The 83rd Precinct Police Station and Stable was built between 1894 and 1895 to house the police department for the Bushwick area in Brooklyn, New York. The building was designed by William Tubby in a Romanesque Revival style of architecture. This Precinct was originally called the 20th, but it was renamed the 83rd in 1929. The building remained with the 83rd until they found a new home on Knickerbocker Avenue in 1983. Today, the building is used by the Brooklyn North Task Force. In 1977, the 83rd Precinct was named a landmark, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
This bronze figure was made in 1919 to commemorate soldiers from the communities of Bushwhick or Ridgewood who fought in the first World War. The figure was sculpted by Italian-American artist Pietro Montana (1890–1978) and was the first of six so called "Doughboy" status of his to be displayed publicly, with the other being located in Suffern, New York, Riverdale, New Jersey, North Arlington, New Jersey, Wanaque, New Jersey, and Alliance, Ohio. The sculpture was unveiled in 1921 following parades and and placement of floral wreaths around its base, as per tradition floral wreaths remain at the base of the statue. Following the parade and ceremonial removal of the shroud by daughters of the soldiers, the statue was officially offered to Mayor John F. Hylan by Municipal Court Judge Harrison Glore, chairman of the monument committee. $7,000 dollars of the statues funding was provided by citizens of Bushwick and Ridgewood contributed $7,000 towards the commission, which adjusted for inflation is $102,425.70, with the rest of the funding coming from the city. The statue underwent cleaning and renovation after sustaining considerable wear and tear in 2001.
An extended power outage in 1977 caused widespread Blackouts throughout Brooklyn. The event facilitated looting, and to this day, memories of the Blackout and the widespread chaos and destruction shape part of the city’s collective memory. Around 9:34 PM on July 13th, 1977, after a series of unfortunate lightning strikes that hit transmission lines and substations, NYC power provider Con Edison shut down, and among Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, the entire city went Black. In Brooklyn, the Bedford-Stuyvesant area and Broadway were among the hardest hit. Thousands upon thousands of people poured into the streets, broke into shops, pillaged everything, and destroyed, often by fire, hundreds of shops. Throughout the 25-hour Blackout in some parts of the city, including Brooklyn, more than 1,600 stores were pillaged with property losses running as high as $300 million. A mile and a half of Brooklyn’s Broadway was set aflame. Following the Blackout, there were few stores around the Broadway area and throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant (and even in Downtown Brooklyn) where people could buy food, clothing, and other items, as shops had been stripped, destroyed, torched, or abandoned. In Brooklyn, as well as other parts of New York City, the 1977 Blackout was one of its most destructive periods, essentially reflecting the great malaise that had been striking the city that year.
The South Bushwick Reformed Church building, on the corner of Bushwick Ave. and Himrod St., is nicknamed the "White Church." The wood-frame, two-story structure with a towering steeple was finished in 1853. The Classical Revival designs were drawn up by men with the surname Morgan in 1852, but their identity remains a mystery. The Sunday school building on Himrod St. was finished in 1881 and then connected to the rear of the church a couple years later. The church became a New York City landmark in 1968. The church complex was listed in the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1982. The active congregation of "South Bushwick Church" has been meeting virtually since 2021 while the building slowly undergoes a multi-million-dollar renovation after a storm damaged the roof and steeple.
Freedom Triangle is located between the busy avenues of Bushwick and Mytrle in the heart of the bustling borough of Bushwick in NYC. The monument commemorates the Brooklyn soldiers who lost their lives while serving overseas in the First World War.
The Lipsius-Cook Mansion, also known as the Catherina Lipsius House and the Dr. Frederick A. Cook House, was originally built for the widowed Catherine Lipsius in 1889. During this time, the widowed Lipsius was running the Claus-Lipsius Brewery. She commissioned the construction of this house on an undeveloped plot of land between Bushwick and Willoughby Avenues. The mansion was designed by Theobald Engelhardt, a Brooklyn-born architect and well-known individual in Brooklyn’s German community that would go on to design a number of other important buildings in the city, such as the William Ulmer Brewery complex and the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company. The mansion was completed in 1890, and Catherina moved in with her four children. In 1902, the house was sold to Dr. Frederick A. Cook, an arctic explorer that would later claim to have reached the North Pole one year before Robert Peary. In 1920, ownership of the house passed to an Italian, Guiseppe Giambalvo. He occupied the building with his family until 1952, when the property was sold to the local branch of the Daughters of Wisdom – a Roman Catholic Christian organization that moved to New York from France in the early 20th century. The house changed ownership twice more; it was purchased by Dr. Clement Davis in 1960 and by the current owners in 2000.
Bordering the neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, Beattie Square is dedicated to Joseph S. Beattie, a local soldier who served in the United States Army during the First World War. Beattie Square is a very small park spanning less than a tenth of an acre. It is enclosed by a Black four-foot-high fence with Broadway on its northeastern side, Vernon Avenue to the south, and Stuyvesant Avenue to the west.
The Bushwick Schoolhouse, also known as the Old Red Schoolhouse, is the home of a group of independent artists that share the space as a solution for the high cost of living in New York. The building has been the home of numerous well-known photographers, filmmakers, critics, composers, dancers, designers, and artists during its twenty-year occupation, though it has a history as an educational institute for the first Dutch Colony that goes as far back as the 17th century.
This Tour is a Driving or Biking Tour.
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Start at the 1890s police station and stable for the 83rd Precinct and drive to some of the most historical spots in Bushwick. Among the sights you'll see are a brewer's mansion and a school from the 19th century; a WWI monument; and a reminder of social unrest in the 1970s.
