Building of the Day: 5424 Fifth Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Residential building with ground floor retail
Address: 5424 Fifth Avenue
Cross Streets: Corner 55th Street
Neighborhood: Sunset Park
Year Built: 1897
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: J. H. Nadigan
Landmarked: No, but part of Sunset Park designation on National Register of Historic Places (1988)

The story: 5th Avenue, between Flatbush Avenue and its end in Dyker Heights, is one of the most densely developed commercial/residential streets in Brooklyn. It’s also an interesting time line of Brooklyn’s development, with the earliest buildings closer to Flatbush Avenue, and the later ones as you go towards Bay Ridge. Unlike other blocks in Brownstone Brooklyn that start out residential and then are transformed into shopping blocks, like parts of Park Slope’s 7th Avenue, 5th Ave was designed to be a mixed use avenue, with virtually all of its original building stock consisting of retail/commercial shop spaces on the ground floor of buildings that had two or more floors of apartments above.

Of course, blocks like this are also a great place to put civic and religious buildings, so 5th Avenue, along its length, also has a fair share of houses of worship, schools, police and fire stations, as well as larger commercial entities such as banks and theaters, too. The Sunset Park stretch of 5th Avenue is a perfect place to find all of these elements.

Because of its geographic isolation and lack of public transportation, Sunset Park did not really develop until the 1890s. Green-Wood Cemetery was begun well before the Civil War, but residential development in the area did not follow, and the land remained farms. In 1889, the 39th St. ferry was established between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Soon afterwards, in 1890, the 5th Avenue railroad line was established to 39th Street, and extended in 1893 to 65th Street. Developers began looking to the Sunset Park area, and by the turn of the 20th century, building was in full swing.

By the mid-1890s, 5th Avenue was starting to be built up. Since the neighborhood was always designed to be a working class and middle income neighborhood, apartments above storefronts were an ideal method of supplying housing and stores for a growing community. These were attractive buildings with appealing store fronts, with housing above. Often, a store owner lived above his store, with tenants above him for even more income. The block of 5th Avenue, between 54th and 55th Street, that includes this building, 5424 5th Avenue, is especially handsome, with elegant Renaissance Revival limestone buildings, with pressed metal upper bay windows and other fine detailing. They were built in 1897, the same year, although a different architect, as this fine corner building.

Corner buildings afford an architect more chance for fine detail, as there are two visible street view walls to work with, and by all accounts, the architect, J. H. Nadigan, did quite well. I could find nothing out about him or his career, and couldn’t even find another listing of his in Sunset Park. This appears to be his legacy, at least as far as we know at this time. It’s a fine building, with a really nice corner turret and peaked roof, as well as a handsome pressed metal clad bay on the side façade.

Of course, the downside of commercial blocks is that when a neighborhood loses income, the retail stretches suffer the most, and take the longest to recover. This building, like its neighbors, was altered considerably over the years, and not for the better. The upper floors were abandoned, and windows were sealed. Recently, a window was cut into the plywood on a sealed window. I’m sure it was done that way because a stock window was cheaper than restoring the original sized window to its frame. Considering what someone could do to this building, that’s not the worst thing that could happen. Hopefully, sometime in its future, this building will be able to be restored to its original glory, one of the many fine mixed use buildings in this landmark-worthy neighborhood. (Googlemap registering only Manhattan address, so no link.)