By Gary Buiso
To understand the borough’s architectural history, don’t look up, look down, a prominent historian and author told the Brooklyn Heights Association last week. There, Francis Morrone said, one might see “big holes in the ground,” whose presence speaks volumes about Brooklyn, as well as the borough’s attitude. At various places across the borough sits large foundations, dug out to accommodate oversized projects that never quite took off—or were scaled down considerably in their final incarnation. For example, Morrone said, the foundation for Brooklyn’s City Hall was dug out in 1834, but then the city, ran out of money. “Brooklyn’s City Hall was created 14 years later in a vastly reduced form,” he noted. In 1860, the Brooklyn Diocese decided to construct a cathedral to rival St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. Sadly, Morrone recounted, the money ran out once more, and the cathedral never did rise. The site where the foundation was dug is today Bishop Loughlin’s High School’s playing field in Fort Greene. Brooklyn’s cathedral, St. James’s, would rise on Jay Street. “Brooklyn was suffering from its usual delusions of grandeur,” Morrone said, attributing that to a “certain competitiveness with the city on the other side of the East River.” At the turn of 20th Century, grand plans for a public library at Grand Army Plaza were moving forward—but when Brooklyn Public Library ran out of money, the project stalled and would not be constructed—again, massively scaled down—until 1941. Hubris, it seems, is certainly something with which the borough is acquainted. “It seems to me that a lot of projects just getting underway now may face long delays,” he warned. Of the borough’s biggest planned development project, the Atlantic Yards, Morrone said, “That scale should not be allowed in Brooklyn under any circumstances.” Morrone’s talk, “Abroad in Brooklyn: A Lively Tour of Our Amazing Borough from its 19th Century Roots to Today’s Sweeping Changes,” was delivered without slides, but with plenty of skill. The author of five books, including architectural guidebooks to New York, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, Morrone’s most recent book is entitled “Brooklyn: A Journey through the City of Dreams,” and was published in 2004. He also teaches at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and leads walking tours through the borough. Morrone said he was concerned with the change in scale of building in older Brooklyn neighborhoods. “This is something some are pushing without due consideration,” he said. Landmarked buildings and neighborhoods must be revered, rather than face further erosion, he continued.
