Most construction in Fort Greene was completed by the end of the 1890s. Only five superb buildings from the first third of the 20th Century were added: the HSBC (Williamsburgh) Bank, Hanson Place Central Methodist Church, Queen of All Saints RC Church, the Masonic Temple and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar opened the Academy in 1908 in a performance of Charles Gounod’s Faust.
In the 1920s-40s Fort Greene was a brightly lit Hollywood showcase with numerous cinemas, including the Paramount from 1928 which had a great Wurlitzer organ, still in place. On the side of Paramount along DeKalb Avenue (now the Long Island University gymnasium) there remains a palimpsest of a sign advertising the Paramount Theatre. Marianne Moore, the poet, lived in Cumberland Street during this period, and she was a big fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. She once wrote that “Baseball is like writing, and writing is exciting.” Richard Wright’s celebrated novel, Native Son, was also written in Fort Greene when the author lived in Carlton Avenue.
By the mid-1950s Fort Greene was in serious decline, a product of the earlier Depression and the chopping up of grand homes into rooming house for Navy Yard workers during World War II. Many homes became derelict or abandoned, their windows and roofs totally gone; dirty mattresses and trash in the yards. A growing surge of newcomers began reclaiming these grand houses in the 1960s and a desire for Historic District designation took root. The movement was led by the late Mr. Herbert Scott Gibson, an African American who lived in the street called Washington Park. He organized the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee whose efforts led to success. In 1978 the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designated both the Fort Greene and BAM Historic Districts. In order to incorporate as a non-profit, the earlier committee obtained IRS approval in 1994 as the Fort Greene Association, Inc.
