CONTEMPORARY NY
WBG002-2.jpg (77177 bytes) New York Architecture Images-  Williamsburg Brooklyn

Beth Jacob School/formerly Public School 71, Brooklyn/sometime United Talmudic Academy Landmark

architect

James W. Naughton. Jr

location

125 Heyward St., bet. Lee and Bedford Aves. N side.

date

1888-1889

style

Second Empire Baroque  

type

Education

 

From Napoleon III's Second Empire: a mansarded central block over brick and brownstone: an admiring follower of Lefuel and Visconti's Louvre.

images

 

 

notes

Designated: February 3, 1981

The Beth Jacob School-originally Public School 71K-was erected when Brooklyn was still a separate city with an independent education system. All the school buildings built in Brooklyn in the twenty years prior to incorporation with New York City were designed by James W. Naughton, superintendent of buildings for the Board of Education from 1879-98. The school was built in the French Second Empire style, adopted in America when the building market in New York began to recover from the economic effects of the Civil War. Pavilions, which, emphasize verticality on the facade, and mansard roofs, which elaborate the pavilions, were characteristic of the style.

The symmetrical, three-story brick structure with stone trim has a round-arched entrance at the base of an elaborately embellished central tower. Recessed three-window sections connect the tower to the end pavilions, which are topped by pediments with raking cornices. Stone bands at sill and impost level, brick and stone quoins, grooved piers, and stone and brick window lintels further decorate the building, which is crowned by a high mansard roof that retains its original iron crestings.

 

This building has an exact twin in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. (The Excellence Charter School)

contact

nyc-architecture.com

  with thanks to "The AIA Guide to New York",