He then studied at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, and was graduated with the diploma of a civil engineer.

[2] On returning to the United States, he accompanied his uncle, James Renwick, one of the commissioners on the northeastern boundary survey.

[2] Brevoort removed, in early life, to Yonkers, but returned to New York and was a member of the Common Council for many years.

[1] His friend, the ichthyologist Theodore Nicholas Gill, honored Brevoort in the specific name of a fish, the hairfin lookdown (Selene brevoortii).

[5] He contributed to the American Journal of Numismatics a series of illustrated papers on "Early Spanish and Portuguese Coinage in America."

In the Historical Magazine he published a paper on the discovery of the remains of Columbus, and in 1874 prepared a volume, printed privately, entitled Verrazano the Navigator, or Notes on Giovanni de Verrazano, and on a Planisphere of 1529, illustrating his American Voyage in 1524, this being a revision and expansion of a paper read before the American Geographical Society, November 28, 1871.