Brooklyn Borough Hall
209 Joralemon Street | also 384 Adams Street, 225 Joralemon Street | Downtown Brooklyn | built 1920
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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.
- 1845
Brooklyn's city hall restarts under a new architect after the Panic of 1837 stalls it
Ground was broken in 1836, but the Panic of 1837 left the city without money, and the contractor who supplied the marble sued. When work resumed in 1845, Gamaliel King replaced Calvin Pollard as designer, with orders to shrink the plan to fit the existing foundation. The weathered first-story walls had to be torn down first, and King reused the cut marble, which the city paid for when it settled the lawsuit.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1847
Someone partly cuts the ropes holding the derricks at the new City Hall
In April 1847, as marble cladding was being hoisted up the walls, someone partly cut through eight of the guy ropes holding the derricks. Some of the stones weighed over five tons, and a failure could have dropped a pilaster through the second floor onto anyone working inside. The damage was found and the ropes replaced, so construction went on as planned, while police looked for whoever did it.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1849
Brooklyn City Hall opens, with fourteen offices on its ground floor
The marble building opened in the spring of 1849, though it was not fully finished until the end of the 1860s. In August 1849 a Brooklyn Eagle reporter toured it and counted 14 first-floor offices, including those of the mayor, city judge, comptroller and county clerk, with the Common Council and Supreme Court rooms upstairs. Critics filled the local papers for a year with complaints about the cost, the paint, and even the size of the new trees.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1895
A fire destroys City Hall's cupola and top floor
On February 26, 1895, a lit gas jet in a third-floor closet stuffed with waste paper set off a fire that burned through that floor and the wooden cupola above it. The alarm bell, the clock and the statue of Justice fell through the roof, and the water used against the flames soaked the Common Council chamber on the floor below, wrecking its walls and ceiling. Three years later a cast-iron cupola by Vincent C. Griffith of Stoughton & Stoughton went up, topped by a flag instead of the statue.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1930
Depression-era critics want Borough Hall gone, but the donor's old deed stops them
During the Great Depression, critics argued that Brooklyn no longer needed the building, that its design was ordinary, and that it honored a city hall era lasting just 43 years. Old records then showed that Hezekiah Pierrepont had attached a condition to his gift of the triangular site: only a city hall could ever stand there, or the land might revert to his estate. Borough Hall stayed.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1980
Borough President Howard Golden launches a fundraising commission to restore Borough Hall
The building became one of the first individual landmarks designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966 and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. In 1980 Borough President Howard Golden also set up a commission to raise public and private money for the restoration, and the firm Conklin and Rossant began a renovation that took nine years. The firm that restored the Statue of Liberty revived the copper cupola, a new Lady Justice statue was installed, and Axel Hedman's courtroom was restored.
Source: brownstoner.com
Further reading
- Brooklyn Borough HallWikipedia
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