POTW: Opening the Pocket Doors: Underneath the Floorboards

It’s not every day you get the chance to see what lies underneath the floors of an old building. And while we don’t have any beating hearts underneath our floorboards, this photograph offers us a rare glimpse of the foundation of 128 Pierrepont Street.  

As was mentioned in our first Opening the Pocket Doors post written by my colleague, Nicole Font, our building at 128 Pierrepont was designed by George B. Post designed in the Queen Anne style. Construction began in 1878 and was completed in 1881. The building has experienced quite a lot over its 142 years since first opening to the public. The Great Hall especially has seen a substantial amount of use: from hosting lectures to the space being rented out to businesses to becoming a space for museum exhibitions. It is no surprise that it had, therefore, been subject to change as part of the various renovations that the building has undergone.  

One of the biggest renovations to the building began in 1999 under the architecture firm Jan Hird Pokorny, one of the businesses that had previously rented space in the Great Hall. Construction was completed in 2003 when the Brooklyn Historical Society hosted a grand re-opening ceremony of the building. This picture offers a unique, overhead view of the brick walls of the basement, as well as the brick structures at the foundation of the support beams, after the floor of the Great Hall was completely removed. Another renovation that occurred from 2012-2014 saw the restructuring of the basement to create our current classroom, utilized today by the CBH Education Department.  

The Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Archive Project is generously funded by the Leon Levy Foundation.

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 cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.