Empire Stores
Empire Stores is emblematic of Brooklyn’s
transformation from lapsed industrial
powerhouse into a growing creative sector.
This award-winning mixed-use development
reimagines a vacant, 19th century
warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront as
a contemporary creative workplace and
community hub. The conversion of this
450,000sf complex provides Brooklyn’s
burgeoning Tech Triangle with much-
needed office space, and brings retail,
dining, public space, and exhibition galleries
to the neighborhood. The campaign of
76 - www.refurbandrestore.co.uk
adaptive re-use celebrates and preserves
the building’s monumental presence on
the waterfront, while improving circulation
between DUMBO’s urban fabric and the 85-
acre Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Architectural intervention transformed this
massive building, once a barrier standing
between the neighborhood and the park,
into a public portal that reconnects the two
zones. A passageway carved out of the
masonry structure creates a pedestrian
conduit between Water Street and the
waterfront. A four-story, open-air courtyard
excavated from within the center of the
building serves as an immersive public
space for building tenants, community
members, and park visitors. Glass curtain
walls line the courtyard, blending the
contemporary and the historic to make
visible the building’s striations: shopping
and a public food court at grade, galleries
for the Brooklyn Historical Society on the
second floor, and multiple floors of open
office space above.