Brooklyn Boro

Prospect Hall, near demolition, boasts rich Brooklyn Heritage

With exuberance, TV commercials, 21st century revival was attempted

August 21, 2021 Raanan Geberer
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When most New Yorkers heard the recent news that demolition papers have been filed (although not yet approved as of press time) by the new owners of the Grand Prospect Hall in Park Slope, their thoughts turned to the TV ads in which owner Michael Halkias, showing off the building’s opulent 19th century interior, proclaimed, “We make your dreams come true!”

However, the Grand Prospect Hall was much more than a wedding and banquet hall, and its legacy goes much further back than the era of Halkias and his wife Alice, who bought the then-deteriorating structure in 1981. 

Since it was built in the 1890s, the hall at 263 Prospect Ave. has hosted political club meetings, presidential campaign rallies, bar mitzvahs, baby showers, masquerade balls, theater productions, concerts, movie shoots, and even a basketball team.

From the 1980s until shortly before Michael Halkias’ untimely death from COVID in 2020, the hall’s TV commercials were aired so often on New York television that at one time, “Saturday Night Live” did a parody of them.

After Halkias’ demise, the building was sold, along with an assemblage of other buildings on Prospect Avenue between Fifth and Sixth avenues, to Angelo Rigas through the limited liability company Gowanus Cubes, according to The Real Deal. While the Victorian-style building was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, it was never made an official New York City landmark, which would have protected it.

The Grand Prospect Hall was built in 1892, then was destroyed and rebuilt by German-American owner John Kolle after a 1900 fire. It had bowling alleys, a billiard room, a shooting gallery and the first Otis “bird cage” elevator (a type of elevator that allowed passengers to look out as the elevator traveled) in the city. 

It also was the first fully electrified public space in Brooklyn, according to published reports. Its Oak Room, reflecting Kolle’s German heritage, was built in the style of a German beer hall and featured a mural showing a waitress carrying overflowing steins of beer.

Besides local meetings, it sometimes hosted appearances by national political figures. Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs and Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan both held rallies there in 1908, as did New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker in 1929.

Entertainment figures like Enrico Caruso also reputedly appeared at the hall, and starting in 1936, the Depression-era Federal Theater Project presented its plays there. As if that weren’t enough, a basketball team known as the Brooklyn Visitations played there during the 1920s and ’30s, For a while, starting in the 1940s, the hall became known as the Polish National Home.

In more recent years, it hosted many local affairs. This writer attended a poetry reading there in the 1990s. Community board meetings were held there, and in 2013, an organization known as Pathways for Young Leaders held a banquet for then-Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes there. From the 1980s on, it was featured as a set in scenes of such well-known movies as “Prizzi’s Honor,” “The Cotton Club” and “The Royal Tannenbaums.”

In 2020, Eagle writer Elizabeth Kuster wrote about an informal tour of the Grand Prospect Hall that Michael Halkias had given her two years before, when he caught her taking photos of the place before a luncheon. 

Among the features he pointed out were the German slogan on the Oak Room’s mural, loosely translated as “Our guests can’t live on water alone”; old-time political caricatures of figures such as Teddy Roosevelt; a taxidermied fox; and a portable wine bar that could be wheeled from place to place, perhaps used during Prohibition.

After Halkias died in May 2020, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Randy Peers told the Eagle, “Michael Halkias was a friend. He was a guy who spoke what was on his mind, sometimes not always what others wanted to hear, and at times a bit irreverent. But Michael, who was my friend, supported my work at Community Board 7 and Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow without question. He opened the doors to Grand Prospect Hall whenever I asked — for a public hearing, committee meeting, an event for my youth. He had refreshments waiting for me on arrival. Every time he saw me he would bug me about ‘When are you running for office?’ He was a true gentleman.”

Peers added, “His wife Alice was always the practical one, minding the business side of things. When I returned to Brooklyn last September, he called me right away. When I told him in January the Chamber was looking to move a signature event to Grand Prospect Hall, he was elated.”

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16 Comments

  1. parkslopedog

    Piece by piece, bit by bit, Brooklyn is being demolished and dismantled by people who only care about making money and building soulless apt units to move in more people with no love of tradition from outside of the city to occupy these boxes. The Grand Prospect Hall is on the Nat’l Registry of Historical Bldgs; doesn’t that mean something? I realize that it’s just a building, after all; but isn’t it more than brick and mortar and furnishings?

    While Brooklyn was obsessed with their health, the very fabric that made Park Slope an alternative to Manhattan was being unraveled. Instead of preserving a place where so many have celebrated joyful occasions, where memories were made, Park Slope is now filling up with hollow hate-filled people who only want to tear down our way of life, to eradicate any reminder of the past, and to transform Brooklyn and everything that made it a happy place where children can grow up in innocence into a place where neighbors are against neighbor, informing on each other with suspicion, and where Prospect Park has become a politically-correct dumping ground for garbage. Last Saturday, after many months, I went to my local farmers’ mkt, and it was a different world: people were unfriendly and withdrawn, unreceptive to conversation, walking around as if doomed. Well, maybe they’ve got something there.

    I will soon leave Brooklyn and Park Slope. I’m done with breaking my heart over the inevitable. I have my treasured memories of the neighborhood and of NYC. I will take them with me with sadness to another place where there are communities of kind and welcoming people, normal people with normal concerns, who embody the qualities of a bygone era and who cherish the traditions that made America great.

    (I’ve edited my post several times, removing what may be sensitive words, and still I’m subjected to approval by censors–why? What’s in my post that’s objectionable? Am I not permitted to express my opinion in a civil manner?)

    • H thomas

      I agree. I lived in Brooklyn for the first 16 years of my NYC residency. So much if NYC has been ruined by ignorant soulless politicians and greedy outsiders. I mourn with you.

      • parkslopedog

        I’ve lived in this part of Brooklyn since my family came to the US from Asia in 1959. We lived near The Brooklyn Museum, and I attended HS across the street. Of course, the world changes, but NYC in general has become unrecognizable with less and less freedom and deteriorating quality of life. There’s really nothing much to stay for. You do well to stay away.

    • James Maffucci

      I agree 100 percent these new interlopers had completed a mission to destroy our historic neighborhood s for their own greed.. I also life long Brooklyn resident 74 years am leaving

      • parkslopedog

        It’s not only being destroyed because of greed, but because of ideology. It’s a shame but maybe they’re doing us a favor by pushing us out. We’re finding greener pastures in places they won’t dare go, places where their loud mouths will be shut down, places where intimidation tactics will be met with greater force. These same type of people pushed me out of a teaching job of 35 years, and I say better pushed out than carried out by the EMT. I’m enjoying my retirement and all the money I was too busy to spend when I was working.

  2. Jim11217

    Lots of excellent venues and party spaces in and around Brooklyn. We desperately need housing. Looking forward to what comes next.

    And farewell to you old birds. Enjoy Florida, Arizona and South Carolina. Brooklyn is better without you!

    • parkslopedog

      There’s more to a community than venues and party spaces–it’s decent hardworking socially responsible people–not spiteful grabby people who like to bully others. We old birds are who made Park Slope the desirable neighborhood it was.

      Some people will always live hand to mouth or on gov’t handouts while refusing to pay rent and depending on eviction moratorium. No wonder landlords are picky about renting out their properties–which may be why there’s a shortage of affordable housing. My leaving Brooklyn won’t mean more available housing for you because you couldn’t afford to buy my house even if I were selling it. BTW, not interested in any of the states you mentioned–typically wrong guesses made by the unimaginative.

      Enjoy and wallow in the Brooklyn/NYC you’ve created. You have no idea what’s coming next, but maybe you do and that’s why you’re being defensive.