What Important Examples of Famous Architecture Are in Brooklyn New York?

While Brooklyn is a borough of New York City, it was an independent city of its own accord until it consolidated with New York City in 1898. it’s still the most populous borough, and it has a huge share of the city’s most memorable architecture.

There are several important examples of architecture in Brooklyn, incuding:

• Brownstone buildings
• The Brooklyn Bridge
• Prospect park
• Boys' High School

Brownstones

A tourist can spend many a day walking up and down the brownstone filled streets of Brooklyn, where many famous and glorious examples of architecture abound. The distinctive style of the brownstones is depicted in movies and TV shows about Brooklyn and are one of the major things for which the borough is known.

Brooklyn Bridge

Perhaps the best way to view Brooklyn is to approach it by its most famous architectural triumph, the one for which the borough is best known worldwide, the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge has woven its way into the lore of New York City, and indeed, the entire country. The bridge was initially designed by German engineer John Augustus Roebling, who died from an injury sustained inspecting the pilings for the bridge. His son, Washington Roebling, took over the project, but he became partially paralyzed after suffering from a decompression illness, caused when he was inspecting how deep the pilings of the bridge needed to be.

Emily Warren Roebling, his wife, became the go-to person in the bridge’s construction, A self trained engineer, Emily Warren Roebling made sure her sick husband’s instructions were followed to the letter.

Construction began in 1870 and took 12 years. By the time the bridge was opened, and for decades later, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Roebling designed the bridge and truss design to be six times stronger than anything previously built, so to this day the Brooklyn Bridge is a firm, steady span that connects Manhattan and the borough of Brooklyn over the East River.

Famous Parks

Brooklyn, having been a wealthy city before it was absorbed into New York City, has a number of spectacular parks incorporated into its precincts. One of the most famous of these is Prospect Park.

The 585 acre park, which holds Brooklyn’s only lake, was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, the designers of New York City’s famous Central Park. In fact, Olmstead and Vaux set upon constructing Prospect Park immediately after they finished their construction of Central Park.

The park contains many fabulous structures, including the only city-located Audubon Center, the Prospect Park Zoo, its own elaborate rococo bandshell, and Litchfield Villa, the home of the previous owners of the southern end of the park.

The ornate and magnificent Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, fashioned to emulate Paris’ L’Arc de Triomphe, crowns one end of the park.

The acreage is still in heavy use today by Brooklyn residents, and the various park structures are central to many walking tours of the historic architecture of Brooklyn.

Boys' High School and Other Key Buildings

Brooklyn abounds in many ornate building facades. A famous one is Boys’ High School, constructed in 1892 by architect James W. Naughton. The Romanesque Revival terra-cotta and brick facade is elaborate with arches, towers and canopies, and is a favorite stop on architectural tours of Brooklyn.

Another Naughton design is an 1880s schoolhouse on Patchen Avenue, built in the Second Empire Baroque design. The building was abandoned several decades ago after a fire, but it was refurbished by a non-profit firm and turned into a charter school.

The Williamsburg Art and Historical Society is located at the corner of Broadway and Bedford Avenue in a Second Empire Baroque design building. The design of the building is ornate and perfectly preserved; even the original (functioning) gas chandeliers are present in the structure.