People/Products

Brooklyn was the nation’s third-largest city, still a few years away from joining New York City, when the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse opened in 1892. Almost immediately, the government began expanding the building—which housed Brooklyn’s main post office and a federal district court—filling the entire block by 1933. But when the court left in the 1960s, the building entered a steady decline, hastened after the Postal Service transferred its sorting facilities to Long Island in the 1980s. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) eventually acquired the complex and, after considering its demolition or sale to developers—both plans opposed by community groups and the late Senator Daniel Moynihan—decided to restore it for a diverse group of federal tenants.