Building of the Day: 157 South 9th Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Washington Palace, now Spanish Free Methodist Church
Address: 157 South 9th Street
Cross Streets: Bedford and Driggs avenues
Neighborhood: Williamsburg
Year Built: Unknown
Architectural Style: There’s an Italianate under here somewhere
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No

The story: On a recent drive through Williamsburg, I came upon this building while initially more interested in some of the other buildings on this block. It’s one of those hybrid buildings where a modern addition was tacked onto a much older building, with the intention of it having a new function. I’m always intrigued by anything that has a name on it — it certainly makes it easier to research — but came upon a bit of a challenge here. The Washington Palace was an events space which operated somewhere between the late 1920s and the mid-1950s. The building was considerably older.

A look at the Sanborn maps, and a look at today’s placement of buildings leads me to believe that this was a single brownstone that appears at what was then 157 South 9th Street in 1887, but 155 South 9th Street in the 1904 map. This is confirmed by the 1918 map, which shows the corrected addresses. It was a standalone brownstone, clearly Italianate in style, as it appears at the very end of the row in a photograph from 1939. It stood next to a row of Neo-Grec flats, which are unfortunately no longer there. You can see it still had its distinctive window hoods and cornice, even though the Washington Palace entryway had been built by that time.

Anyway, I believe that this is the building that became the Washington Palace. The front entryway and extension date from the 1920s in style, and in terms of the evidence of when the building was a social hall. I found many entries in the papers where the Washington Palace was host to weddings, American Legion meetings, parties, and other similar functions. The entries last from the late ‘20s through the early ‘50s. Most of the people and organizations were Jewish, which matches the ethnic makeup of the community, although this was before the arrival of most of the Hasidic community.

The Palace was actually quite difficult to research because of its name. There was a very famous early professional basketball team called the Washington Palace Five, aka “the Laundrymen.” There was a lot more information about them than this poor events space on a back street of Williamsburg. Today, the Washington Palace is a church, the Spanish Free Methodist Church. Fortunately, they kept the name of the old building on the facade. GMAP