Coney Island Pumping Station
2301 Neptune Avenue | also 2772 West 23rd Street, 2327 Neptune Avenue | Coney Island | built 1936
Open on the map3 entries
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.
- 1938
The city builds a Fire Department pumping station on Neptune Avenue to keep up water pressure
New York City built the pumping station for the Fire Department in 1938 so that water pressure would hold up on the northern side of Coney Island, beside the start of Coney Island Creek. It was one of many Depression-era Public Works Administration buildings, done in the sleek Moderne style. The original building was limestone with black marble trim and a base of black marble, and a flight of marble steps flanked by Pegasus statues led to its entrance.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1938
Irwin Chanin, builder of Manhattan's Chanin Building, designs the pumping station
The architect was Irwin S. Chanin, born in Bensonhurst in 1892 and trained in architecture and engineering at Cooper Union. With his brother Henry he ran the Chanin Construction Company, which built the Chanin Building and Theater District theaters in Manhattan, and Chanin designed the Majestic and Century apartment buildings. The company also built this Coney Island station. Chanin died in 1988, aged 96.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1981
The pumping station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The pumping station went onto the National Register in 1981, while Chanin was still alive. By the time Brownstoner profiled it in 2015, the city had abandoned it as no longer needed, its ground-floor windows were sealed or covered, and almost all of its detail was gone. The Pegasus statues had been moved to the Brooklyn Museum. It stood next to the school I.S. 239.
Source: brownstoner.com
Further reading
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