The Brooklyn Academy of Music grew out of the Philharmonic Society of Brooklyn, formed by a group of wealthy Brooklynites in 1857.

Across the river, New York was growing rapidly, and its center of culture was moving northward, away from Brooklyn. Brooklyn itself was growing in population and annexing adjacent areas. In 1868, with a population of 266,000, it ranked as the third largest city in the country — large enough to have its own season of serious music.

In its first year the new Philharmonic Society presented its concerts in the Atheneum on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street.

The Philharmonic Society soon decided that the Atheneum was too small and crowded. In 1859, the group obtained a charter for a new organization, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to raise funds and construct a concert hall. In 1860, the subscribers to the new Academy hired a young but eminent New York architect, Leopold Eidletz, who built them a gigantic brick building with stone trims and large Gothic windows on Montague Street between Court and Clinton streets. The auditorium of the new Academy had 2,250 seats. The first performance, on Jan. 15, 1861, was a gala event, in which the city’s well-to-do were treated to great arias of Mozart, Verdi, Rossini and Weber, sung by the most popular operatic stars of the day.

Over the next decades, the Brooklyn Academy of Music entered a period which is often considered its heyday. The Academy housed not only many of Brooklyn’s cultural events but civic festivities as well. In 1883, the Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted the evening reception for the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. The event was attended by thousands including President Chester A. Arthur and Governor Grover Cleveland.

The Brooklyn Philharmonic Society continued to operate within the Academy, and the Academy held many dramatic performances. Concert and dramatic artists, operatic stars and “great recitalists,� such as Edwin Booth, John Drew, Nellie Melba, Jan Paderewski and Fritz Kreisler, all appeared there. The Brooklyn Academy of Music remained a cultural landmark on Montague Street until late in the evening of Nov. 30, 1903. During preparations for a political banquet, a stray spark became a fire, and within 20 minutes the auditorium was a blazing volcano of flame. Crumbling walls crushed a saloon next door, and other surrounding buildings caught fire.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music was rebuilt with another complex of stunning performance spaces in 1908 at 30 Lafayette Ave., corner of Ashland Place.

— Vernon Parker

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