The Union League Club-House
This is a 1891 photo of The Union League Club-House on Bedford Ave. in Crown Heights Grant Square. With all the talk of the Montauk Club apartment today I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought about this building. You see the similarities in architecture but this building looks even more upscale…
This is a 1891 photo of The Union League Club-House on Bedford Ave. in Crown Heights Grant Square. With all the talk of the Montauk Club apartment today I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought about this building. You see the similarities in architecture but this building looks even more upscale and larger. I really hope that someone could bring this great building back to its glory days. When I pass this area I try to imagine how it was 100 years ago. Do you think we will ever see this building have its renaissance.
Oy-did I say that? Time to sleep.
Wrong link – this building has significant historical significance.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9506E1D61339E033A25751C2A9659C94649ED7CF
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19031017&id=b1YwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=F1YDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4988,4818639
I went to grade school here and remember the huge classrooms, high ceilings, wide hallways and the rats running around the dining room on the lower level during lunch. Us kids had no appreciation for a historic building and spent most of the time trashing the place until we moved out in the early ’70s into a new school building, which we continued to trash as the school did not really discipline the children who learned there and let chaos rule.
Jewish Unity Club! What did they do with it? Run it as a club? Or was that when it was a school?
What a delightful thread. Thanks everyone, I loved your input.
Great photo, Amzi. I hadn’t seen this one before. I was especially glad to see the tower, which is now gone. I have a photo from the Bklyn public library from the same period, but this photo is much better. Not only are the eagles now gone from the dormer on the right, the whole dormer is gone, the roof trim is gone, and the eyebrow windows are now nondescript flat rectangles. I don’t know when the roof was converted and the tower taken down.
I’m sorry to hear all of the interior has been stripped and reconfigured, but this building has been through several owners. It was purchased by the Jewish Unity Club in 1946, and was used as a school until converted into a senior citizen’s center in ’84.
Bessie, I guess the bowling alley, the powerplant, and other period details are long gone. There isn’t even an office or auditorium space that wasn’t torn out?
I don’t think we can wish the past back. A senior citizen’s center is a valuable resource to a community with a large senior population. There will also always be the need for a shelter in the Armory, but that doesn’t mean a well run, small shelter can’t co-exist with a bustling square. We certainly don’t have a well run shelter at the moment.
This is a perfect spot for some well though out urban planning, which will have to be done with community involvement, city, state and other funding, and the public will for success. The world has changed, but the tony swells and bejewelled ladies in gowns promenading to parties may someday return, albeit in a more modern and multicultural manner. Landmarking is only the first step. We need to landmark the Chatelaine Hotel, the theatre and the large apt building on the western corner of Dean and Bedford, too.
Bessie these are such great photos.. The buildings are really nice in Grant Sq. It is really unfair that some areas get whatever they want when it comes to keeping it up and NYC ignores other equally beautiful areas. This is almost like a times square type of intersection and something really nice should happening here… Again thanks Bessie for those photos.
Thanks, Bessie.
The club will need a lot of work.
But there’s a lot of elegance left.
NOP