Empire Stores

Empire Stores is a long, massive complex of seven interconnected red-brick warehouses that stretches along the East River waterfront. Built between eighteen sixty-eight and eighteen eighty-five, the structure features thick exterior brick walls and heavy schist interior walls designed to keep the storage areas cool and dark. This environment made it an ideal facility for perishables, particularly coffee, earning the warehouses a place at the center of Brooklyn’s nineteenth-century coffee industry.