As Linda Collins has been reporting in our pages for some time, plans for new hotels in Brooklyn have been made at a rate that is astonishing, especially when you consider that there was not a single hotel in the general downtown area just over a dozen years ago. As she now reports, there are altogether 40 hotel projects currently in the works, with two hotels set to open this year. The success of the Brooklyn Marriott that Joshua Muss built and that opened in 1998 next to MetroTech inspired others to follow suit. A rush toward new hotels was encouraged by the rezoning for new construction downtown, by the growing cultural district around the Brooklyn Academy of Music, by the continuing gentrification of brownstone areas, and by such potential magnet projects as Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Yards. However, since the plans for new hotels were made before the financial collapse in 2008 and the resulting deep recession, it will be interesting to see if all the 40 actually get built and how many of them will thrive. A look back reminds us that Brooklyn had a plethora of hotels through the years of World War II and slightly beyond. Brooklyn Heights was a hotel center, what with the square-block-filling St. George (then the biggest hotel in the city) and such others as the Bossert, the Leverich Towers, the Pierrepont, the Margaret, the Touraine, the Montague, the Standish Arms and the Franklin Arms. With the white flight to the suburbs that began in the late 1950s and continued for a generation, all of these fell on hard times, some surviving for a time as subsidized welfare hotels until all, except for a section of the St. George, found different uses under new owners. The Touraine (on Clinton Street about where the rear of the Heights public library branch is now) was demolished, but Jehovah’s Witnesses acquired the Bossert, the Towers and the Standish Arms, as well as the replacement for the fire-destroyed Margaret. Catholic Charities bought the Pierrepont to serve as a home for the aging, while the Montague and the Franklin Arms were converted into apartments.

The loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers didn’t help Brooklyn’s hotel situation. Without the Dodgers, Brooklyn lacked a destination magnet to compensate for the general perception that it was a prime example of urban decay and crime. As long as they were in Brooklyn the Dodgers not only drew people to hotels but they also stayed in them during the baseball season. I remember that as kids we had our own grading system for the hotels, depending on which players stayed in them. The most prestigious was the Towers, at Clark and Willow Streets, which was the summer home to such as the 20-game winners Whitlow Wyatt and Kirby Higbe, and, after he was bought from the Cardinals, the slugger Joe “Ducky� Medwick. In his rookie year with the Dodgers, PeeWee Reese stayed at the St. George, definitely a notch down, where he roomed with the blooming but ill-fated star, Pete Reiser. The Bossert was home to mid-level players, as was the Hotel Granada (long since demolished) near the Academy of Music. As autograph collectors we learned which hotel to hang out around in hopes of getting particular signatures. There was no special security around the players; they were almost like part of the neighborhood.

The informality of that time will sadly not be recovered in the foreseeable future, if ever. Brooklyn has, however, come a long way from the depths of the ’70s. Former Borough President Howard Golden helped lay the groundwork, aided by having some real power through the since eliminated Board of Estimate. He was instrumental in getting MetroTech built and in getting officialdom behind plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park. Where Golden lacked charisma, his successor, Marty Markowitz, has little actual power but plenty of infectious personality that carries beyond the borough’s borders. With Marty cheerleading the way, and with urban decline largely in reverse, here’s hoping that Brooklyn as a revived hotel town can actually be realized. That future depends also on other projects like Brooklyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Yards going forward in the face of a still uncertain economy.

— Henrik Krogius, Consulting Editor
Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News

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