Walkabout: Apartment Building Favorites

There are literally thousands of original apartment buildings in Brooklyn. From eight unit flats buildings, to tenement buildings, to large pre-war apartment buildings, there are apartment buildings everywhere, and some of them, architecturally, are quite wonderful.

There are so many great buildings that I could take pictures for weeks, and still not cover every neighborhood, or capture every great building. My choices for my favorite apartment buildings are dictated by my ability to get around, and whether or not I had a photograph.

I know there are tons of great apartment buildings in Park Slope and other neighborhoods. Some of them are quite impressive, some historic, and some by major architects.

But I don’t have photos, so they didn’t make the list this time. Many of my choices are from Crown Heights North, partly because I live here, and see them every day, and partially because we have a lot of apartment buildings, and most of them are excellently designed buildings by important architects who were building to entice the upper middle, and upper classes, or building flats buildings for the expanding middle class.

For more information on this subject, please check out my posts earlier this year on multiple unit housing: tenements, flats, and luxury apts.

I’ve got favorites in other neighborhoods, too. This list only scratched the surface. I’ve only included buildings that were built as apartment buildings or hotels, not conversions such as former hospitals, schools, factories, etc.

My absolute favorite is still Montrose Morris’ Alhambra Apartments, on Nostrand Ave in Bedford Stuyvesant. It was a run down wreck about to be abandoned when I first saw it, the first day I ever came to Bed Stuy, in 1983.

One side had a devastating fire, a couple of years later, there was pressure to tear the entire building down, but it emerged as a literal phoenix from the ashes in 1998, restored by the firm of Anderson Associates.

I never get tired of the many details, and the way the different design and architectural elements flow together in the Alhambra. To me, it’s musical, like the layerings of instrumental lines in a symphony. If I had seen this building as a teenager, I probably would be an architect today.

I’m only sorry that I never saw the original interiors, and that there don’t seem to be any photos, either. Morris was but one of the great late 19th and early to mid 20th century architects who could count amongst their best works, their apartment buildings.

Some of the best apartment buildings in Brooklyn are classic “pre-wars” designed between 1910 and 1930. Crown Heights North has many great examples that include impressive lobbies, as well. I present the Alhambra, as well as other favorites on my Flickr page. Where are your favorite apartment buildings?

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]