110 Livingston Street

110 Livingston Street is an Italian Renaissance revival-style building located in Downtown Brooklyn, New York.

The building was designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, and was built in 1926 to serve as the headquarters for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, including amenities such as a pool, banquet hall, and bowling alleys. The building has a limestone and terra cotta facade, with Renaissance-revival style features including balustrades, egg-and-dart ornamentation, and Corinthian columns.

In 1940 the building was converted to serve as the New York City Board of Education headquarters. Over decades of use by the Board of Education, the building became known for the entrenched bureaucracy and dysfunction of its occupants, and the New York Times has stated that the building's name eventually came to symbolize the failings of the New York City school system, as "more than a location or a shorthand name for the institution it housed, the city's Board of Education. It symbolized a state of mind, a failed system that was at once imperious and impervious."

In 2003, the City of New York sold the building to Two Trees Management, a primary developer of the DUMBO, Brooklyn neighborhood, for development as luxury residential apartments, as part of development efforts taking place throughout Downtown Brooklyn. Several floors were added to the structure, and the courtyard was decorated with a Trompe-l'œil mural of architectural features by muralist Richard Haas. The interior lobby space, including a coffered ceiling, has been restored by the architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, and a historic theater space on the ground floor is intended to be used by a local arts organization.

Further Reading

• 110 Livingston Gets Respect (New York Sun)
• 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy in the New York City School System, by David Rogers

External links

• Developer's Website
• 110Livingston.net, Residents' news & forums
• Richard Haas, 110 Livingston Street mural