When it was completed in 1929, this 512ft neo-Romanesque cathedral to commerce was the tallest building in Brooklyn, its 17ft-wide tower clockface, then the largest in the world, visible for miles. Its height was surpassed in 2010 by The Brooklyner (111 Lawrence St) and its interior floors – at one time tenanted by around a hundred dentists, orthodontists and oral surgeons – have since been converted to luxury condo apartments. It's still the architectural heart of downtown Brooklyn, a Byzantine domed phallus or a gigantic middle finger depending on who you ask.
Its facades feature a hodge-podge of stone-carved symbols of industry and thrift, including beehives and squirrels. The ones to look out for on the Hanson Pl side are a pair of lions guarding a locked box, and two amusing panels of a burglar – in one, trying to break into a bank vault; in the other, sitting unhappily behind bars.
