Page 9 - NYLS Magazine • 2015 • Vol. 34, No. 1

Robert Carroll ’13 wrote The Believers, a play set in Brooklyn, a staged reading of which was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher Building in February 2015.
This Currier and Ives print highlights the Equitable Building (the large white building just to the right of the tall steeple of Trinity Church), the first home of New York Law School. The location was close to the newly built Brooklyn Bridge and drew Brooklynites right from the start.
life inspiring art in brooklyn
In the late afternoon of Sunday, February
8, 2015, a crowd gathered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Fisher Building on Ashland Place. They were there to attend a reception and staged reading of The Believers, a play written by Robert Carroll ’13. Mr. Carroll, a native of Brooklyn, straddles the worlds of law, politics, and theater. His play tells the story of a young campaign manager on primary day 2001
in New York City—the day of the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Carroll wrote the play while
he attended NYLS, and the play makes
reference to a reporter observing the attacks from Worth Street. The play portrays
the final hours of the first campaign
the protagonist has ever run, and how idealism, practicality, and radicalism can blend together under outside pressure. The Believers is set in Brooklyn, and Mr. Carroll knows whereof he writes. He is the current President of Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, a founding member of the Brooklyn Reform Coalition, and a member of Community Board 7, which represents the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace, East Windsor Terrace, South Park Slope, and Greenwood Heights. He is also an associate at the firm Wolfson & Carroll, where he focuses on estate administration, real estate and Mitchell- Lama Housing Corporations, contracts, and election law. The Believers had its premiere in fall 2014 at the Storm Theater.
The staged reading at BAM exemplifies the strong ties linking Brooklyn and NYLS. The event was hosted by Thomas L. McMahon ’83, President of TLM Associates LLC, a strategic planning and government relations firm, in collaboration with Joseph V. Mellilo, Executive Producer at BAM, whose nephew, Max Melillo, is a fourth-year Evening Division student at NYLS who works
at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Attendees included NYLS alumni, friends, faculty members, administrators, and staff. After the reception and staged reading, Mr. Carroll and the cast participated in a question-and- answer session with the audience.
Kings County Supreme Court Justice Martin M. Solomon ’75, who was also in attendance, said, “NYLS attorneys and law students continue to be among the most committed volunteers and leaders in Brooklyn. There is a strong connection between Brooklyn and NYLS, as the school’s lawyers and students have a unique understanding of the borough
they live in and practice in as the borough continues to expand and thrive. They are active participants in our civic life and become truly invested in Brooklyn, serving as community board members, co-op board members, volunteers in our religious and cultural institutions, running for elected office, and becoming members of the judiciary and serving as political leaders.”
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is located in the middle of a Brooklyn building boom. Looking west from its entrance toward downtown Brooklyn, one sees a flurry
of construction projects. That’s because Brooklyn is the epitome of hot these days. The borough is one of the most desirable places to live in the country, and the cost of real estate in some neighborhoods has outpaced Manhattan. The new Barclays Center is now the home of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team and, as a concert venue, draws top talent. Mayor Bill de Blasio hails from Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. And Hillary Clinton
has chosen the borough as the site of
her presidential campaign headquarters. “Brooklyn” is now even one of the most popular names for babies. And as Brooklyn thrives, so does its long-standing relationship with NYLS.
early history
The Brooklyn connection stems from the earliest days of New York Law School. Brooklyn was the childhood home of Alfred E. Hinrichs a member of the first graduating class of 1892, who went on to serve as Dean of the Law School from 1936 to 1938. Dean Hinrichs was also an organizer of the Citizens Union in Brooklyn. His classmate, Henry M. Cummings, worked as a lawyer in Brooklyn for 48 years. In the class five years later was Robert Alexander Inch, who went on to serve
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