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| 16th Street Brooklyn |
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| Memorial Baptist Church |
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Powdered Doughboy
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BAPTIZED BY FIRE
"DEDICATED TO THE MEN OF THE 14TH INFANTRY WHO WERE ENGAGED IN THE WORLD WAR 1917...1918"Standing guard over the 8th Avenue entrance to the 14th Regiment Armory Sports Complex and Women's Homeless Shelter. Park Slope South, Brooklyn
Bronze Sculpture by Anton Scaaf Dedicated 1923
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Windsor Terrace Two Family Membraned
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| 534 17th Street is a three story, two family house designed by Baxt Ingui Architects, PC. The architect of record is Benjamin H. Baxt Owner: Ellen Baxt This 20' x100' lot is zoned R5B. Building height is thirty feet. |
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| Fenestration! |
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| Before: Building Green For those of you familiar with the block's bucolic past, this is what you probably remember... This tiny brick ruin of a building sitting waaaaay back at the rear of the lot. A sixty foot deep front yard is certainly a bygone luxury. |
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| Premeditated Deforestation |
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| Predemolition |
DIY Homebuilding.
Not to many two family homes being built from scratch these days in this part of Brooklyn. Not that much vacant land left to develop. Building new almost always means tearing down something old.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tree Sweater Weather
South Slope: Sixteenth Street's tree trunks bundled up against the cold.
Resident Artist Laurie Russell
Thursday, January 20, 2011
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Windsor Terrace Edition, or should I say addition.
And now, The Official Paper Work... Click on image to expand.
Troubled remudling job over in the heart of Windsor. This charming row of well maintained 1940 single family homes is located on 11th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets in Brooklyn just a half block off the Prospect Expressway.
Rana Partners, LLC purchased the house, 1715 11th Avenue, in November 2008 for $510,000 and soon after filed plans to add on this second story in February of 2009. Looks like Stop Work Orders and building code violations for "Construction in Progress With Out Approved Plans" got this little project placed onto the Stalled Construction Site Hall of Shame back in April of 2010. Never fear, they have finally submitted plans for that 4 ton HVAC unit plopped up on the roof.
Here's my guess... Someone picked this house up at an estate sale under market with the big get rich quick idea of maxing out the FAR and flipping it... Pretty big mess for just an additional 515 sq. ft. of living space, no?
The nearly identical homes on this R5B zoned block stand just 14' tall and have vintage basement level garages, slate roofs, and rusticated brick walls. For flavor...
And now, The Official Paper Work... Click on image to expand.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Grand Prospect Hotel and Parking Garage Presents Preliminary Plans
Direct from last nights Community Board #7 Land Use/Landmarks Committee meeting held in the auditorium of P.S.10 Magnet School for Math, Science and Technology, IMBY presents The Grand Prospect Hotel and Parking Garage. Estimated crowd size, including CB #7 members, The Press, District 39 Councilmember Brad Lander and assorted concerned citizens... Lets say 50 people tops. General feelings openly expressed about the project, mostly positive.
Make their dreams come true, for a change.
Before we start, understand that these pre-preliminary architectural renderings are just that, very preliminary. They can and most likely will change. We're talking colored pencil here, not cinderblock. No actual Buildings Department filings have been made yet. No environmental impact, shadow or traffic studies have been executed. Soil boring tests haven't even been undertaken. What we are looking at then is what the developers, the Halkias', say is essential for their business' survival in the 21st century... What they want to continue to make their dreams come true, as they say in their flyer.
"Think of it as a magnificent cake with a cherry on top."
Dream if you may a magnificent garage... Four hundred off street parking spaces to be contained within five floors, one at cellar level and four more to be street level and higher. On top of the garage will sit the hotel, 166 rooms on seven additional stories to top off somewhere below 120 feet or eleven stories total, not including bulkheads and other permissible roof obstructions like AC chillers, cell phone antennas, and elevator control rooms of coarse.
This grand vision all depends on acquiring a crucial zoning variance upgrade from their current R6B residential zone. Possible requests may include a site specific commercial overlay up-zoning to C4-3, C4-D, or less likely C8-4.
A variance is a discretionary action by the Board of Standards and Appeals which grants relief from the use and bulk provisions of the Zoning Resolution to the extent necessary to permit a reasonable or practical use of the land. A variance may be granted, after a public hearing, when unique conditions on a specific parcel of land would cause the property owner practical difficulty and undue hardship if it were developed pursuant to applicable provisions.
In this case, according to their own lawyer, The Grand Prospect Hotel developers would have a hard time proving "undue financial hardship" in order to get a variance. GPH is a thriving business.
Public Review
Take a look for yourself at the pictures below and feel free to comment. I suggest you contact Mr. John Burns, the chair of Community Board #7s Land Use Committee directly with any questions or suggestions. Link to CB#7 email.
Public input is being welcomed at this point. You might actually play some small part in the way this turns out. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
One general impression is that some South Slopers are salivating over those 400 spaces. They would gladly live each day in the shadows if it meant there was a warm parking space awaiting their Volvos each night. My only wish is that Mr. Halkias and Doban Architecture understand that this new hotel building will essentially define our skyline forever.
Please don't make something shitty.
Post Script: I guess that when I wrote yesterday that the feelings expressed during the presentation were "mostly positive" I should have mentioned that there were a few people in attendance who voiced serious misgivings about the impact this new hotel will have on the already overburdened surrounding infrastructure. One individual in particular gave testament to how this section of the South Slope, 16th Street below 6th Avenue, is the ground zero for real property speculation. There are at least a dozen new buildings within a block's circumference. Hundreds of new units have or will soon be occupied straining an already taxed water, sewer, and electrical grid.
These new residents, with young children, generally more affluent then those before them, own automobiles. There is a perception by some that a serious shortage of available on-street parking spots exists now that did not exist a decade ago. This is the carrot that Mr. and Mrs. Halkias are holding out to our community in the hopes of garnering enough public support to get his zoning variance pushed through. They know the B.S.A. would never permit their project unless it had significant political muscle behind it. Here's one reason why the presentation was made... To judge the neighborhood's temperament. Otherwise they would have gone strait to the Board and made their appeal. Just a short five years ago, the South Slope had one of the fastest downzonings for any neighborhood in recent NYC history. The folks at The Grand Prospect understand the power the community wields and it seems neighborhood opposition to the proposed hotel/parking garage in it's current configuration is now mounting.
To be continued...
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| The proprietor of the Grand Prospect Hall, Mr. Halkias. |
Make their dreams come true, for a change.
Before we start, understand that these pre-preliminary architectural renderings are just that, very preliminary. They can and most likely will change. We're talking colored pencil here, not cinderblock. No actual Buildings Department filings have been made yet. No environmental impact, shadow or traffic studies have been executed. Soil boring tests haven't even been undertaken. What we are looking at then is what the developers, the Halkias', say is essential for their business' survival in the 21st century... What they want to continue to make their dreams come true, as they say in their flyer.
"Think of it as a magnificent cake with a cherry on top."
Dream if you may a magnificent garage... Four hundred off street parking spaces to be contained within five floors, one at cellar level and four more to be street level and higher. On top of the garage will sit the hotel, 166 rooms on seven additional stories to top off somewhere below 120 feet or eleven stories total, not including bulkheads and other permissible roof obstructions like AC chillers, cell phone antennas, and elevator control rooms of coarse.
This grand vision all depends on acquiring a crucial zoning variance upgrade from their current R6B residential zone. Possible requests may include a site specific commercial overlay up-zoning to C4-3, C4-D, or less likely C8-4.
A variance is a discretionary action by the Board of Standards and Appeals which grants relief from the use and bulk provisions of the Zoning Resolution to the extent necessary to permit a reasonable or practical use of the land. A variance may be granted, after a public hearing, when unique conditions on a specific parcel of land would cause the property owner practical difficulty and undue hardship if it were developed pursuant to applicable provisions.
In this case, according to their own lawyer, The Grand Prospect Hotel developers would have a hard time proving "undue financial hardship" in order to get a variance. GPH is a thriving business.
Public Review
Take a look for yourself at the pictures below and feel free to comment. I suggest you contact Mr. John Burns, the chair of Community Board #7s Land Use Committee directly with any questions or suggestions. Link to CB#7 email.
Public input is being welcomed at this point. You might actually play some small part in the way this turns out. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
One general impression is that some South Slopers are salivating over those 400 spaces. They would gladly live each day in the shadows if it meant there was a warm parking space awaiting their Volvos each night. My only wish is that Mr. Halkias and Doban Architecture understand that this new hotel building will essentially define our skyline forever.
Please don't make something shitty.
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| Grand Prospect Hall & The sunken Prospect Expressway below |
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| The proposed 11 story hotel/garage is on the left. Existing GPH building on the right. |
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| There's the gold, and then there's the shaft. GPH owns two homes along 16th Street it intends to demolish providing rear access to the parking garage. They are 188 and 190 16th St. Service and supply vehicles will enter the hotel from 16th St. as well. I do not recall seeing any rear elevation drawings present. |
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| Grand Prospect Hall's current parking lot. Visible at back of lot, one and two family homes along 16th Street. |
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| Current 16th Streetscape: The two homes to be demolished are on the far right. Left stranded in between driveways will be this recently restored/remodeled white 2 story wood frame house. Corcoran sold this house, 192 16th St. in 2007 for $1.35 million. From this photo you can see that at 2pm the low January sun casts long shadows into the middle of the street. How far might the shadows extend from the 120' tall Hotel? |
Post Script: I guess that when I wrote yesterday that the feelings expressed during the presentation were "mostly positive" I should have mentioned that there were a few people in attendance who voiced serious misgivings about the impact this new hotel will have on the already overburdened surrounding infrastructure. One individual in particular gave testament to how this section of the South Slope, 16th Street below 6th Avenue, is the ground zero for real property speculation. There are at least a dozen new buildings within a block's circumference. Hundreds of new units have or will soon be occupied straining an already taxed water, sewer, and electrical grid.
These new residents, with young children, generally more affluent then those before them, own automobiles. There is a perception by some that a serious shortage of available on-street parking spots exists now that did not exist a decade ago. This is the carrot that Mr. and Mrs. Halkias are holding out to our community in the hopes of garnering enough public support to get his zoning variance pushed through. They know the B.S.A. would never permit their project unless it had significant political muscle behind it. Here's one reason why the presentation was made... To judge the neighborhood's temperament. Otherwise they would have gone strait to the Board and made their appeal. Just a short five years ago, the South Slope had one of the fastest downzonings for any neighborhood in recent NYC history. The folks at The Grand Prospect understand the power the community wields and it seems neighborhood opposition to the proposed hotel/parking garage in it's current configuration is now mounting.
To be continued...
Thursday, January 06, 2011
PBS Discovers Park Slope Armory
Very nice look at the Park Slope Armory Sports Facility.
If you haven't been inside yet, here's what you're missing.
The City Concealed: Park Slope Armory
The City Concealed: Park Slope Armory from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
If you haven't been inside yet, here's what you're missing.
The City Concealed: Park Slope Armory
The City Concealed: Park Slope Armory from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
In My Brooklyn Backyard: Lunar Eclipse
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| Total Lunar Eclipse This is what I saw standing in my Brooklyn backyard on Tuesday December 21st, 2010 at 3:17 in the morning EST. Latitude: 40.66208540915283 Longitude: -73.9831714332103 |
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Park Slope Section of Brooklyn on Eve of Important Movement.
Another IMBY W.W.W. Train of Thought Leaves the Station.
Why not build a downtown Brooklyn Ballpark?
New York politicians reacted as effectively as possible to the threat of losing their team. A meeting that included the city’s mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Brooklyn’s Borough President Cashmore, the New York City’s Construction Coordinator, and the Dodgers’ owner Walter O'Malley was held to investigate how to acquire the land just to the east of the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in downtown Brooklyn for a new ballpark. O’Malley indicated that the Dodgers’ had $6 million available to purchase land and build a new ballpark.
Of course we all know how this story turned out... We lost out to Los Angeles, and the honorable Robert Ferdinand Wagner II was elected to a third term, but hey, he got us fluoridated drinking water and the Mets.
History is funny.
Priceless memo below. Draw your own parallels.
Take a look at this 1957 Dodgers Autographed Baseball,
Virtual Tour
COMMENTS?
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| link: The Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide, February 3rd, 1917 Park Slope Property a Specialty |
The author of this editorial article, Charles Edward Rickerson was in "Real Estate and Insurance" according to Empire State Notables, but I think he was essentially a well known Brooklyn broker operating in The Slope with an office at 227 Flatbush Avenue. The New York Times has about a half dozen paragraphs in their archives records listing his recent property sales. link The Real Estate Record has many, many, more listings where he leased prominent area townhouses.
I found this great hand written letter he had sent to then Brooklyn Borough President (1940-1961) John Cashmore, offering up the idea of using Ft. Greene Park as a possible site for a new Brooklyn Dodgers' stadium. If you recall, in 1957 Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley was threatening to move the team if they didn't get a new ballpark.
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| January 4th, 1957 Mr. Rickerson does the math selling Ft. Greene Park to Borough Pres. Cashmore. Link |
Why not build a downtown Brooklyn Ballpark?
New York politicians reacted as effectively as possible to the threat of losing their team. A meeting that included the city’s mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Brooklyn’s Borough President Cashmore, the New York City’s Construction Coordinator, and the Dodgers’ owner Walter O'Malley was held to investigate how to acquire the land just to the east of the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in downtown Brooklyn for a new ballpark. O’Malley indicated that the Dodgers’ had $6 million available to purchase land and build a new ballpark.
Of course we all know how this story turned out... We lost out to Los Angeles, and the honorable Robert Ferdinand Wagner II was elected to a third term, but hey, he got us fluoridated drinking water and the Mets.
History is funny.
Priceless memo below. Draw your own parallels.
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 February 6, 1957 Internal memo from Walter O'Malley Link |
Take a look at this 1957 Dodgers Autographed Baseball,
Virtual Tour
COMMENTS?
Friday, December 17, 2010
My Latest Real Estate Porn Site Addiction
Architectural Voyeurs!
Columbia University Libraries Digital Collection has scanned 54 years worth of easily accessible NYC real estate related ramblings from the weekly gossip publication Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide.
I can't tell you how much time I've spent online, but it certainly was well worth shaving my palms.
Columbia University Libraries Digital Collection has scanned 54 years worth of easily accessible NYC real estate related ramblings from the weekly gossip publication Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide.
I can't tell you how much time I've spent online, but it certainly was well worth shaving my palms.
...Of Mixed Structural Character
"South of Ninth street the structural character of Eighth avenue is extremely varied all the way to its end at Twentieth street or Greenwood Cemetery. The buildings comprise flats with stores, old fashioned brick and frame two and three-story dwellings, old brownstone fronts that have seen better days and what not."-from Varying Phases of Eighth Avenue, Brooklyn.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
391 14th Street Development Site Changes Hands.
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| As Is Post Demo: 391 14th Street is located within the proposed Park Slope Historic District expansion area. |
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| APPROVED PLANS: FRONT, SIDE, AND REAR ELEVATIONS SHOWING PASS-THROUGH DRIVEWAY FOR EXISTING GARAGES. I ASSUME NEIGHBORING PROPERTIES HAVE EASEMENT RIGHTS... |
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| TWENTY-FIVE FOOT WIDE SEMI-DETACHED TWO FAMILY DEMOLISHED IN THE SPRING OF 2008 AS SEEN HERE IN ITS FORMER GLORY. YES, THAT'S A LEGAL (1940) CURB-CUT PRESERVATIONISTAS!!! |
Still Building in the South Slope.
How about this. Looks like 391 14th Street, LLC has sold this site with approved plans for a 5 story, 5 dwelling unit building to 391 14th St. Realty, LLC for the sum of $950,000. The deed was recorded on ACRIS 12/14/10.
The new architect of record will be CHRISTOPHER T. MENZIUSO of the firm GRASSO-MENZIUSO ARCHITECTS. Anyone know of them?
DOB Building info.
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