So it was late yesterday afternoon, as I spun down Park Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
This T-shaped building takes up most of a square block and seems out of place , only because of its size, in a neighborhood full of elegant brownstone townhouses and min-mansions. (Crown Heights was one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in New York—something Stingo, the narrator of Sophie’s Choice, notices.) To me, it looked like a sanitarium attached to a church.
Turns out, my hunch wasn’t far off the mark: It opened late in the 19th Century as the Brooklyn Methodist Episcopal Home of the Aged. About two decades later, the chapel was added.
When the Home was built, Social Security and public services for the elderly and other vulnerable people didn’t exist. So, whatever help was available came from charities, whether secular or church-related.
Mercein Thomas, the architect of the Home, refused payment for his services. So did William Kennedy, the architect who designed the extension and chapel. The money was donated by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which included some of Brooklyn’s most prominent families.
Today the building houses the Hebron Seventh Day Adventist Church and bilingual (French and English) school that mainly serves Haitian and Senegalese immigrants.
As I understand, the building is in peril: A developer wants to demolish the south wing and build an apartment tower that would dwarf, not only the school, but the neighborhood. And it would accelerate gentrification, which would drive out longtime residents as well as the families of the kids who attend the school.
Where would be the sense of wonder in riding past another tower block?
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