The Brooklyn Tower

For its entire history, the tallest thing in Brooklyn was an idea Manhattan never took seriously. The Brooklyn Tower changed that. At 1,066 feet and 93 stories, the SHoP-designed residence at 9 DeKalb Avenue is the borough’s first supertall and the tallest building anywhere in New York City outside Manhattan.

Project Scope

The tower rises from a base most developers would have demolished. JDS Development built it around the landmarked Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn, weaving the 1908 Beaux-Arts hall into the podium rather than around it. SHoP wrapped the shaft in interlocking hexagons and cascading setbacks, clad in shimmering bronze and black that read very differently from Manhattan’s glass supertalls.

Inside are 550 residences: 150 condominiums, 280 market-rate rentals, and 120 affordable units, over roughly 100,000 square feet of retail in the podium and the old bank. Slotting a 93-story tower onto a tight Downtown Brooklyn corner, over a protected landmark, with no margin for error on the foundation, made this one of the more technically demanding residential builds the borough has seen. The tower topped out in late 2021 and finished in 2023.

Why It Matters

The Brooklyn Tower proved a supertall could pencil out beyond Billionaires’ Row. For decades, towers above 1,000 feet were a Manhattan story tied to Manhattan land values. Doing it in Brooklyn, and mixing condos with market-rate and affordable rentals in a single shaft, opened a different model for where extreme height can go, even as residential construction nationally has cooled.

Its preservation move matters too. Rather than treat the Dime Savings Bank as an obstacle, the design made the landmark the building’s front door, a template for how new towers can absorb protected structures instead of fighting them. Love the bronze monolith or not, it rewired what the Brooklyn skyline is allowed to be.

Project Team & Details