#ThrowbackThursday: Burning of the Brooklyn Tabernacle and Hotel Regent in 1894

The Brooklyn Tabernacle the Hotel Regent next door on Greene Avenue at Clinton Avenue burned to the ground in 1894. (Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum)

This week’s #ThrowbackThursday’s photograph features the 1894 burning of the Brooklyn Tabernacle and the Hotel Regent next door, which were located on Greene Avenue at Clinton Avenue. The Rev. Dr. Thomas De Witt Talmage, whose popular sermons drew hundreds of New Yorkers, built his first two churches on Schemerhorn Street in the 1870s. The first church was destroyed in an fire in 1872 and after the second church also burned down in 1889, the congregation moved to another location in Fort Greene. After the third fire in 1894, the unlucky Presbyterian pastor moved to Washington D.C.

Do you have old photographs of the neighborhood you’d like to share? Send them to us at TheNabe@TheNabe.me or tweet us at @TheNabeCUNY.