Federal Building and Post Office (Brooklyn)

The Federal Building and Post Office is a historic main post office, courthouse, and Federal office building in Brooklyn, New York. The original building was the Brooklyn General Post Office, and is now the Downtown Brooklyn Station, and the north addition is the courthouse for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York, and is across the street from and in the jurisdiction of the main courthouse for the district, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. It also houses offices for the United States Attorney, In 2009, the United States Congress enacted legislation renaming the building the Conrad B. Duberstein United States Bankruptcy Courthouse, in honor of chief bankruptcy judge Conrad B. Duberstein.HistoryPlanning and design for the new post office began in 1885. During his three year tenure (1884–86), Mifflin E. Bell, supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, designed the building in the Romanesque Revival style of architecture. The building originally functioned as both a post office and courthouse with four courtrooms.Much of the original appropriation for the building was allotted for the purchase of the lot, which is bounded by Cadman Plaza East (then Washington Street), Johnson, Adams, and Tillary streets. After Bell's resignation, his design was revised by his successor, William A. Freret, whose final design was a much bolder Romanesque building than Bell had envisioned. Still, some of the more elaborate architectural details of Bell's original design, such as larger corner towers, were never executed in the final design.