Royal Castle Apartments

20 Gates Avenue | also 476 Clinton Avenue, 26 Gates Avenue | Clinton Hill | built 1913

Open on the map5 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1912

    Levy & Baird build the Royal Castle apartment house on Clinton Avenue

    Around 1912-13 the development firm of Levy & Baird put up the Royal Castle, a six-story brick apartment house at Gates and Clinton Avenues. By then the large mansions of prosperous families were harder to maintain and staff, and apartment houses had become a popular alternative along Clinton Avenue. The name was chosen to suggest luxury and social standing on a street once called Brooklyn's Gold Coast.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1912

    The William M. Ingraham mansion and its lawns and gardens make way for the Royal Castle

    Before the Royal Castle was built, the corner held the residence of William M. Ingraham, a brick mansion surrounded by spacious lawns and gardens. The apartment house replaced it around 1912, one of several apartment buildings in the area that took the place of earlier mansions.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1912

    Olympic wrestler Deitrich Wortmann is half of the firm that designs the Royal Castle

    The Royal Castle was designed by Wortmann & Braun. Deitrich Wortmann (1884-1952) was born in Germany and studied at the University of Leipzig and Columbia University. A keen amateur athlete, he wrestled for the United States at the 1904 Olympics. In 1936 he served on the American Olympic Committee, chairing the weightlifting team and managing the bobsled team. Little is known of his partner, R.H. Braun.

    “Wortmann was very active in amateur athletics and represented the United States at the 1904 Olympics as one of the members of the wrestling team.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1912

    The Royal Castle is a Beaux Arts apartment house with a dramatic sixth floor and roofline

    The brick building stands on a rusticated limestone base at the intersection of Gates and Clinton Avenues. The Gates Avenue side has a deep central court that marks the main entrance, a round-arched stone portico, and divides the building into two pavilions. Simulated pilasters of widely spaced stone blocks run up the brick faces, and each pavilion has a Venetian round-arch window on the sixth floor. The Clinton Avenue entrance carries a plaque reading Royal Castle.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1981

    December 22

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Royal Castle Apartments a landmark

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Royal Castle Apartments at 20-30 Gates Avenue a landmark on December 22, 1981. A hearing in October 1979 was continued to December 11, 1979, and five witnesses spoke in favor of designation with none opposed. The Commission called the building an excellent example of the apartment houses built to attract prosperous families in the early twentieth century.

    “…it is an excellent example of the type of apartment house erected during the first decades of the twentieth century to attract prosperous New York families…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 13 buildings with stories in Clinton Hill