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The plight of 329 MacDonough Street (shown above last month) received a lot of ink here and elsewhere in the aftermath of a construction incident that threatened the structural integrity of the brownstone and its neighbor. When contractors dug a trench in the cellar that destabilized the party wall, the DOB was quick to call for the two buildings’ demolition. Our concern was public safety. said Tim Lynch, the Buildings inspector who made the initial call. You cannot endanger workers. As a NY Times article this morning explores, Mr. Lynch is not a cold-hearted philistine–he had spent fourteen years of his career working for an engineering company that specializes in preservation. In the wake of his initial call, though. Mr. Lynch received praise for keeping an open mind as the owner and other preservationists worked with other engineers to come up with a proposal to save the buildings. The plan was a long shot, thought Lynch, but he decided to give it a try. It was one of the most complicated engineering plans I’ve worked on, said Mr. Lynch. The stabilization effort ended up taking 42 days, using 36 tons of concrete and more than half a mile of lumber in the process. And the homeowner, who is also likely to receive fines along with the contractor for the illegal work that caused the initial problems, is out an extra several hundred thousand dollars.
After Fight, a Brooklyn Brownstone’s Costly Rescue [NY Times]
Learning from the MacDonough Street Crisis [Brownstoner]
MacDonough St. Houses Report [Brownstoner]
Update on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
Salvation on MacDonough Street? [Brownstoner]
Stay of Execution on MacDonough Street [Brownstoner]
MacDonough Street Update 1/25/10 [Brownstoner]
Wall Collapse, Vacate Order, Maybe Demo on MacDonough [Brownstoner]


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. As I said in a post yesterday (and the Times article made clear), Lynch is a professional who knows historic buildings, why they stand up and why they fall down. He wasn’t “wrong in the first place” to order demolition – he was making a life safety decision based on the condition of the building. In most cases, the owner (or the owner’s insurance company) is not going to pony up money to save a building, and Tim’s professional judgement was that if the building was not taken down, it and three or four other buildings would come down in very short order. He was probably right in that judgement.

    Tim would be the first to tell you that just about any building in any condition can be saved, but usually that takes a lot of time (to sort out the finger pointing) and a lot of money. In this case, preservationists stepped in and saved the day, and because there was a cooperative owner with a lot of money, the building could be saved.

    It is great that the two buildings were saved before they endangered even more buildings. Like I said, that happened because preservationists forced the issue. It also happened because Tim Lynch was the chief engineer at DOB – most other engineers in that position would not have had the expertise to evaluate the fix proposed and see that it had a chance of working. That combination of circumstances – along with the owner’s deep pockets – does not come along very often. And that is unfortunate.

    It may too nuanced for some, but this is a case where both sides were right.