EMPIRE SWITCHBOARD, GREENWOOD HEIGHTS

PLAIN, unadorned brick buildings, as Bernie Taupin/Elton John would put it, say so much. They are gradually disappearing around town, with those that haven’t been adapted for residential use are being town down in favor of taller, more modern residential buildings. In some cases, the interior wiring isn’t supportive of modern electrical systems and instead of reworking the wiring developers often elect to build new.

Here’s one of those plain brick buildings at 4th Avenue and 28th Street in Brooklyn. This is in a neighborhood of short 3-block streets located between 2nd and 5th Avenues in between Park Slope and Sunset Park. Realtors, in some cases, call it Greenwood Heights because of its proximity to Green-Wood Cemetery.

The handy 1929 Belcher Hyde desk atlas on Historic Map Works (they don’t like screenshots on some pages because you’re supposed to buy the plate to see them without the hassle) is often helpful when filling in the blanks. When built the brick building was the home of Empire Switchboard, which I imagine was where telephone switchboards were manufactured. The invention of thw switchboard allowed telephone operators to provide direct one on one connections from phone to phone instead of the previous shared system of party lines.Despite the rise of the wireless phone, there are still some switchboard operator jobs.

If you’re curious, the Paradise Theatre across the street is now a parking lot for a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

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10/15/24