ue Extension. But
Borough Hall Park is the old-time and long settled center. The large
office and financial buildings are there. It is convenient of access
from every part of the borough. Every new rapid transit line will be
directly connected with it. It is opposite the district of
corresponding use in Manhattan. It is separate from the congested
shopping district and will undoubtedly remain so. Some advocate
Flatbush Avenue Extension as the best place for new buildings. The
future value of the Extension even for public buildings cannot be
denied. Canal Street, Manhattan Bridge, the Extension and Flatbush
Avenue furnish a continuous broad thoroughfare from the North River to
Jamaica Bay. When Greater New York becomes a city of 10,000,000
people, it may become the axis for magnificent public buildings both
in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But Canal Street today is a locality of
small business and it is premature to try to force its Brooklyn
continuation into prominence as a civic center. Although Manhattan's
new court house will be built on Center Street, yet the front door of
Manhattan's civic center will be the City Hall Park for the next
thirty or forty years, and Canal Street at its best will be only the
back door. When the big business of Manhattan reaches Canal Street it
will be time enough to use city money for great public buildings on
the Extension. If Brooklyn were an independent and self-contained city
like Boston and Chicago it might experiment without fear in building
up a new civic center, but Brooklyn today must look well to hold her
own against the constant draft that Manhattan makes on her financial
and office center.

Brooklyn Bridge is today and for a long time will be the main entrance
to Brooklyn. The district between the bridge and Borough Hall has
become depressed and unsightly, mainly because the retail shopping
business left it, and Brooklyn, unlike independent cities, had no
wholesale mercantile business to take its place. No city can hope to
improve and brighten itself and still neglect its front door. The
Clark Street subway will have a station near lower Fulton Street. The
federal government has appropriated money to enlarge the Post Office.
The bridge terminal has ceased to be a terminal and has become a way
station, so that now the structures that deface the entrance to
Brooklyn can be taken down, as Bridge Commissioner O'Keeffe proposes,
and a solid, simple, low-lying structure substituted for