Building of the Day: 177 Livingston Street

Address: 177 Livingston Street, on corner of Gallatin Place
Name: Office Building
Neighborhood: Downtown Brooklyn
Year Built: 1885
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architects: George L. Morse
Landmarked: No

There are some great buildings in the Downtown Fulton St. area, most obscured by signage and modern facades, this one is one of my favorites.

It’s virtually untouched by the so called improvements of the day, mostly because it’s on Livingston St. which is barely traveled, compared to Fulton.

It was built as part of Abraham and Straus, which in its day stretched across 7 separate buildings in the block between Fulton, Livingston, Gallatin and Hoyt.

This building is a Romanesque Revival beauty, with alternating colored brick bands, a rounded corner, and those wonderful arches with heavy, ornate terra-cotta Byzantine Leaf trim worthy of Chicago’s Louis Sullivan. Look at the closeups, this work is stunning, and miraculously, intact.

The often overlooked George Morse was a stealth master architect, producing great work like this building and the Franklin Trust building in the Romanesque Revival style, then moving on to design the Temple Bar Building on Court Street in a gloriously original Renaissance and Classical Revival style, adding to the great buildings of Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights.

This building is no longer part of A &S/Macy’s, and recently underwent a gut reno, and is awaiting new office tenants on at least one floor.

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]