Building of the Day: 80 Cranberry Street
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy. Address: 80 Cranberry Street, corner of Henry St. Name: The Cranlyn Apartments Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights Year Built: 1931 Architectural…
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.
Address: 80 Cranberry Street, corner of Henry St.
Name: The Cranlyn Apartments
Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights
Year Built: 1931
Architectural Style: Art Deco
Architects: H.I. Feldman
Landmarked: Yes
This is a classic Art Deco apartment building. It’s got the massing of shapes with the ziggurat cuts in the upper floors, with their penthouse terraces, and decorative bands of alternating brick colors, and some really nice terra-cotta trim.
Especially nice are the terra-cotta peacock motifs above the side entrances on Cranberry. H.I. Feldman, a Yale educated architect, designed a lot of apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx, especially during the 1930’s and ’40’s.
He embraced both Art Deco and Modernism in his middle class buildings. Many of his Bronx buildings are on or near the Grand Concourse, the Bronx’s Striver’s Row. Here in Brooklyn Heights, he also designed 55 Pierrepont and 70 Remsen, which are way different in style from his Deco buildings.
They will be individual BOTD’s at a later date. The Cranlyn towers over its brownstone neighbors, but its place on the corner of Henry, down the street from the St. George Hotel, and near the much later Cadman Plaza highrises works well, and it all balances out. Most people pass here without even noticing what a great building this is. Next time you are here, look up!
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
ditto, with the money we make from selling our properties in the shade of the Chrysler building (ahemm, haha), we may buy many properties in the sun.
Intriguing building, the Cranlyn.
One thing I remember about this building is that each apartment still had it’s original “house phone”. ie if you chose to, you could receive outside calls thru the front desk – like a hotel.
I think it’s hard to make the case based on value, but I’d prefer a house on Cranberry btw Columbia Heights and Hicks with all the gorgeous little houses than a house on Cranberry btw Hicks and Henry across from this place. You know, if you’re giving me the choice!
Then again, I’m not an art deco lover either.
ditto, with all due respect, that is too broad a generalization.
If one owns a house next to the Dakota, or the Beresford or the San Remo, or the Eldorado, or any of the tall apartments on Fifth Aveune or Park Avenue, it is not going to be worth less than a little house surrounded by other little houses somewhere else. Likewise the houses in Brooklyn Heights that share their block with the Bossert, or the Standish Arms, or the Cranlyn are worth considerably more than houses far away from these nice tall buildings on a low-rise but undistinguished block somewhere else.
Don’t be a hater of good architecture, it is one of our main assets here in the Big Apple.
Brownstone and well-designed apartment building go together beautifully and form a very intelligent and desirable urban ensemble that caters to diverse needs, which is the definition of urbanity.
Levittown-like uniformity is over-rated.
All other things equal, a BH brownstone that views another brownstone is going to command a higher premium than one that views a hi-rise.
^^^
Great line, Minard. I’m speechless.
ditto, your house would be worth a lot more if it were located opposite the Chrysler building.
A friend of mine who lives there now says it is not particularly well maintained, but it’s still liveable, certainly.
Minard, I don’t follow your logic. I love the Chrysler building, but I don’t want it opposite my house.