The Brooklyn Post Office Annex

I recently came across this photograph, showing the Atlas Iron men putting up an annex for the Brooklyn Post Office.

The Brooklyn Federal Building - which stands today between Johnson St., Cadman Plaza East, Tillary St. and Adams St./Brooklyn Bridge Blvd. - is made up of two structures.  The original, four-story building on the southern end of the block was designed to house Brooklyn's main post office and four courtrooms.  Planning began in 1885, construction started in 1888, the exterior was finished in 1891 and the interior followed in 1892.

By early 1890, it was becoming apparent that the building would not be adequate.  Legislation was introduced in Washington, D.C. by Congressman William C. Wallace in April, to allow a single-story annex to be built on the north side of the building.  The annex would increase the working space of the post office by 5000 square feet.  It would have a "roadway under [the] floor" on the Adams St. side, to serve as a loading dock for mail wagons.  Its basement would house the steam heating and electric lighting machinery for the entire Federal Building - which could not be opened until these were in place.  The bill was passed at the end of September.

Bids were finally taken for the construction of the annex in February 1891.  The winning bid ($64,650) went to Bernard Gallagher, who had been the first contractor on the main building.  It was meant to be completed by the start of May, but there were further delays.  The government claimed that there were property boundary disputes to work out with neighbors, and newspapers claimed that the troubles were really financial: the Billion Dollar Congress having drained the Treasury.

The annex and Federal Building were finally completed and the post office was informally opened on 27 March 1892, under postmaster George J. Collins. 

I have not been able to find a photo of the completed annex, but I did find an insurance map from 1904 which shows the footprint of the buildings on that block in detail.  (In this map excerpt, north is to the right.)

By summer, a new problem presented itself.  The annex had an all-glass roof, and with the sun shining down on the mailing division floor plus boilers working below them to power the main building's elevators, it became a sweatbox.  Shades were finally added to the windows at the end of the summer.  The following May, there was still talk of needing to protect "the eyes of the clerks employed in the annex" from the glaring sun.

The further history of the annex is rather unclear.  The post office and other departments in the building faced increasing demands.  More of the property north of the building may have been purchased in 1899.  I have seen mentions of a new addition built in 1908, but haven't found any specifics on that.

The government purchased the remainder of the block, up to Tillary Street, around 1915.  This held a pair of buildings which had operated together as the Columbia Theater, then briefly as a burlesque house called the Alcazar, and then returned to the name Columbia to present silent films.  The second building served as the theater lobby and also housed a bowling alley and perhaps a bank after that.  The Federal Building's supervising architect James Wetmore was later quoted in the Eagle saying, "we utilized first one building and then the other to provide space for the postoffice, and finally connected them with the main building by a temporary structure."

I haven't been able to determine whether the 1891 Annex, built by Gallagher and Atlas Iron, was replaced by any of this work or simply incorporated into it.  In any case, the entire set of buildings (still referred to as "the annex") was torn down in 1929.  This cleared the way for a seven-story addition, designed by Wetmore and built between 1930 and 1933, which takes up the northern part of the block and stands conjoined with the original Federal Building today.


Sources:
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, especially: 11 Apr 1890, 30 Sept 1890, 14 Oct 1890, 12 Feb 1891, 19 June 1891, 26 June 1891, 13 Sept 1891, 17 July 1892, 17 Aug 1892, 4 May 1894, 7 June 1908, 12 Jan 1913, 23 Oct 1928, 15 Oct 1929.
New York Times: 11 Feb 1891, 28 Mar 1892.
Catalog of the Second Annual Exhibition of the Department of Architecture of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (1893).
Insurance Maps, Borough of Brooklyn, City of New York, Vol. 2 (Sanborn Map Co., 1904).  From The New York Public Library.