City Issues Vacate Order for Bushwick Church Turned Thrift Store Due to Crumbling Roof
The vacate order shut down a thrift store that had been operating inside and throws the building’s future into question.
From the Forum: Closing Out a Job When the Architect Isn’t Responding
An architect never completed the work to close out a job with the Department of Buildings, and the homeowner is wondering what to do.
DOB Files Suit Over Crown Heights Sidewalk Shed in Place for a Decade
The Department of Buildings is taking the property owners of a Crown Heights apartment complex to court after they allegedly failed to fix a 10-year-old dilapidated sidewalk shed.
A Scaffolding Contractor Is in Court for Park Slope Collapse That Left Woman With Brain Injury
A well-connected contractor was indicted Friday by Brooklyn prosecutors on charges related to a near-deadly scaffolding collapse in Gowanus in 2019, which injured three people, one of whom was left with permanent brain damage.
Fines, But No Findings Yet for Owner or DOB in Year-Ago Carroll Gardens Building Collapse
While New Yorkers wonder if last week’s deadly condominium collapse in Florida might have been preventable, they count their blessings that a building failure in Brooklyn last year didn’t result in similarly tragic consequences.
Brownstone Boys: Our Halloween Treat, Final Inspections!
Our architect warned us months ago to expect some curveballs and to put a bit of money aside for them.
What To Know About Buying an SRO
In New York City, single room occupancies are almost as much of a local institution as Katz's pastrami and the Coney Island Cyclone.
Mystery Deepens Around Murdered Landlord’s Unstable ‘Burg Building
Strange real estate happenings in Williamsburg: A contractor has discovered the Department of Buildings has no plans on file for the luxury rental at 120 South 4th Street that experienced an emergency vacate order last month because of structural problems. Or, to be more precise, the DOB does have plans on file — but they are for another building.
Question: Department of Buildings Reform Needed for Homeowners in Brooklyn?
As any Brooklyn homeowner set on a major renovation knows, the City’s Department of Buildings permitting process is expensive, time consuming, and opaque. And it has only gotten worse in the last year or so, as we experience a building boom and the City has increased requirements for such things as sprinklers, according to what we hear from readers on the Forum and elsewhere.
Last month the City’s Department of Buildings announced a major reform initiative. This followed 50 arrests in a massive bribery scandal that erupted earlier this year.
Reform strategies include spending $120 million, eliminating in-person visits with an entirely virtual process, hiring an additional 320 employees over four years, a new fee structure, and creating one building code to speed up the permitting process.
Researching Your Old House: How to Find Original Brooklyn Row House Blueprints
What did your Brooklyn row house look like originally? What year was it built? Who was the architect? Was it a two-family, one-family or something else? These are all questions original blueprints can answer. You may want to know because you are renovating, you have a passion for old houses, you are a new owner or you’re just curious.
Finding your original blueprints requires some legwork, ingenuity and persistence, as Brownstoner reader chemosphere recently discovered when researching his house in Flatbush.
He posted about the process, what he found and questions about the 100-year-old shorthand he was trying to decipher in a few separate posts in the forum. He has kindly allowed us to use those posts and the pictures of the blueprints he found to discuss in more detail how to find and read your original blueprints.