500 Decatur Street Block Association

LIBRARIES in COMMUNITY

Jun 25, 2004

Macon Branch
361 Lewis Avenue(at Macon Street)
(718) 573-5606

Two thousand people gathered to open the Macon Branch in 1907, the 11th Carnegie library in Brooklyn. The two-story Classical Revival red brick library retains its original fireplaces, oak paneling, alcoves, and wooden benches. To author John Steptoe (1950-1989), who wrote his first book, Stevie, at 16, said he wrote because of the "... great and disastrous need for books that black children could honestly relate to"-- Macon was home.


Bedford Branch
496 Franklin Avenue(at Hancock Street)
718) 623-0012

The first library in the Brooklyn Public Library system. It opened in 1897 in the former P.S. 3, a schoolhouse in a cornfield. After two other locations, it moved to its present 1905 Carnegie building.