Built for Brooklyn History: A Place With Many Names

This From the Vault post was originally written by Tess Colwell and published on July 26, 2017 by the Brooklyn Historical Society. To see the latest Photo of the Week entries, visit the Brooklynology blog home, or subscribe to the Center for Brooklyn History newsletter.

Visitors to the Center for Brooklyn History on Pierrepont Street sometimes ask if the building served another purpose before it was a historical society. The answer is—it was always a historical society! Built in 1881, the Queen Anne-style building was designed by architect George Browne Post.

The Long Island Historical Society (subsequently renamed the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1985 and in 2021, after merging with Brooklyn Public Library, the Center for Brooklyn History) held a design competition from December 1877 to 1878 as a basis for the construction of the new historical society building. Post won the competition, and his vision, attention to detail, and innovative design can be seen every day by visiting our landmarked building.

Check out our collection of 128 Pierrepont Street building architectural drawings (including Post’s) submitted for the building design competition.

These views of the front entrance to the Long Island Historical Society were taken in 1961 by Ellis Herwig, whose monogram can be seen on the back. He published several books on photography in the 1980s.

The images are part of the Long Island Historical Society photographs collection containing photographs from 1925 to 1980 that relate to the historic building and activities of the former Long Island Historical Society. To view more photographs from this collection, check out this gallery.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal of Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at [email protected].