Bedford Historic District

Encompassing about 800 buildings in all, the proposed Bedford Historic District contains some of the finest and best-preserved blocks of row houses in the City. Since the end of World War II, the district was and remains one of the largest African-American and Caribbean-American neighborhoods. The late 19th century small apartment houses and row-houses, in the Italianate, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival and Renaissance Revival styles typical of the period, are largely intact.

Many of the rowhouses were designed by notable Brooklyn architects, including Isaac D. Reynolds, who built several blocks of houses, including Nos. 66 to 72 Halsey Street (1881) in the Italianate/neo-Grec style, and Nos. 254 to 260 Hancock Street (1889-1892), in a delightful pastiche of Italianate, Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles. Other outstanding houses include “Doctor's Row,” Nos. 159 to 165 Hancock Street (c. 1880s), with intricate and detailed terracotta ornament, constructed by John G. Prague, an Alderman elected on the Tammany ticket in 1892, and according to The New York Times, one of the best known builders on the upper west side of Manhattan, who “devoted his attention to high-class private houses and apartments.”

Four designated individual landmarks round out the district. Girls High School at 475 Nostrand Avenue (1886), and Boys High School (1891), 832 Marcy Avenue, are both picturesque, richly decorated buildings by James Naughton, who was then the Superintendent of Buildings for the Brooklyn Board of Education. Brooklyn architect Montrose Morris was responsible for the two other individual landmarks in the district, both exceptional apartment buildings designed for the middle-class: the Roman brick Alhambra Apartments (1889-90), a charming mixture of the Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles, and the Renaissance Apartments (1892), whose romantic silhouettes were inspired by the chateaux of sixteenth-century France.@2014