Williamsburgh Savings Bank

April 23, 2009 -

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank is a Brooklyn icon. Also known as One Hanson Place and "The Clocktower," this landmark building was completed in 1929 and remains Brooklyn's tallest structure. Much has been written about the bank's history, including an article at Forgotten NY and a photoessay at Satan's Laundromat. However, there are many hidden spaces remaining inside this massive building, from its basement vaults to the surprisingly small clockworks at the top of the building. Though it once housed dozens of dentists and doctors' offices, few have seen the interior of the bank since it was closed in 2005. Over the last four years, the building has been renovated into a luxury residential complex. Work is still not finished and many residential spaces remain empty, including Penthouse A, with its two private observation decks. Soon, though, the building will be completely filled and permanently closed to the public.

Click here to see part two of this photo essay, including a look inside the Clock Tower Dome.

Basement Vaults

4 Feet Thick

In the Lobby

Teller's Window

Breukelen Mural

Hidden View

Metal and Stone

Ram's Head

Arch and Tower

Observation Deck

Placards and Arches

8: The Fighting at Gowanus

Flatbush and 4th

The Clock Face

Inside the Clock Tower

Clock Works

Harlem - P.S. 186

March 30. 2009 -

PS 186 is a somber ruin looming over a busy Harlem street. Opened in 1903, this elementary school was shuttered in 1975. According to a 2005 WNYC piece "it’s been thirty years since PS 186 in Harlem was closed because of its dilapidated conditions. The neglected building has been rotting away ever since." The New York Landmarks Conservancy describes PS 186's current condition as "poor" - inside the building, trees have taken root, floors are collapsing, birds have found refuge, and yet the auditorium is filled with upright chairs. A 2007 New York Sun article promised that "development plans are emerging" but, unlike the work being done at nearby PS 90, there is no evidence that PS 186 is being redeveloped by its owners, the ML Wilson Boys and Girls Club, despite a promise made in 1986 to create a community center in the space. Like the abandoned Renaissance Ballroom nearby, PS 186 is an eloquent reminder of the Harlem's long and sometimes troubled history.

Additional images by photographers on this expedition are at Bluejake and Impose Magazine.

Courtyard View

Auditorium

Upright Rows

Top Floor

Stairwell Sunlight

Rectangles

Classroom, Snow, Trees

Korean Graffiti

Blackboard Jungle

Arches, Portal, Sunlight

Street View

Coney Island - Under the Boardwalk

March 12, 2009 -

In Brooklyn, even the hidden world under the Coney Island Boardwalk isn't safe from development. Recent repair work near Shoot the Freak has revealed and destroyed the Freak's domain. Luckily, there are still forgotten areas further down the boardwalk, stretches of quiet land that are home to tunnel lairs, foxholes, abandoned building entrances, discarded sharks, guard-doves, love nests and campsites. It is, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote in A Coney Island of the Mind -"a kissproof world of plastic toilet seats tampax and taxis/[...]and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments/of the immigrants dream come too true/and mislaid/among the sunbathers."

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On a personal note - these photos are dedicated to Robert Guskind, whose encouragement and support, beginning with a single photo in 2006, helped inspire me to document Brooklyn's entire industrial waterfront. He was a generous friend who advised me in creating this website, and then wrote a story about nearly every photo essay on it for Curbed and The Gowanus Lounge, bringing thousands of people to my photographs. I was just one of the many people in the Brooklyn community that he supported and encouraged. Robert loved Coney Island and I had looked forward to sharing these photos with him this week, on the 2nd anniversary of this website. Robert passed away unexpectedly last week.

A Kissproof World

Shark and Tent

Campsite

Arches and Lines

Grid of Light

Abandoned Entrances

Sewell Gym

Love Nest

Dot Matrix

Urban Camouflage

Recliner

Bedroom and Bird

Guard Dove

The Harlem Renaissance Ballroom and Casino

February 25th, 2009 -

The Renaissance Ballroom and Casino is an imposing block-long Harlem ruin. A vital piece of the neighborhood's history, it was built between 1920 and 1923 and was a black owned and operated center of culture - a movie theater, a ballroom, a space for basketball games, dances and meetings. It was the "setting for all of Harlem’s most important parties," according to author Michael Henry Adams, but by 1979 the complex had closed down and "by the 1990s it had so deteriorated that it was used as a setting for Spike Lee’s crack den from hell in the movie Jungle Fever."

The New York Times describes the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino as "a Harlem landmark in all but name," citing a "Landmarks Preservation Commission... proposal, dating to 1991, to designate the Renaissance complex a landmark." However, the buildings were never landmarked. The property owner, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, used backers like the New York Landmarks Conservancy to convince the Landmarks Commission that landmarking the property would "have created intolerable delays" in their plans to build a "13-story apartment house" and a "community center" on top of the complex.

In 2007, demolition began. Today, the buildings are nearly empty, exposed to the snow. A few ghostly artifacts remain inside their darkened interiors.

Inside the Harlem Renaissance Theater

Theater Seats

Theater Mural

Mural and Demolition

The Harlem Renaissance Ballroom

Chandelier

From the Balcony

Box Seats