Before It's Gone: Lee Brothers' Auto

Every once in awhile, I get off at the Carroll Gardens stop at Smith and 3rd St. and this building catches my eye, especially when the afternoon sun is cutting across it, casting these dramatic shadows. Every time I made a mental note to draw it someday. A few weeks ago, I happened across this post saying that the property would be demolished and replaced with a residential development, so it instantly became one of my "Before It's Gone" projects.

The building is kind of an eyesore, but sometimes eyesores are more interesting to me, visually. In addition to the shadows created by the auto shop's deep overhang, I'm also intrigued by the decaying Mediterranean-style roof and façade on the left. I love these bits of leftover archictecture. I think of it as a type of architectural palimpsest, "something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form," a phrase derived from old manusctipts in "which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain."

In this case, that part of the building is the century-old remnants of the Court Theatre, a movie house which operated from 1922 to 1941. I think that Spanish-esque tiled roof is part of the Hispanophile trend in architecture of the late 1920s, where buildings were given faux-European characteristics to lend them a sense of elegance and sophistication. I wrote about this before in my post on the Seville Studios.

As the photo below shows, the original theater, which had 560 seats, was more than double the current length. At some point, it was cut in half, perhaps for the construction of 3rd Street, which now runs where that billboard was. Why the whole building wasn't demolished, I have no idea. Surely it would have been easier than demolishing half of it, and gutting the other half to turn a theater into a garage? And yet no one bothered to removed that little piece of decorative roof. Here's another old photo of the theater.

1932 photo by Percy Loomis Sperr. NY Public Library

In 1942, it was turned into a gas station called Pep Service Station, and in 1992 it was purchased by the Lee Brothers, who operated it until recently. Apparently, there has been talk of the brothers closing their shop for years, but now it's definitely happening. It will be replaced by a four story residential building.


Sources:
https://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2018/01/after-years-of-planning-its-official.html

https://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2014/11/it-was-bound-to-happen-lee-brothers.html

https://www.brownstoner.com/architecture/brooklyn-architecture-375-smith-street-court-theater-carroll-gardens/

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/22021