Flickr photo by lumierefl
The NY Tiimes looks at Brooklyn’s turn of the century social clubs, including Brooklyn Heights’ Crescent Athletic Club, in today’s edition:
NY Times: The final work in this quartet stands at Clinton and Pierrepont Streets, in Brooklyn Heights, built in 1906 as the Crescent Athletic Club.
With 12 stories, the Crescent was larger than most clubs in Manhattan, with a swimming pool, a rifle range and a 3,000-square-foot wine cellar. In 1918 the club opened up the range to nonmembers to improve military preparedness. “American youth takes naturally to shooting,” said Montaigu Sterling, the member in charge.
But Brooklyn’s clubdom was peaking just as the Crescent opened its magnificent high-rise palazzo. The Carlton Club left its building in 1907, and the Union League lost its house a few years later. The Lincoln Club dissolved in 1931, and in 1939 foreclosure overtook the Crescent. It had been a brief, shining moment.
The Crescent is now St. Ann’s School; the Carlton has been converted to apartments; and the Union League houses a senior center and offices. In each case, very little of the interior appears to survive.
