Posted by baad lamb
The silver and gold mosaic zodiac ceiling and center chandelier (detail)
Now that the Brooklyn Flea is held inside the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, photographers and armchair architects are as plentiful as bargain hunters on Saturdays and Sundays at One Hanson Place. This building went up in 1927, and according to Robert A.M. Stern in "New York 1930" (the middle volume of his comprehensive-must-have five book series on architecture and urbanism), the bank expected this Atlantic/Flatbush Ave. intersection to become the heart of Brooklyn's commercial district, but things didn't turn out quite as they had hoped (just ask Bruce Ratner, today). But this did have an upside. Just as with the Empire State Building, which made the same real estate gamble in Manhattan and lost, the lack of tall building development surrounding this building allowed it to become Brooklyn's most visible skyscraper, and its most iconic.
Lots more pics after the jump...
