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Brooklyn’s latest historic district – a cluster of 21 skyscrapers and office buildings surrounding Borough Hall downtown – was created on Tuesday over the objections of some of its landowners and inhabitants.

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District despite opposition from business groups that said the designation would burden owners with new costs and regulations, and from the co-op board of the district’s only residential building, 75 Livingston Street.
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The buildings, several of which were built in the neo-Gothic style, include the 13-story Beaux-Arts Temple Bar building, Brooklyn’s tallest building at the turn of the 20th century; the borough’s 1926 Municipal Building; and the building at 16 Court Street, a stepped-back tower that rises 36 stories above Brooklyn’s municipal plaza. (See map – pdf.) The district also includes Brooklyn’s cupola-crowned Borough Hall, which was declared an individual landmark in 1966. (via)