Brooklyn Hilton (Brooklyn Detention Complex)

The Brooklyn Men’s House of Detention, 275 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, has been nicknamed the “Brooklyn Hilton” since at least 1968. The nickname probably borrows from “Hanoi Hilton,” where American prisoners of war were held during the Vietnam War.
 
Hilton hotels does not have a hotel in Brooklyn.
 
   
CorrectionHistory.org
Brooklyn Detention Complex
Address:
275 Atlantic Ave.,
Brooklyn, N.Y.
11201
The Brooklyn Detention Complex, built on Atlantic Avenue in 1957 as a single-cell jail to house 815 adult males, many of whom await trial in Brooklyn and Staten Island courts.
 
Google Books
An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn
By Francis Morrone
Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
2001
Pg. 8:
The building looks like any number of middle-class modern apartment buildings in neighborhoods from Forest Hills to Yorkville. That’s just the point, it seems. This has been nicknamed the “Brooklyn Hilton.” (At one point the hotel at Renaissance Plaza that became the Marriott was slated to be a Hilton. It would have caused confusion to have two Brooklyn Hiltons.)
   
The Sun (New York, NY)
Abroad in New York
By FRANCIS MORRONE | May 2, 2005
(...)
Between Smith Street (turn south for restaurant row) and Boerum Place is the 1956 Men’s House of Detention. Penal reformers wished that such structures resemble middle-class apartment houses. Nicknamed the “Brooklyn Hilton,” we’d have had some confusion if the Brooklyn downtown Marriott had been, as was originally planned, a Hilton. Today, the House of Detention is closed. Such has been our crime drop that the outer-borough houses of detention are, at least for now, no longer needed.
 
Gastro Traveling
Comestiblog says:
December 1, 2009 at 9:51 am
Not all that long ago, the only “hotel” in that neighborhood was the Brooklyn House of Detention, known euphemistically as “the Brooklyn Hilton.” The area, however, is Downtown Brooklyn, not Park Slope.
 
Google Books
AIA Guide to New York City
By Norval White, Elliot Willensky and Fran Leadon
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
2010
Pg. 589:
Brooklyn Men’s House of Detention, 275 Atlantic Ave., bet. Smith St. and Boerum Place. N. side, ca. 1950. LaPierre, Litchfield & Partners.
 
Cheerfully described as the Brooklyn Hilton, this facility holds mostly those awaiting trial who cannot post bail, as well as those considered too dangerous to roam before trial.
(Also on page 253 in the 1968 edition—ed.)