Brooklyn Tower
The Brooklyn Tower is a supertall mixed-use, primarily residential skyscraper in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. Developed by JDS Development Group, it is situated on the north side of DeKalb Avenue near Flatbush Avenue. The main portion of the skyscraper is a 74-story, residential structure designed by SHoP Architects and built from 2018 to 2022. Preserved at the skyscraper's base is the Dime Savings Bank Building, designed by Mowbray and Uffinger, which dates to the 1900s and is a New York City designated landmark.
The tower is the first supertall building in Brooklyn, as well as the tallest building in the borough and the tallest in New York City outside Manhattan. The Dime Savings Bank Building contains a white-marble facade with colonnades; a diagonal entrance portico on Albee Square; and a domed roof. The bank's interior contains a hexagonal rotunda, which is used as retail space. The building includes of amenity spaces, some of which are within the bank. The tower section accommodates approximately 150 condominiums and 425 rental apartments, totaling roughly.
The bank building was built in 1906–1908 for the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn. The original building, which operated as Dime Savings Bank's main branch for over a century, was expanded by Halsey, McCormack and Helmer in 1931–1932. The bank building was sold to JDS in 2014, and the Brooklyn Tower was constructed as an annex to the Dime Savings Bank starting in 2018. The tower's superstructure topped out during October 2021, and sales of the condominiums began in 2022, with 18 condos having been sold by early 2024. After JDS defaulted on one of its loans, Silverstein Properties, owned by Larry Silverstein, took over the unsold condos in June 2024.
Site
The Brooklyn Tower is situated at 9 DeKalb Avenue and 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. The building's site occupies much of the triangular city block bounded by Fleet Street to the northwest, DeKalb Avenue to the south, and Flatbush Avenue Extension to the northeast. The southwest corner faces a pedestrian plaza at Albee Square, and the Brooklyn Tower wraps around a structure at 33 DeKalb Avenue to the southeast. The site covers, with a frontage of on Flatbush Avenue and a depth of from Flatbush Avenue to Fleet Street.The building is adjacent to other tall mixed-use developments, such as the three towers of City Point immediately to the west and One Willoughby Square one block west. The campus of LIU Brooklyn, including the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, is across Flatbush Avenue Extension to the east. The building stands across from an entrance to the DeKalb Avenue station of the New York City Subway's. The Brooklyn Tower is within several blocks of the former tallest buildings in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Point and 11 Hoyt. Both were surpassed by the Brooklyn Tower in July 2021 when the latter's height reached. The Brooklyn Tower exceeds the height of Brooklyn Point, the second-tallest building in Brooklyn as of 2022, by around 350 feet.
Architecture
The Brooklyn Tower was developed by Michael Stern's JDS Development Group. The building has two components. The base includes the Dime Savings Bank Building, designed by Mowbray and Uffinger. The bank, built in 1906–1908 and expanded in 1931–1932, was designed in the Classical Revival style. Adjacent to the bank is the, 74-story tower section, designed by SHoP Architects. The structure is the tallest building in Brooklyn, the tallest physically on Long Island, and the tallest in New York City outside Manhattan. WSP Global was the structural engineer for the tower, while Jaros, Baum & Bolles provided MEP engineering. The developer's in-house construction company, JDS Construction, was the lead contractor.Form
The original bank building is shaped like a hexagon, with chamfered corners at the north, southwest, and southeast. When built, the bank's footprint measured on Fleet Street, on Albee Square, and on DeKalb Avenue. This was subsequently expanded to on Fleet Street, on the portico facing Albee Square, and on DeKalb Avenue. The Dime Savings Bank will be converted to a retail unit for the skyscraper.The residential entrance faces Fleet Street, while the retail entrance is on Flatbush Avenue Extension. Glass entrances to the tower units are placed directly on both sides, leading to an atrium. The tower is designed in a hexagonal shape, evoking the motif used in the bank's ground-floor rotunda. At each of its six sides, the Brooklyn Tower has slight setbacks, which terminate in a crown.
Facade
Dime Savings Bank
The Dime Savings Bank's facade contains a water table made of pink granite, above which is a white-marble facade. This design was intended to give an impression of stability. The Dime Savings Bank was the first bank building in the United States to be clad in Pentelic marble. Some 2,000 tons of Pentelic marble were required for the bank's construction. The bank building is surmounted by a deep parapet, above which is the attic on the fifth story. The only sections of the bank without a marble facade are the rear wall, as well as an attic on the eastern end of DeKalb Avenue. Both are made of buff-colored brick that is laid in common bond. The roof contains a smooth marble dome, which sits on a base of modillions and a hexagonal tholobate with acroteria.At the southwest corner of the building, a tetrastyle entrance portico faces the pedestrian plaza at Albee Square. Four Ionic columns support a frieze with the words "The Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn" and a triangular pediment. Behind the columns, a stoop leads from the plaza to a multi-story opening, framed by a marble surround with acanthus leaf, bezant, and bead molding motifs. The bottom of the opening contains two single doors, which are divided by a trumeau with several panels. Directly above the doors are transom grilles, with panels depicting the god Mercury and various industry-related figures. Above this is an entablature, acroteria, and a large transom window. The opening is topped by a lintel with denticulation, flanked by scrolled brackets on either side. The portico's underside, or soffit, contains hexagonal panels. The pediment contains the carved sculptural group "Morning and Evening of Life", with personifications of a youthful "Morning" and an elderly "Evening". This pediment was designed by sculptor Lee Lawrie as part of the 1931–1932 renovation.
The Fleet Street and DeKalb Avenue facades are nearly identical, with colonnades of Ionic-style fluted columns, which divide each facade into bays. Within each bay is a tall opening with glazed window panes. Above the lowest row of windows are bronze spandrel panels, decorated with motifs of heads and flowers. The tops of each opening contain carved garlands of fruit. Above the colonnades, the attic level contains window openings, which are separated by pilasters and topped by a frieze with a Greek key pattern.
The colonnades on both facades are flanked by end bays, each of which contains a metal-framed window between a pair of marble pilasters. Rams' heads and garlands of fruit are carved at the top of each end bay, and the capital of each pilaster contains a Greek key pattern. At the eastern end of the DeKalb Avenue facade, there is an archway flanked by one-quarter columns. At the bottom of the archway are aluminum-framed doors, above which is a transom with bronze panels. The doors and bronze panels are surrounded by a marble archway, above which is a sign with the building's name and a dime with a Mercury cap. The top of the archway contains a keystone with a Mercury head. An end bay exists to the east of the archway.
Tower
The tower's exterior is clad in stone, bronze, and stainless steel, with hexagonal shafts interspersed throughout the facade. The design of the Dime Savings Bank Building inspired that of the tower; in particular, the hexagonal shape of the banking hall inspired the hexagonal massing of the tower. Gregg Pasquarelli, one of the principal architects at SHoP, has referred to the design as both "badass" and "quite elegant". According to Pasquarelli, the tower was intended to be "deferential to the landmark, but not derivative".The base of the residential tower is clad in stone to complement the bank, and the facade gradually becomes darker as it rises. The spacing of the tower's vertical mullions is similar to the distance between each of the bank's columns. The mullions are extruded from the glass curtain wall and contain sharp edges at certain locations, giving the impression of a staggered facade. The exterior is designed in such a way that, when the tower is viewed from a certain angle, two adjacent sides will appear as though they are a single plane. This was a reference to older Art Deco skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center. Pasquarelli further emphasized the tower's Art Deco origins by describing the residential tower as the "Empire State Building of Brooklyn".
Interior
The Brooklyn Tower includes up to of commercial space. The retail space includes one unit on the lower level and the first to fourth floors of the bank, covering around, as well as a second unit covering about. In addition, there is a commercial office space on the third floor of the tower section and a commercial gym on the fourth floor of both the tower and the bank. The interiors of the Brooklyn Tower's residential units were designed by Gachot Studios. Interior designer Krista Ninivaggi was responsible for designing the amenity interiors, and HMWhite was the landscape architect.Banking hall
The interior was originally clad in green marble. Initially, the banking room was much smaller, with a counter screen enclosing a triangle at the center of the room. The bank's original design included a gray Vermont marble floor and a cream-colored plaster wall. The original design had a stained-glass dome in the roof of the main banking room, measuring across. At the rear of the room was a vault door weighing 15 tons; a section of the floor had to be dropped every time the vault door opened. There was also a board of directors' room at the rear of the banking room. The subbasement had a shooting range for the bank's security guards, which is no longer in use.The modern banking room is approximately a triangle that measures on each side. The banking room covers, with a ceiling measuring tall. Seven kinds of marble are used in the banking room. The marble floor contains star and hexagonal motifs. When the bank was in operation, there were pink- and black-marble tellers' counters along the sides of the room. The lower section of the walls is made of plain sandstone, and it contains openings with scrolled keystones above them. The sandstone wall is topped by a frieze with medallions that depict silver dimes with winged caps. Above the frieze are fluted pilasters that flank the tall windows from outside. The coffered ceiling has similar star and hexagon motifs to the floor. Surrounding the ceiling is a band, containing stars inside circles and flowers inside rectangles. In addition, six bronze chandeliers are suspended from the ceiling.
At the center of the banking room is a rotunda, which was added in the 1931–1932 expansion. The rotunda contains twelve red marble columns. The capitals of each column are gilded and are designed in the Corinthian order, with medallions of dimes. The columns hold up a decorated, multicolored entablature, which surrounds a sky-blue circular dome at the center. There are also pink marble benches at the columns' bases. Underneath the dome is a three-faced bronze clock, which stands on a black-marble pedestal and is encircled by a marble bench.
The banking room's southwest corner contains a pair of tall marble columns on either side of the main entrance. The southeast corner includes a pair of marble columns, between which a marble staircase leads down to a triangular lobby and a vestibule on DeKalb Avenue. The DeKalb Avenue lobby has walls with marble wainscoting and scalloped pilasters, above which runs a cornice with a Greek-key pattern. Ornamental screens are placed across doorways that lead from the lobby to the basement. The entrance vestibule has marble walls with bronze grilles. Both spaces contain coffered ceilings. Above the lobby and vestibule is the Ladies' Lounge, which overlooks the banking room. The lounge's floor is similar in design to the hexagonal floor of the banking room. The walls contain marble wainscoting and wallpaper, topped by a multicolored cornice.