Building of the Day: 144 South Oxford Street

The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.

Address: 144 South Oxford Street, between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue
Name: Oxford Nursing Home, formerly Elks Lodge #22
Neighborhood: Fort Greene
Year Built: 1912
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival (Tuscan palazzo)
Architects: H. Van Buren Magonigle and A. W. Ross, altered 1955 by Weschler& Schimenti
Landmarked: No

In the early part of the 20th century, Fort Greene bloomed with a wealth of buildings that feature white glazed and polychrome (multicolored) terra-cotta ornamentation. Looming grandly, and most significantly, are the Brooklyn Academy of Music (1908), and the Masonic Temple (1906).

In addition are the iconic Griffin Apartments (1920’s), the 1927 apartment building at 299 Adelphi, the former Visiting Nurse Association building at 138 So. Oxford, and this building.

It was built as a meeting hall for the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks in 1912. At the time, this part of Fort Greene had many important civic organizations with large meeting halls; BAM, 2 branches of the YMCA (white and colored) the Masons, several large churches and an armory.

The chief architect, H. Van Buren Magonigle, is now more or less forgotten, but he was best known in the early 20th century as a renaissance man among architects; he was also a painter, sculptor, writer, and best known for his monuments, including the Fireman’s Memorial on Riverside Drive, which he also sculpted, and his memorial to the Maine, which lies at the entrance to Central Park at Columbus Circle.

He also designed the Gates Avenue Courthouse in Bedford Stuyvesant, now housing the PAL. The Elks building is much diminished by alterations done in the 1950’s, but still retains a wonderful wide Tuscan cornice, like a hat, atop a building that still has some great terra-cotta trim.

Note the relief columns, the grape motif running at waist level, and the spiral acanthus leaf half columns at the sides of the building. If you peer behind the security gate at what once the main entrance, you can see the terra-cotta lettering “BPOE” for the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. The building is now a nursing home.

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]