This week, we continue our series of deep dives into the histories of storied addresses.
Metropolitan Pool and Recreation Center on the corner of Metropolitan and Bedford Avenues (Nicki Fleischner).
It was a morning for nostalgia when Charles Hart won the bid to demolish Grand Army Hall on February 7, 1898. The building was a Brooklyn icon in sorry disrepair. Its roof leaked, its wooden floors had rotted, and the entire northern wall leaned over Metropolitan Avenue, threatening to collapse onto pedestrians below. Just 35 years ago the building had been constructed as an Armory during the Civil War, and now its very existence was a “menace to life and limb.”