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The Outsider: Outdoor Living Room in Fort Greene
WELCOME to The Outsider, Cara Greenberg‘s Sunday garden column for Brownstoner. KNOW OF ANY BEAUTIFUL BROOKLYN GARDENS? (Sure ya do!) Contact caramia447@gmail.com
THE LONG, NARROW BACKYARD is a challenge garden designers face in Brooklyn more often than not. The owners of this one, 22′ wide and more than three times as long, approached James Stephenson of The Artist Garden with the notion of two patios plus lots of planting space. They were looking for a clean, modern look that would blend with their indoor aesthetic.
Working with oversized pieces of thermal bluestone, Stephenson laid out a plan for a central inner patio that serves as an outdoor family/living room, and another toward the rear of the property that provides overflow entertaining space for larger groups.
A central pergola made of iron and cedar is an architectural element that will also become a shade structure when the wisteria vines planted in each corner climb up and over.
Don Statham, an Upstate NY-based garden designer, collaborated on the plantings, which include what Stephenson calls “epic” columnar oak trees that will eventually create privacy walls on either side of the central patio. Everything is planted in the ground; there are no raised beds or containers.
The south-facing garden, with in-ground drip irrigation, is essentially low-maintenance.
More detail and photos after the jump.
Photos: James Stephenson
05/27/2012 8:00 AM
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Open House Picks
Park Slope
349 13th Street
Rutenberg
Sunday 12:00-1:00
$1,800,000
GMAP P*Shark
Park Slope
707 Union Street
Brown Harris Stevens
Sunday 1:00-3:00
$1,425,000
GMAP P*Shark
Clinton Hill
411 Classon Avenue
Corcoran
Saturday 12:30-1:30
$1,150,000
GMAP P*Shark
Crown Heights
1142 Dean Street
Corley Realty
Saturday 1:00-2:30
$985,000
GMAP P*Shark
p.s. This is the last post of the day–let the long weekend begin!
05/25/2012 1:00 PM
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Don’t Forget to Get Your Garden Fix
Just because it’s a long weekend doesn’t mean you won’t have a reason to check back with Brownstoner. The Outsider, the urban gardening column that Cara Greenberg started writing earlier this month, will run as usual on Sunday morning. (Recent posts here, here and here.) This week’s topic: Outdoor Living Rooms (like the one above). And speaking of gardens, you might want to check out Gardenista, the new blog from the interiors geniuses at Remodelista.
05/25/2012 12:30 PM
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Energy-Neutral Test House in Carroll Gardens Nears Completion, Park Slope Rental to Follow
Last month we showed you some renderings of a renovation underway on a brownstone at 367 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. The eco-friendly project by developer Voltaic Solaire will be entirely solar-powered, with the cost of all utilities included in the rent for all six rental units in the building. While it’ll be some time still until the 5th Avenue building is complete, the New York Times reports that the developer is putting the finishing touches on a “test house” on a small triangular plot at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Ninth Street in Carroll Gardens. “If we can obtain sustainability at this location, it can be obtained anywhere,” Ronald F. Faia, Voltaic Solaire’s CFO, said of the site’s location in the shadows of the BQE. To get to energy-neutral from just plain old green, the developer is installing LED lighting and insulated pipes along with energy-efficient appliances and windows. (The windows cost 15 percent more than regular ones.)
Off-the-Grid Living in Brooklyn [NY Times]
Visions of Park Slope’s Green Machine [Brownstoner]
Building Powered by Sun and Wind Will Rise in Park Slope [Brownstoner]
05/25/2012 10:30 AM
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Over 20 Percent of NYC Metro Area Mortgage Holders Underwater, But Brownstone Brooklyn Largely Spared
The headline pretty much says it all: The percentage of mortgage holders in New York City and environs who have negative equity ticked up slightly from 20.1 in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 21.3 in the first quarter of 2012. As you can see from the map (from Zillow via The Real Deal), however, much of the pain was felt in New Jersey and Queens. Brooklyn, especially Brownstone Brooklyn, looks largely unscathed. And compared to the rest of the country, where almost one-third of homeowners are still underwater, New York isn’t doing too badly.
One-fifth of NYC-area Borrowers Are Underwater [The Real Deal]
05/25/2012 9:00 AM
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Rental of the Day: 243 St. James Place
Here’s what you get at 243 St. James, an apartment for rent in Clinton Hill: two bedrooms, some historical detail, a convenient location, and a good rent: $1,950/month. Probably won’t last on the market all that long.
243 St. James Place [Century 21] GMAP P*Shark
05/24/2012 12:30 PM
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The Insider: Attic ‘Cabin’ in Fort Greene
Welcome to The Insider, here every Thursday at 11:30AM. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, as is The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden series, every Sunday at 8AM. ALWAYS SEEKING LEADS TO WORTHY INTERIOR DESIGN AND GARDEN PROJECTS!!! Please contact caramia447@gmail.com
THIS MULTI-FUNCTIONAL SPACE at the top of a five-story brownstone was once “a weird scenario,” says Manhattan-based architect Ole Sondresen, who renovated the entire building for a pair of artists with two college-age children — a utilitarian attic, 22′x60′, divided up into “six or seven little storage spaces.” Now it’s a destination for the family, used for movie nights, games, and music-making. “It’s meant to be almost a cabin at the top of the house,” Sondresen says. “A getaway in one’s own space.”
Enhancing the cabin feeling is the unorthodox use of wood, wrapping around the entire ceiling and down the wall to become a bench under the windows. “We saw it as an upside-down space,” the Norwegian-born Sondresen says. “While the rest of the house has wood floors and plaster ceilings, this space has white painted oak floors and the warmth of wood as the ceiling.”
The contractor was William Dorvillier.
More photos and details of the attic loft, as well as the new kitchen on the parlor level, after the jump.
Photos: Ole Sondresen
05/24/2012 11:30 AM
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Walkabout: Trashing Atlantic Avenue, part 2
(Atlantic Avenue, near Nostrand. 1920. Photo: Brooklyn Public Library)
In March of 1912, the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide, the bible of late 19th and early 20th century building in New York City, published a long article about the future of Atlantic Avenue, that great east-west corridor that joins the East River to Queens. In our first chapter, we saw that development of Atlantic Avenue depended greatly on the operations and machinations of the Long Island Railroad. For more on this, please read chapter one. Due to the railroads path, on or above the avenue, it seemed, even in 1912, that the avenue would never be more than garages and factories. Going on from there, the article stated that “It is a significant and a lamentable fact that a majority of the sales of real estate on Atlantic Avenue have been in foreclosure.” (more…)
05/24/2012 10:30 AM
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PANYL Kitchen Make-Over Complete
When we last left off, we were preparing to upgrade our kitchen cabinets from the off-the-rack Ikea finish with some help from PANYL, a new company whose mission is to help spruce up standard Ikea units with a proprietary self-adhesive vinyl application. As you may recall, the Park Slope-based start-up offered to give us a free makeover to demonstrate its proprietary approach to IKEA hacking. We’d installed IKEA kitchen cabinets when we were renovating back in 2005 and had grown tired of the faux-wood finish. Mrs. B ended up selecting an orange for the upper units and went with a dark gray for the lowers. We were a little nervous about the bold call but gotta say we’re loving the result. For the fainter of heart, there are lots of other colors and finishes to choose from on the company’s website. The materials for our makeover would have come out to about $650 had we actually had to pay for them retail. A few action shots of the installation on the jump…
(more…)
05/23/2012 10:54 AM
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Walkabout: Trashing Atlantic Avenue, part 1
(Railroad crossing at Atlantic and Bedford Avenues, 1905. Photo: New York Public Library)
Atlantic Avenue is one of Brooklyn’s great thoroughfares, today stretching from the East River waterfront to Jamaica, Queens. It is Brooklyn’s only east-west truck route, and serves a vital purpose in getting goods and people from Long Island to the East River and beyond. Like much of Brooklyn, its origins lie with Dutch settlement, and in fact it began as a private road, ending at Ralph Patchen’s farm on the East River, in the early 1700s.
As Brooklyn grew, that road became District Street, the southernmost boundary of the Village of Brooklyn, which was incorporated in 1816. That’s certainly hard to imagine now, and it didn’t take long for that to be obsolete. By 1855, as the street grid developed, District Street became Atlantic Street, running parallel to Pacific Street next door. In the 1870’s the street, already a busy thoroughfare, became an Avenue, running all the way to Nassau County. (more…)
05/22/2012 10:30 AM
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Do You Refer To Manhattan As “The City”?
So asks Gothamist. We do, but we were born and raised and Manhattan. Thoughts from native Brooklynites?
05/22/2012 10:00 AM
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In Case You Missed The Outsider Column…
…on Sunday, just scroll down the page to check out a rather unusual garden in Park Slope. Or just click here.
05/21/2012 9:33 AM
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Downtown Brooklyn is Kicking Butt
As anyone who reads Brownstoner regularly knows, the very-long held plans for the transformation of Downtown Brooklyn are in the midst of being realized, and perhaps nothing short of historic for future students of urban history. This weekend, the New York Times took a look at how stuff is changing in the area. This is how the article ends:
That said, however, other residents say the designation may reflect a growing awareness of Downtown as special and worth preserving from the next crush of development. For proof of people’s newfound attachment to the place, look no farther than the sidewalks. Years ago they were empty on Saturdays and Sundays, after the courts adjourned. But the shoppers, tourists and bicyclists now punctuating them “give the area a bit more life on weekends,” said Serafin Piñol-Roma, who moved here in 2005. In 2005, he bought a one-bedroom in Concord Village, a multibuilding co-op with more than 1,000 units. Last year he traded up to a two-bedroom, for which he paid $444,000. An instructor of cell biology at City College in Upper Manhattan, he used to keep to Manhattan for entertainment as well. But he has recently embraced Brooklyn. “It took a little time to cut the umbilical cord,” was how he phrased it.
Downtown Brooklyn is a neighborhood in its own right now, is the point. The questions are: Where are the schools and groceries?
To the Heights and the Slope, Add ‘Downtown’ [NY Times]
Photo by tracktwentynine
05/21/2012 9:30 AM
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Green Manufacturing Center to be Built in the Navy Yard
On Friday news dropped that the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation will invest $46 million to build a green manufacturing center in the Navy Yard, primarily in the massive glass-shingled Building 128 just inside the Clermont entrance. Job creation is being stressed as a certainty. Here are the full details from the press release:
Crye Precision – a premier designer and manufacturer of body armor and apparel for the U.S. military as well as federal and state law enforcement agencies – which was awarded $1 million through the New York State Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) process, has agreed to become one of two lead tenants at the new Green Manufacturing Center. Crye currently operates in four separate spaces at the Navy Yard, with 110 employees, and will now lease 80,000 square feet, consolidating multiple sites into one central location. Crye decided to expand in the Navy Yard after considering numerous options for consolidation and expansion, including New Jersey. The company’s expansion into the Green Manufacturing Center will create 100 new jobs over the next five years. Crye also has several commercial product lines under development; one uses locally recycled materials that are converted into fabrics. Crye Precision Executive Director Caleb Crye, said, “The Navy Yard has been exactly what our business needed to grow and we are thrilled that our future will remain here. We started here a decade ago with 4,500 square feet, today we’re up to 45,000 square feet with more than 100 employees and when the new facility is complete we’ll have a more efficient operation with room to grow and add at least 100 new jobs.” A second anchor tenant, Macro Sea, will lease more than 50,000 square feet for New Lab, a cutting-edge facility that will promote design and manufacturing innovation using the latest in environmentally-conscious processes and machinery. Through traditional tenancies and co-working spaces, New Lab will encourage the collaboration between design and fabrication by hosting a dynamic mix of designers, digital manufacturers, architects, graduate research facilities, and others in a hive of sustainable design and innovation.
As for the time line? “Major construction begins this summer and will take approximately 18 months to complete.” State and city subsidies will help the project come to fruition.
Rendering credit: Macro Sea
05/21/2012 9:00 AM
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The Outsider: Viewing Garden in Park Slope
WELCOME TO The Outsider, Brownstoner’s weekly garden column, written and produced by Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Sunday at 8AM.
THIS GARDEN BEGAN as an outline on a napkin, sketched out by the homeowner. “The client is an architect and had very strong ideas about what he wanted,” says Sasha Newman of Little Miracles Designs, who was hired to turn the concept into a finished design and then to oversee fabrication and installation.
The round central structure, made of Corten steel, serves two functions; it acts as a retaining wall to hold up soil and support plantings, and also provides convivial seating for a group. It was Newman’s inspiration to use Corten for the structure, rather than the stone the client originally had in mind. “A thick wall would have been visually too heavy for a rectangular backyard 18-20′ wide,” he says. Instead, he suggested the material popularized by the sculptor Richard Serra and by its use on the High Line — an alloy that doesn’t rust through, but merely oxidizes on the surface for a coppery patina.
The garden is designed to be viewed from all levels of the house. Plantings were informed by contemporary currents in American landscape design, using primarily foliage plants that don’t rely on floral color but whose interest comes from contrasting combinations of texture. The garden is also, says Newman, “as close to zero maintenance as you can get.”
Details and more photos, including construction shots and a complete plant list, after the jump.
Photos: Sasha Newman
05/20/2012 8:00 AM
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Digging Deep at the New BBG Visitors Center
Here’s a shot of our electeds celebrating the public opening of the new Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors Center last week.
05/19/2012 2:00 PM
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Details on the Sacred Sites Open House Weekend
Yesterday we mentioned the open house at Brown Memorial Church in Clinton Hill, which, it turns out, is part of a huge open house weekend for sacred sites around New York State. The NY Landmarks Conservancy is hosting its second annual state-wide Sacred Sites Open House weekend, which means hundreds of New York religious institutions will open their doors to people from the community. There are eight open house locations in Brooklyn: Brown Memorial Church on May 19th from 11 to 2:30pm; the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity on May 19th 2 to 4pm; Congregation Beth Elohim on May 19th, 6 to 7pm, with a concert at 7-8:30; the Old First Reformed Church on May 20th, 1 to 5pm; Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral at May 20th 1 to 4pm; Plymouth Church on May 19th, 12 to 4pm; St. Pauls Evangelical Lutheran Church of Williamsburg on May 19th from 10am to 4pm (with an unveiling of new Landmark plaque 1pm); and Temple Beth Emeth (pictured) on May 19th 1 to 3pm. Go to the website to see a list of all the participating sites.
Temple Beth Emeth by Forgotten NY
05/18/2012 12:00 PM
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The Insider: Gentle Reno in Prospect Heights
WELCOME TO THE INSIDER, our weekly in-depth look at a recent interior design/renovation project, here every Thursday at 11:30AM. Like The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden series on Sundays at 8AM, The Insider is written and produced by Cara Greenberg.
IT TOOK TERI BRAJEWSKI of TWB Design a full year of apartment-hunting to settle on what she calls a “petite three-bedroom” in an eight-unit building from the 1890s. It wasn’t just the intact woodwork and other Victorian niceties, including a fretwork archway, bay window, and tiled mantelpiece, that sold her on the ground floor unit, or even the private backyard. “It was one of the few I looked at and didn’t think, ‘If only I could tear this wall out…’”recalls Brajewski, an interior designer and co-owner of Interior Provisions, an online and by-appointment home goods shop in Nolita.
In fact, the long, narrow, 1,100-square-foot floor plan functioned so well for her family — she’s a single mom of two — that all the walls stayed right where they were. Brajewski lost no time gutting and replacing a full and a half bath; that’s been the major work to date. Other sprucing up includes floor refinishing, new lighting throughout, new furniture, and a carefully considered paint job with Benjamin Moore’s Natura line of no-VOC paints.
Brajewski is a LEED AP (accredited professional). She incorporated some sustainability principles, a water-saving toilet and the use of locally-made and vintage furnishings among them. Contemporary and mid-20th century pieces look magically at home in their surroundings. “The gracious scale of mid-century furniture works very well against a Victorian backdrop,” she says.
For now, Brajewski is living with the existing kitchen, though she bought a new dishwasher and washer/dryer, and the garden remains a frontier yet to be conquered. Brajewski “called in a ton of favors and got a lot of trade discounts” but estimates the cost of her improvements, including new furnishings, at about $100,000 for a civilian. The contractor was Jim Savio.
Above: The apartment’s front room is divided by an archway into areas Brajewski uses as a living room and a home office. The made-in-USA sofas are contemporary, from Thayer Coggin, but with a ’50s/’60s look. The vintage coffee table is from a shop in Hudson, NY; the rug from a sample sale. Cafe curtains were made by Angel Threads of Brooklyn.
Photos: Ofer Wolberger
See more, including a complete list of paint colors, after the jump.
05/17/2012 11:30 AM
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Squadron Honors MCA
From the press release: “State Senator Daniel Squadron honored Beastie Boys founder Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch with a resolution on the Senate floor. The resolution, which recognizes Yauch’s and the Beastie Boys’ major contributions to music, as well as Yauch’s political activism, passed the Senate yesterday afternoon. Yauch grew up in Brooklyn Heights and the Beastie Boys grew to prominence via the East Village and Lower East Side music scene. The Squadron resolution reads in part: ‘Whereas, The music and message of the Beastie Boys evolved over the years, but they can’t, won’t, don’t stop changing the face of hip-hop, of music, and of our culture. Whereas, The Beastie Boys exemplified New York through a period in which grassroots creativity and a community of iconoclastic artists helped redefine and rejuvenate a city on the ropes, with iconic imagery from Brooklyn to Ludlow Street.’
05/16/2012 11:30 AM
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Opening Day for Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors Center!
Last week there was a sneak peek for media of the new Brooklyn Botanic Visitors Center, and today it opens to the public. The project was designed by the firm Weiss/Manfredi. According to a rep for the institution, the mayor will be on hand to cut the ribbon today. Contractors were sprucing up the grounds this morning, and hopefully the slight drizzle that may attend the ceremony will bolster its verdant roof.
BBG’s New Visitor Center About to Open! [Brownstoner]
05/16/2012 11:00 AM
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adam_dahill
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM