Brooklyn Apartments

By The Auckland Psychogeographer

The Brooklyn Flats are a notable part of Arthur Sinclair O’Connor’s great sequence of art deco apartments in central Auckland, an intriguing progression from his more well-known buildings Courtville and Espano. Riding the crest of a new wave of urban refinement, O’Connor’s work from the 20’s and 30’s catered to a newly affluent scene of professionals, academics, entrepreneurs and – frequently – independent women. O’Connor worked extensively on commercial and public buildings, including cinemas, dance-halls and is even thought to have collaborated on probably Auckland’s first steel-reinforced concrete building, the Tepid Baths. This commercial background exposed him to the high-end European techniques and fashionable American designs of the day, which he extensively utilised in his major apartments.

Brooklyn is – naturally – a nod of the hat to New York, with a jazz-age eccentricity on display throughout in the two-tone tiling, brickwork, ornate plaster decoration and generous frontage. It’s mock-classical in ways that is authentically American for the time – muscular and carefree, imaginative, thrustingly ambitious and even perhaps a little loud. Inside, as in O’Connor’s other greats of the between-war years, there’s delicate carpentry, ingenious provision of services (quite the selling point for the day), tiling and plasterwork. The high-ceilinged apartments are roomy and sunny in a way contemporary builds can only envy – and was even then the aspirational epitome of a graceful Auckland that was never to quite arrive.