Building of the Day: 925 Prospect Place

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: The Pierre Apartments
Address: 925 Prospect Place
Cross Streets: New York and Brooklyn Avenues
Neighborhood: Crown Heights North
Year Built: 1933-1936
Architectural Style: Art Deco
Architect: Matthew W. Del Gaudio
Other Work by Architect: 840-850 St. Marks Ave, part of team on the Williamsburg Houses, theaters in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. Also Our Lady of Pompeii in Greenwich Village, as well as Civil Courthouse on Centre St, Manhattan.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Crown Heights North HD (2007)

The story: The St. Marks District was once Crown Heights’ Gold Coast, with large mansions filling the wide streets. But in 1920, the IRT subway line was completed, bringing thousands of eager new people to this part of Brooklyn and along Eastern Parkway. Apartment buildings soon began to replace the mansions, as developers scrambled to build to house this new middle class population, while the rich took off for the new suburbs of Long Island, Westchester, and the luxurious new apartments of Park Avenue.

I find this particular period of time, those years between the end of World War One and the Great Depression, fascinating from the perspective of housing. It really was the end of the Age of Opulence, and the beginning of rise of the American middle class, with Crown Heights, Flatbush, and other neighborhoods filling up with the children and grandchildren of the white ethnic immigrants who had only a couple of generations ago filled the tenements of the Lower East side and Williamsburg.

These people wanted class and respect, and what is classier than a new apartment in a new and modern Art Deco apartment building with a swanky name like “The Pierre?”

The developers of these building understood the mindset because they were those people too; they were also the sons and grandsons of the Lower East Side. The developer of this building was Abraham Shapiro, and the architect was a familiar name in Manhattan’s Little Italy – Matthew W. Del Gaudio.

De Gaudio was born in Italy in 1889, and came to the US as small child, in 1892. He received his education at Cooper Union, the Mechanics and Tradesmen’s Institute, and from Columbia University. He opened his own practice, and was soon building everything from Our Lady of Pompeii, on Carmine St, in Greenwich Village, to tenements, stables, hotels, theaters and trades buildings. By the 1930s and 40’s, he was involved in the building of New York’s many housing complexes, including the Williamsburg Houses, Parkchester, Gravesend Houses, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. He teamed up with William Lescaze, one of his co-designers at the Williamsburg Houses, in 1955, and they co-designed the Civil Courthouse Building on Center Street, in Lower Manhattan. He received many awards, before and after his retirement, and died in 1960 at the age of 71.

The Pierre was a classic middle class apartment building of its day. It rose six stories, with a choice of 1 ½. 2 ½, 3 and 4 room apartments. Local amenities touted were excellent public transportation, fine shopping on nearby Nostrand Avenue, and proximity to the Children’s Museum, only a block away. The sales brochure for the apartments also mentioned that the new IND “A” train only blocks away at Fulton Street.

These were also typical Art Deco-era apartments with sunken living rooms, accessed by ornamental railings, bookcases in the living room, Venetian blinds and concealed radiators. They boasted “modern and complete kitchens complete colored bathrooms and colored fixtures, glass enclosed separate shower stalls, and close hampers including utensil cabinets.” In addition, each apartment also had linoleum floors in the kitchens, radio outlets, inter-phone systems, and laundry facilities in the basement, plus much more.

The Avery Library at Columbia University has a large collection of apartment building sales brochures, and the Pierre is among them. They show descriptions of amenities, a sketch of the building, and floorplans. These were designed to allow brokers to get tenants even before the building was finished, so that by the time the last Venetian blinds were hung, the building was already fully rented. The Pierre joined dozens of middle class apartment buildings in Crown Heights, and hundreds in other sections of Brooklyn, swelling Brooklyn’s population to new heights for the 20th century. GMAP

(Photo: Carl Forster for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2007)