Williamsburg Houses; houses in Van Cortlandt Village, Bronx, among others.
Landmarked: No

The story: When the movies were king, Brooklyn had some spectacular movie houses. Most of them are now gone or are only shades of their former selves, having been converted into churches, supermarkets, or retail stores. The borough also had some lesser movie houses; neighborhood spots that perhaps were not huge fantasy palaces run by the major studios, but instead were both large and small, perfectly great neighborhood venues to run movies, a place where a family could walk, and escape into Hollywood’s worlds of fantasy and drama.

Movie theater aficionados had developed websites devoted to their favorite topic, and there are lots of people of a certain age who remember their first time in a theater, or certain movies or personal appearances by stars and entertainers who dropped in to promote their newest film or project. Sometimes these people were neighborhood celebrities themselves, men and woman from the old neighborhood who made it big, but came back to remember where they came from. This building was that kind of place. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Dr. Maurice T. Lewis House, now office of Felix W. Ortiz, New York State Assemblyman
Address: 404 55th Street
Cross Streets: Corner Fourth Avenue
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1907
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: Harde & Short
Other Work by Architect: In Brooklyn – Kismet Temple, Bed Stuy. In Manhattan – Alwyn Court, 58th Street, and other apartment buildings on Upper East and West Side
Landmarked: No, but on National Register of Historic Places

The story: Sunset Park was designed and built for ordinary middle and working class folk. This is unique amongst our brownstone neighborhoods, most of which were built for the upper classes, no matter where they may lie on the economic scale now. It’s a huge neighborhood full of rows of fine row houses, apartment buildings, churches and other civic buildings, and this last weekend, I had the pleasure of touring many of its blocks in a walking tour organized by the Sunset Park Landmark Committee. The leader of the tour, Joe Svehlak, grew up there, and we’ve known each other for years, in one of those convoluted Six Degrees of Separation connections that occur so often in life. I was eager to learn more about a neighborhood that I knew very little about, and I have a wealth of information now that I am more than willing to share in upcoming BOTDs.

Ironically, in this working class ‘hood, I’m starting with the only freestanding mansion in the district. This is the Dr. Maurice Thomas Lewis house, built for him in 1907, when he was president of the Bay Ridge Savings Bank. Doctor Lewis was a busy man. He graduated in the Class of 1892 from the Long Island Hospital School of Medicine, and practiced medicine for over 38 years, and for many years was a consulting pathologist at Harbor Hospital, which stood on Cropsey Avenue at 23rd Street, here in Brooklyn. Perhaps because his patients couldn’t complain about his scheduling, being dead and all, that enabled him to pursue an entirely different line of work, and have a successful second career as a banker. (more…)

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Alku Toinen Cooperative Apartments
Address: 826 43rd Street
Cross Streets: 8th and 9th Avenues
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1916-17
Architectural Style: Vaguely Arts &Crafts
Architect: Eric O. Holmgren
Other Work by Architect: Evening Star Baptist Church (former Later Day Saints Chapel), St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Bed Stuy; 189 Ocean Avenue, PLG; theaters in Williamsburg; 122-134 Brooklyn Ave, Crown Heights North and other buildings.
Landmarked: No, but on the National Register of Historic Places (1988)

The story: Driving through Sunset Park, you might overlook this building and its neighbors, as they seem to be rather unassuming and simple apartment buildings, probably built before the 1920s. You’d be right about the date, but wrong in assuming that these buildings are not important. The name of the building, carved above the door is a clue: Alku Toinen. What is that? A proper name? And what language? Is there more to this than meets the eye? Of course!

Alku Toinen is Finnish, and means “Beginning Two.” There is an Alku, as well, just next door at 816 43rd Street. That was the real “Beginning.” These buildings are the first non-profit cooperative apartments in the entire United States. They were built by the Finnish Home Building Association, a group of sixteen Finnish families who received a permit for their first building, Alku, in 1916. Alku Toinen was next.

The idea of a non-profit housing cooperative was so new to the country that they were not even classified as housing, as there was no classification on the books for this kind of cooperative. The state had to classify them under the Department of Agriculture, which regulated cooperative farms. (more…)