A Medieval Fortress, Not

From somewhere between 1901 to 1907, a picture of the Sands Street gate to enter the Brooklyn Navy Yard: The purpose of crenelations is to give archers places to hide and to shoot outward. The large ground-floor windows of the two gatehouses suggest that maybe, just maybe, the crenelated towers are for show only. There are towers like that all over New York on old arsenals of various types, and there used to be more. I guess once you’ve decided on an architectural symbol (such as crenelations mean the military, or a roman temple-front means a bank), you keep using it until everyone tires of it. The first time I saw the Sands Street gatehouses – which was when I first worked on a building in the Navy Yard – was in the 1990s. They were in rough shape, in part because no one cared and in part because they were used as the entrance to an NYPD car impound lot – this was where you went to get your car back after it had been towed for a parking violation. The towers were partially cut down…