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July 3, 2008

Out-of-Scale Addition at 524 State Street

524-State-Street-0608.jpg
How ridiculous-looking is this? We don't make it down this last block of State Street very often (we tend to take 3rd Avenue to Lafayette when heading back to Clinton Hill from Smith Street or the Heights) so this addition to 524 State Street had eluded our watchful eye until now. While this is technically only a one-story addition, it looks like two-stories since the original top floor had small flat-roof dormers to start with. The current owners blew those up to full-size windows and then slapped these two massive arched windows that are completely out of whack with the scale of the house—or any of the houses on the block. The design is by Andrew Tesoro Architects. What were they thinking? GMAP P*Shark DOB




Posted by Brownstoner at 11:31 AM | Comments (54)
Categories: Architecture, Boerum Hill, Development

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Stoner:

Why is you be such a hater?

Jealous much.

If its within the zoning rules, so be it. I'm sure its nice inside.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 11:46 AM

This is the worst addition I have ever seen.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 11:48 AM

Looks fine to me. People have been building extensions on townhouses since the 19th century - they are all over Park Slope and more than a few are much worse than this example.

In any event, the house itself is nothing to write home about. It was obviously originally constructed for a relatively lower income family and has no architectural detail at all. It is a stack of bricks with a lego cornice.

Posted by: Polemicist at July 3, 2008 11:50 AM

I'm thinking they had a lot of spare FAR.

Posted by: Karka at July 3, 2008 11:51 AM

"The current owners blew those up to full-size windows and then slapped these two massive arched windows that are completely out of whack with the scale of the house—or any of the houses on the block....What were they thinking?"

They were thinking, better hurry up and build before the street gets landmarked. Same for the private garage and curb cut installed at the ground floor of the house...out of whack (and in anticipation of parking woes comes Atlantic Yards).

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 11:52 AM

I'll reserve judgment until it's finished.

So far, it is not the worst I've seen by a long shot.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 11:54 AM

looks parisian to me

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 11:57 AM

Ugly.
If this were Amsterdam and the whole row of houses had the same topper, it would look okay.
Such poor taste, going from a 3-window wide to an intermediate 4-window floor to a 2-window (with two casements each) with an ugly curved radius topper...UGH!
And so out of place.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:01 PM

The garage and curb cut has been there ever since I've lived on the next block (11 years or so). Have to agree that the addition is totally ludicrous though, despite the fact that it appears to be of good construction quality. Walking by there a while back I heard a neighbor saying that an elevator was part of the reno.

Posted by: johnife at July 3, 2008 12:01 PM

Out of scale my a$$. You nimbys should be lined up and shot.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:03 PM

couldn't they at least do a better job of integrating the design with the building? Looks like a white pus pimple.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:06 PM

this is sad. dare i say it, scarano could have thought of something better.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:07 PM

Looks like Paris and Berlin. You know there are cities far older than this that survive just fine without LPC telling private property owners what to do.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:08 PM

The horror! What's next? Recessed lighting?

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:09 PM

If they'd kept it simple and just added 2 rows of rectangular windows, it would have been less absurd, in my opinion (it would still be a too tall addition, but less awkward). Now it looks like a scary robotic face with gritted teeth, rounded eyes and a black nose.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:10 PM

It would be great to live in this house, and have all that space, light and parking.

Posted by: Park Place at July 3, 2008 12:13 PM

Literally sticks out like a "sore thumb"

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:17 PM

the aesthetic isn't for me, i think they would have been better off going MORE modern to differentiate the old from the new. the scale is a bit much - mathematically allowed or not. just because one can do doesn't mean one should.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:21 PM

What an unattractive addition.
Amazing that the walls and foundations of the little old house can support this.
The design is so bad and so ad hoc that I bet it is completely illegal.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:23 PM

I have a hard time with this one. I don't think it's an inherently ugly design, it just stands out--and not a in good way-- compared to the rest of the houses on the block/the neighborhood. In the owner's defense, though, I'd have a hard time saying no to huge windows if you can them approved by DOB... I bet the interior of the addition is an amazing space.

Are those stairs going up to a roofdeck in the middle of the arched windows? Pretty sweet.

Posted by: Gravy at July 3, 2008 12:33 PM

"It was obviously originally constructed for a relatively lower income family"

A terrible, terrible development, to be sure.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:34 PM

Popping on an extra storey or two to the top of a row house is more common than you think. I can think of a several buildings here in Crown Heights where that was done within a generation of the house being built. The key to looking good usually involves moving the cornice up to the new roofline, so the addition looks like it belongs. That said, this one doesn't bother me as much as some others, and does look like a quality job.

I think if the architect would have faced the addition in a similarly aged and colored brick, that at least reads from the street as period, it would blend in better with the house itself, as well as its neighbors. The design makes the house look like it has a mansard roof, which is a period shape. I think that is what works, it's not just a glass and steel square cabana, like so many new additions. I would have capped it with a similar cornice, or even the original one modified, so the entire house is a unified whole.

-Montrose Morris

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:38 PM

Guest at 12:08: Paris has had building regulations that limit height since 1783. Paris currently has plenty of laws limiting development and the shape and size of buildings in the "inner core."

Posted by: Carol Gardens at July 3, 2008 12:40 PM

Looks like its their own da*n house and they can do with it what they want. Geez. Mind your own business - especially since its apparently not your neighbor since you never go down that street like you said. Youre worse than some old busybody.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 12:44 PM

I love the garrett look but why they couldn't face it with brick or even make it a darker exterior color? And the cornice looks out of whack now, rather than the visual top sightline it was meant to be. I'm bet the interior space is wuite beautiful, especially with the arched windows (12:10- I see the face too) but I will never understand how an architect would sign off on a design that works so poorly on the outside- visually speaking.

Posted by: bxgrl at July 3, 2008 12:46 PM

Pray to GOD they will not loan money to Asshats to go shit like this. The sad thing you think the dumbass factor in heating/cooling cost? Did this dumbass factor in higher property taxes? No beacuse Asshats live for the now...

The What

Someday we will run out of money..

Posted by: what at July 3, 2008 1:13 PM

Yeah, people have been putting additions on top of buildings here, and in Paris, for ages--and some of them look great. This one is hideous. An embarrassment to the architect and the owners. An eyesore to the neighbors. It's like a tacky, tasteless McMansion was plucked from the Jersey suburbs and dropped from the sky onto this innocent building.

Oh, the aesthetic evil that men do... call it Carbuncle: The Sequel. These people should get together with the poor schmucks who inevitably will buy in the Carroll Gardens Atrocity (which, admittedly, is much worse), maybe have swingers parties in their above-ground pools.

Thank god for landmark protection—glad I have it. Fortunately for me and my neighbors, and thanks to clueless losers like the above, the great looking houses on our blocks in Clinton Hill will only become more scarce and valuable. People who resist landmark protection are fools. You can have your cookie-cutter studio on 6th Avenue; me, I'll take Bedford and Commerce.

Posted by: Rehab at July 3, 2008 1:52 PM

Polemicist: The house "was obviously originally constructed for a relatively lower income family and has no architectural detail at all. It is a stack of bricks with a lego cornice."

What about the house tells you that? It looks to me like a single family house from the 1850s, one that was not constructed for a relatively lower-income family, but rather for a middle to upper middle class family. Most people in NY and Brooklyn lived in houses like this at the time. It what Greenwich Village, Clinton Hill and many other neighborhoods of that era are made up of.

As for the addition, its pretty awful. The scale kills the building below, and the McMansion aesthetic is horrible. The owner would have been well served to look at European examples of rooftop expansions, and to have done a more modern, less aggressive bulk-wise build over. (Obviously, I'm on the opposite side of Montrose on this - no amount of historicizing is going to make an addition of this size look right.)

And yes, 12:44, its their own d*mn house, but we have to look at it. Their free to promote bad architecture, and we're free to discuss it.

Posted by: WBer at July 3, 2008 2:58 PM

Yes, guest at 12:08 who wrote "Looks like Paris and Berlin. You know there are cities far older than this that survive just fine without LPC telling private property owners what to do."

That was ridiculous. Having lived in Paris, I know that you can't get away with squat there. It is heavily landmarked! hhhhh...ignance... And, the city gov't required building owners to wash their buildings to prettify the city. Can you imagine that in NYC?!!!

Berlin is also tightly controlled. Even if Berline is hazy-daisy compared to much of Germany, there are tight controls on development and facade changes. They're even thinking of landmarked war-damaged facades.

Please find out more before you spout off.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 3:00 PM

I live two doors down from this house. I can say from my rooftop view, it's gonna be pretty bangin'. you can't tell from the street but there's a little lookout point on top for rooftop access.

I will agree it doesn't go with the aesthetics of the block, but if you ask me this whole block is a little funny. The cross roads of beautiful state street and the megalopolis of Atlantic Center. With that there's a strange mix of Brooklyn home design, especially ever since that gray one down the block was remodeled and stuccoed.

Sorry to be a guest, still cant find my user name and password.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 3:11 PM

This reminds me of the famous old story about Frank Lloyd Wright, who said that the only place he would ever consider living in New Haven was in Harkness Tower "because then I wouldn't have to look at it."

Another architectural travesty inflicted on us, by Asshats who won't ever have to look at the craptaculousness they have wrought.

Posted by: WonTon at July 3, 2008 3:26 PM

What is an asshat? is it ass - hat?

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 3:34 PM

I hate these additions. But if it ain't landmarked, I guess you can do what you want.

Hey What, you've got it all backwards. The Asshats figured in the extra rent they'll be able to get by adding two more stories. In fact, it may be the only way they can afford the place.

Posted by: denton at July 3, 2008 3:50 PM

2:58

Yay, another brand new poster! Perhaps even one of the shill trolls?

This area was never really desirable until perhaps this decade, so you are 100% wrong that this house was built for the upper class - it has never been such an area.

As for the details that indicate it was built as inexpensive housing - let me see. The simplistic cornice, the bland concrete lintels, the fact the house is only 3 stories in height, the list goes on. You're just a sill troll though, so what the hell would you really know about historical architecture in this city?

In the end, the house is nothing special. In a sane world - being 2 blocks from one of the largest transportation hubs in the Western Hemisphere - it would be knocked down and replaced with more useful housing.

Posted by: Polemicist at July 3, 2008 4:37 PM

Wber is not new I agree. Brick face is older than brownstone and the only low income folks that I know in the 1850's were Irish Americans.

That addition is ugly. There's a nice addition on the corner of bergen and vanderbilt that blends well with the nabe.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 5:00 PM

Polemecist -

I've been posting on Brownstoner for some years, and have even responded to your posts in the past.

Everything you cite as "simple" describes exactly the architecture of this period. As it happens, I do know a thing or two about historical architecture in this city - enough to be able to say that this is a very typical Italianate style row house, probably of the mid to late 1850s, certainly pre-Civil War. It is the style of building that was built as a single-family residence (yes, a small one, but single family nonetheless). Not unlike many buildings elsewhere in Fort Greene, or even in Brooklyn Heights for that matter. The fact that it has tall parlor floor windows and a cast-iron balcony in front are good indications that it was not a mutli-family flat house, but rather was built as a single-family house. Its hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like it was part of a development, so it WAS probably built on spec by a builder who acquired a series of lots. It was no mansion, but it was also not for the "lower classes", unless by "lower classes" you mean merchants or professional classes of the mid-19th century.

You can tell a lot by looking at a building, if you know what you're looking at. But I'll go back to trolling now.

And regardless of whether or not its anything "special", that doesn't excuse the McMansion addition, which certainly is nothing special. Like I said, you could put a very nice addition on this building - the owners chose not to.

Posted by: WBer at July 3, 2008 5:19 PM

Polemicist Dawl,
Just a note of correction: the lintels are not concrete. We all know that generally on these brick rowhouses, the lintels are brownstone.

It's interesting to think we live right near one of the largest transportation hubs...is that true? Are there numbers handy online showing the number of commuters who travel through the Atlantic/Pacific/LIRR station every day? Kind of cool that in prime FG we're a short walk to it.

Speaking of FG, even with landmarking, we get some travesties. The LPC doesn't effectively control much when it comes down to it.

My opinion on this house: such a large addition on top should have been set back and might as well have been done in a mod style.

FGG.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 5:21 PM

I think probably the whole thing should have been set back but the top floor windows definitely should have been made in to gabled or dormer-type, there is a lot of historical and recent precedent for this. And a proper cornice installed on the very top.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 5:30 PM

looks like a sebaceous cyst to me.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 5:34 PM

a rooftop addition only an anarchist would like. it is a slap in the face to the neighborhood and a hideous protuberance.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 6:08 PM

Close-Up on Boerum Hill, Brooklyn
by Kelly McEvers
October 11th, 2005 the Village Voice

"In many ways, the story of Boerum Hill is the story of Brooklyn. It was settled more than three hundred years ago by Dutch farmers. By the mid-1800s, it was one of America's first suburbs, a place where an emerging middle class of tradesmen and merchants escaped the teeming streets of Manhattan."

So it was a middle to upper middle class neighborhood. I've always loved these simpler rowhouses. They seem so graceful.

Posted by: bxgrl at July 3, 2008 6:22 PM

It seems to me the best approach to this house would have been to pop the cornice and move it to the top of the addition. The big windows would need to be smaller to work, though.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 6:41 PM

To: Polemecist

Brownstone became a popular building material, a fad if you will, around 1850 through 1900. Pre 1850, brick was the material of choice. If you look closer at the single family mansions around Brooklyn Heights, they are brick and brick/brownstone mix. When they started using brownstone, it was not like striking gold and builders everywhere declared - This is for the rich elite snobbs! Additionally, percentage wise, most of the brownstone around brooklyn - mostly those built at the end of the fad, when the stone was cut for maximum use and not dried long enough - are deteriorating. Flaking. Falling apart. Only to be "restored". I only know of one home on Wahsington Ave that the owner is actually using real brownstone to restore his home. The rest of the brownstone snobbs are using....what? ...Colored CEMENT! Well, what does that make it now? A glorified brick filled stucco? Please, do some more research about building materials, and like how wood was milled for its beauty and structural soundness - only to be butchered for maximum usage and profit. Brownstone was no different. And on a lighter note, stick your architectural detail up your ass!

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 9:56 PM

Hey Polemecist,

82 State Street. Another brick house for the poor folk? You must come from new money. Do you drive a Subaru?

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 10:04 PM

you can't have it both ways.

either you totally respect the historic fabric or you really mix it up: you can juxtapose the modern and the traditional, making something new and seriously cool in the process.

but this, in my opinion, is just plain tacky.

Posted by: guest at July 3, 2008 10:44 PM

"Looks like Paris and Berlin. You know there are cities far older than this that survive just fine without LPC telling private property owners what to do."

That's my immediate thought too, seeing the picture even before reading any text from Brownstoner: Lay off, because it's so clear they are simply doing the European thing here. Kind of dumb not to get that. But maybe some people don't travel much.

Definitely have to reserve final judgement until it's completed and the facade is all done. But so far what's odd is they went way out of scale with the windows, for doing a European style addition. The huge size of the arched windows is strange compared to the windows on the original building. Just looks out of balance -- I'm not saying they have to be matchy or anything.

If they wanted an atrium style room up there with large windows, I agree with those who said they should have just gone all modern. Ironically, when you try to make something look historic and in context but then don't really do it right, it can look more out of whack than if you did something ultra modern.

Posted by: guest at July 4, 2008 10:14 AM

If they paint it a dark green to match the house cornice, and to blend in more with surrounding tree tops, it wouldn't stick out so much in that awkward way that's bugging people. They just don't have the facade finished yet.

Posted by: guest at July 4, 2008 10:28 AM

I agree that the facade still comes into play, but so it goes. This block is so strange, and it's a pain in the ass. The spill off point for the crazies and trash in the area. It's unfortunate. If anyone want to buy my house off it and develop feel free to make an offer.

Posted by: guest at July 4, 2008 10:59 AM

Another example of someone with too much money and not enough sense.

Posted by: guest at July 4, 2008 1:31 PM

I recommend that the neighbors sue.
This addition appears to be resting on the party walls. It probably has no permits,
and if it does, the permits were obtained illicitly and are therefore invalid.
Unless you gave prior consent, this thing is resting on your foundations illegally.

DOB wonk

Posted by: guest at July 4, 2008 6:37 PM

For just what reasons should the neighbors sue? The homeowner has a right to build on his property, and telling neighbors to sue for visual offensiveness is simply ridiculous. Granted it could look better with a different facade and moving the cornice up, but you can't sue for differences in taste.

The addition does not appear to be resting on party walls. Look closely at the photo the building to the left is much taller, so on that side each building has built separately and probably at different times so each has its own wall. If there is a party wall on the left, you can see from the photo that the addition lines up with the end of the cornice and is within the owners property line.

Why are you are assuming permits don't exist or were obtained illicitly and are invalid?

Posted by: bxgrl at July 5, 2008 2:28 PM

I lived in one of the tiny houses to the right. There are 2 little houses side-by-side. The owner of one told me they were carriage houses for a big house around the corner on 3rd. Our house has a weird set up. The rooms are small, bathroom in the hall and a narrow stairway in the hall. The stairs are a total waste of space. I dont understand why it was built that way. Maybe the buggy was stored on the first floor, which is one room with a tall ceiling, and the upper rooms were for the servants. I would love to know more about the history of the place.
My mother bought the place in the 1960's and ran a bodega on the first floor till the mid 80's.

Posted by: mb at July 6, 2008 6:01 PM

Out of scale? Um, it's, what, nine feet higher than the building next door. Shame about the cornice position, but big whoop. Age it for thirty years and it'll look pretty nice anyway.

Posted by: Zach at July 7, 2008 12:50 PM

It would be nice if all of you who own nothing and have no money to do a rehab wood but out shut up and get a life!!

Posted by: guest at July 10, 2008 12:23 AM

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