A look north up Bond Street from Livingston in downtown Brooklyn reveals the dignified domed Dime Savings Bank and its new neighbor, the 74-story, 1,066-foot residential Brooklyn Tower. The Dime is an Ionic-columned neo-Classical money palace built between 1906 and 1908 by architects Mowbray and Uffinger. The interior is one of Brooklyn’s most magnificent indoor spaces: the central dome is defined indoors by a ring of twelve marble Corinthian columns crowned, at the top, by gilded representations of the obverse and reverse of the “Mercury” Dime. Since “Mercury” dimes were issued between 1916 and 1945 these must have been added sometime after the bank was opened in 1908.
“Mercury” dimes don’t depict the Roman messenger god; the representation of Miss Liberty wearing a winged cap merely resembles him, hence the nickname. The reverse is a design of a Roman symbol of authority, a bundle of birch rods tied together with an ax, known as the fasces. Unfortunately Italy’s Benito Mussolini‘s authoritarian national party, the Fascists, co-opted the symbol as early as 1919.
The Dime is no longer a bank; it’s owned by the developers (JDS Development Group) of the large object rising behind it, the Dystopian Brooklyn Tower, which immediately dwarfed City Point, the tower on the other side of Albee Square, which has a food mall in the basement centered around a Brooklyn branch of Katz’s deli. If you’re curious, here’s more on the Brooklyn Tower.
The buildings are where two of Brooklyn’s longest streets meet. Fulton Street (including sections of Cadman Plaza west and Old Fulton Street) winds from the waterfront in DUMBO southeast and east to Eldert Lane at the undefended Brooklyn-Queens border, while DeKalb Avenue doesn’t stop till it gets to Ridgewood several miles east. I have walked Fulton Street in its entirety in sections.
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5/8/24
1 comment
The Brooklyn Tower looks like it belongs in the Lord of The Rings Move, the 2 Towers. All it need is Sauron’s all-seeing eye at the top. I read that the builder defaulted on the loan and the building is going into receivership. Sauron would be very disappointed to see his tower treated in this fashion.