A firehouse that went dark in 2003 is getting a second life as a music school. City officials, students and community leaders gathered Tuesday at the former Engine Company 204 firehouse on Degraw Street in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, to break ground on its transformation into the permanent home of the Noel Pointer Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free music education to New York City students.
The building at 299 Degraw Street dates to the late 1800s, and as reported by PIX11, it was closed and decommissioned in 2003 and sat vacant for years afterward. According to the city, the firehouse was originally built in 1857 for the horse-drawn Brooklyn Fire Department Engine 4 before becoming FDNY Engine 204 once Brooklyn was folded into New York City in 1898, per NYC.gov.
The closure wasn't quiet. When Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered Engine Company 204 shut during 2003 budget cuts, community opposition boiled into a street protest, and then-Council Member Bill de Blasio and actor-firefighter Steve Buscemi were arrested outside the station, according to DNAinfo. The outlet also notes that in 2007 the city approved a plan for the Brooklyn Philharmonic to move its administrative offices into the building, but that deal collapsed when the orchestra ran into financial insolvency.
A Decades-Long Path to Groundbreaking
Municipal money to turn the firehouse into a permanent music center began flowing in December 2019, when then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams helped secure an initial $6.5 million allocation, per NYC.gov. That funding has since grown into the project's full $17.8 million budget, which the station's report says is backed by contributions from the mayor's office, the City Council and the Brooklyn Borough President's office. In July, the city's Department of Design and Construction awarded a $10,288,484 construction contract to Woodside-based APN Construction Corp. to carry out the physical work, according to a notice in the City Record.
Converting a 19th-century firehouse into a modern music school is no small structural feat. Architectural plans for the 6,000-square-foot facility call for partial underpinning of the west party wall, exterior masonry restoration, sound-proofed classrooms, and compliance with LEED Gold environmental standards, per project documentation reviewed by HigherGov. Construction is expected to take about two years, per PIX11.
Officials Celebrate a Building's New Purpose
NYC Department of Design and Construction Commissioner Paul Ochoa said the building has a history of serving the community, PIX11 reported. The Department of Cultural Affairs and the Department of Design and Construction are jointly overseeing the project.
Students from the Noel Pointer Foundation took part in the groundbreaking ceremony. Among them was violinist Pilar Winter Hill, who studied at Juilliard for five years and started playing music at age six. She said music has played an important role in her life since childhood, and added that the organization's impact extends beyond music and art, according to PIX11.
Three Decades of Free Music Instruction
The Noel Pointer Foundation was founded in 1995 by Chinita Pointer in honor of her late husband, Noel Pointer, a Grammy-nominated jazz violinist. Since then, the foundation has delivered string music education to more than 39,000 New York City public school students across all five boroughs, according to NYC.gov. The nonprofit partners with nearly 50 Title I public schools and daycare centers citywide, serving children ages 3 to 18 in historically underserved communities.
Today the foundation offers free instruction to roughly 2,000 students a year through classroom and extracurricular programs, with students ranging from daycare through high school, per PIX11. Chinita Pointer said the foundation supports students' growth, self-esteem and relationships with teammates. At the new facility, offerings will expand beyond traditional classical strings to include piano, guitar, voice, DJing, composition, master classes and audition prep for pre-professional music programs, NYC.gov reports.
Carnegie Hall Stages and What's Next
Students in the foundation's flagship Noel Pointer Youth Orchestra have performed at major venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, with alumni going on to institutions such as Juilliard, Yale, Harvard and the Berklee College of Music, according to a 2019 announcement from the city's Department of Cultural Affairs.
Once complete, the new facility will include private lesson rooms, recording studios, a music library and gallery, a performance hall, and an outdoor garden, PIX11 reported. For a building that sat empty for more than two decades after its firefighters moved out, the groundbreaking marks the start of a new chapter as a space built for the next generation of Brooklyn musicians.
