Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building
New York, Kings County, New York
Marker Inscription
Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building 8 Old Fulton Street This handsome red brick building was built in 1860-61 as offices for the Brooklyn Railroad Company, one of New York's first large-scale transit operators. By 1897, the company served 22 million passengers annually, operating twelve lines radiating from the Fulton Ferry Terminal. Designed in the Italianate style, the building's distinctive façades incorporate granite quoins and cast iron piers. The building served as a factory before its conversion to residential use in 1975 by architect David C. Morton. It was later encompassed within the Fulton Ferry Historic District.
Erected by New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation
The Story
Built in 1860–61 beside the Fulton Ferry landing, this red-brick Italianate building housed the offices of one of New York's earliest large-scale transit companies. By the century's end its dozen streetcar lines fanned out from the ferry terminal, carrying tens of millions of riders a year through a booming Brooklyn. After a later life as a factory, the building was converted to residences in the 1970s and folded into the Fulton Ferry Historic District.
Why it matters
It captures the era when ferries and street railways knit Brooklyn to Manhattan, fueling the growth that would make them a single great city.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years around 1860, Brooklyn was one of the fastest-growing cities in America, and it was still its own city then, entirely separate from New York across the river. What tied the two together was the water. The Fulton Ferry landing was the great hinge of daily life, the point where thousands of workers, shoppers, and merchants crossed between the Brooklyn shore and lower Manhattan every single day.
This was the height of the age of the horsecar and the street railway. Before subways and elevated trains, a city moved on rails laid into the street and cars pulled by horses. The company that put up this handsome red-brick building rose to organize exactly that traffic, gathering the growing tangle of local lines into one large operation at the moment the modern commuter city was being invented.
The building itself speaks of that confident, prosperous era. Its Italianate design, with granite quoins framing the corners and cast-iron piers along the ground floor, was the architecture of ambitious commerce in the mid-nineteenth century, a style meant to look solid, respectable, and permanent.
People & events
The story here is really the story of a company and the city it helped move. The Brooklyn City Railroad Company built these offices in 1860 and 1861 as the nerve center of one of New York's earliest large-scale transit operators. From this spot near the ferry, the company managed a network that reached deep into the growing neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
By the end of the century the scale had become enormous. A dozen separate lines fanned out from the Fulton Ferry terminal like spokes from a hub, and the company was carrying tens of millions of riders a year. That is the quiet drama of a building like this: not a single famous event, but the daily, repeated act of getting an entire city to work and home again.
The building outlived the business it was built for. It later served as a factory, a common second life for sturdy nineteenth-century commercial structures, before an architect converted it to homes in the 1970s. In time it was folded into the surrounding historic district that now protects the character of the old ferry neighborhood.
Its place in the American story
The knitting-together of Brooklyn and Manhattan is one of the great American urban stories, and this building sat right at the seam. Ferries and street railways did the unglamorous work of stitching two cities into one economic body, moving the people whose daily crossings made consolidation feel inevitable. In 1898 Brooklyn and New York would formally merge into a single Greater New York, and the constant traffic organized from places like this is a large part of why.
The rise of large transit companies also marked a shift in how Americans lived. When you could reliably ride a streetcar from a residential neighborhood to a downtown job, you could live farther from where you worked. That simple possibility reshaped American cities, spreading them outward and creating the daily rhythm of the commute that most of the country now takes for granted.
And the building's arc, from transit office to factory to protected historic residence, mirrors what happened across older American cities. The eventual arrival of bridges and subways would make the old ferry-and-horsecar world obsolete, but the buildings it left behind became treasured reminders of how the modern city first learned to move.
If you visit
Stand back and take in the façade first. Look for the granite quoins stacked at the corners and the cast-iron piers along the street level, the details the inscription singles out. These are the fingerprints of the Italianate style, and once you learn to spot them you will see the same vocabulary on prosperous commercial buildings all over the older parts of the city.
Then let yourself feel the location. You are steps from the old Fulton Ferry landing, at the very edge of Brooklyn where the land drops toward the water and Manhattan rises across the river. Picture the crowds that once poured off the boats and onto waiting streetcars right where you are standing.
This is a perfect first stop on a walking trip through the historic ferry district. It pairs naturally with a stroll along the waterfront and a look up at the great bridge nearby, whose arrival would eventually change everything for the ferry world this building was built to serve. Give yourself time to wander the surrounding streets, where more nineteenth-century Brooklyn survives block after block.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- South Street Seaport Museum0.5 mi away · 12 Fulton Street
- Museum of American Finance0.8 mi away
- Fraunces Tavern Museum0.9 mi away · 54 Pearl Street, New York, NY
- Hall des Lumières0.9 mi away · 49 Chambers Street, New York, NY
- MĒRCER LABS1.0 mi away · 21 Dey Street
- National Museum of the American Indian1.0 mi away · 1 Bowling Green, New York, NY
Attractions
- Brooklyn Fleanearby
- Brooklyn Bridge0.2 mi away
- Kayak Brooklyn0.3 mi away
- Brooklyn Heights Promenade0.4 mi away
- PIER 170.4 mi away
- Ambrose0.4 mi away
Food & drink
- Maman2.2 mi away
- Bluestone Lane2.2 mi away
- Yaso2.2 mi away · 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ
- Sweetgreen2.2 mi away
- Krispy Pizza2.2 mi away · 33 Hudson Street, Jersey City, NJ
- Semicolon Cafe2.2 mi away
Places to stay
- Holiday Inn Express0.7 mi away · 126 Water Street, New York, NY
- Hotel Indigo0.7 mi away · 120 Water Street, New York, NY
- The Wall Street Hotel0.7 mi away · 88 Wall Street, New York, NY
- Hyatt Centric0.7 mi away · 75 Wall Street, New York, NY
- Radisson Hotel New York Wall Street0.8 mi away · 52 William Street, New York, NY
- Wall Street Inn0.8 mi away · 9 South William Street, New York, NY
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
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Themes & tags
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