Opening the Pocket Doors: A Stained Glass Mystery

If you've visited the Othmer Library, you might have noticed the large stained glass lunettes (arched windows) on the gallery level. These are original to the space, but did you know there used to be more stained glass features throughout the building? Similar lunettes, faintly visible in the photo below, once adorned the Great Hall. More obscure is the stained glass screen at the rear of the stage, which, along with the lunettes, was removed around 1917.

As you wander the halls of our landmarked building, you may also come across the stained glass skylight over the stairwell. In 1937, when the Long Island Historical Society installed an elevator, the skylight was, in the words of former Executive Director David Kahn, "mutilated.” The version you see now was restored after the elevator was moved in 1999-2002.

Beyond some of these puzzling design choices, an even greater mystery lies in the identity of the artist who crafted these stained glass pieces. To date, the building records have yet to reveal the artist's name, but there is a probable candidate.

In 1987, during a visit to the exhibition 'In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement,' David Khan noticed similarities between some of the stained glass displayed in the exhibit and the windows in the Society's library. Both featured  “abstract formal patterns of symmetrical flowers and leaves, two-dimensional composition with individual elements separated by leading, and a light palette in shades of aquamarine, amethyst, pink, and pale yellow.”

The familiar stained glass Kahn observed was attributed to the studio of Charles Booth. Charles Booth (1844-1893) was a stained-glass artist from Liverpool who, in 1875, established a studio in New York City. He was inspired by nature, medieval art, and Japanese art – all of which he frequently incorporated into his work. Booth was part of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized the intrinsic beauty of art over its practical or moral implications. One of the movement's major achievements, highlighted in the 'In Pursuit of Beauty' catalog, was that it released “stained glass from its traditional religious milieu and [brought] it into the lavish private residences and august public buildings being built in the 1870s and 1880s.”

Could 'august public buildings' include the Center for Brooklyn History? Maybe! To my knowledge, the Brooklyn Historical Society never confirmed whether Booth created the stained glass windows; however, they tentatively credited them to his studio. The windows in the library do look similar (at least to my untrained eye) to other works attributed to Booth, such as the Jefferson Market Courthouse — now the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library. Work on the Society’s building records is still underway, so there’s a chance this mystery may one day be solved. In the meantime, we can appreciate the beauty of our stained glass windows, even without knowing the artist's true identity.

Sources

• Bolger, Doreen, et al. In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15324coll10/id/80230, p. 185.
• [Letter from David Kahn to Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen], January 12, 1987. Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Records, ARC 288. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
• "Stained Glass Mystery May Finally Be Solved." Brooklyn Historical Society Newsletter, March/April 1987. Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Records, ARC 288. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.

 

The Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Archive Project is generously funded by the Leon Levy Foundation.

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