Brownstones
April 23, 2008
Unprotected Sunset Park Being Destroyed Bit by Bit
The website Cititour has an advocacy post about the destruction of brownstones in Sunset Park. The item focuses on the house above, on 54th Street and 6th Avenue, part of "a row of turn-of-the-century brownstones with stained glass windows and fireplaces [that] are being destroyed bit by bit." The blog writer argues:
Witnessing this destruction should make the case for giving the area landmark status before it's too late. The neighborhood has been seeing an all-out assault on row houses in recent months as real estate prices remain fairly high. Some are being torn down to make room for condos, others are having additional floors added, and still other two-family homes are being converted into 4-families, again with the city's blessing, and a total disregard to the neighborhood. It's a crying shame.
While we don't doubt that new construction in Sunset Park is felling older buildings, we're unaware of whether there is an organized movement afoot to landmark the area. Can Sunset Park readers fill us in?
A Brownstone Dies In Brooklyn [Cititour]
Photos from Cititour.
April 2, 2008
It's Almost House Tour Time
Birds chirping, daffodils budding...home and garden tours, on the horizon! Nine house and garden tours have been scheduled for the coming months. First up is the Fort Greene House Tour, which'll take place on Sunday, May 4th; the following weekend the Brooklyn Heights House Tour will happen, followed by the Park Slope Civic Council House Tour on May 18th. After that, there are tours scheduled through the beginning of fall for Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Boerum Hill, Victorian Flatbush, Crown Heights North, and Bed-Stuy. A full listing with info on which organizations to contact for more info is on the jump.
March 26, 2008
Brooklyn Brownstones Stay All in the Family
This morning The Observer reports on how many kids who grew up in houses in the Brownstone Belt are, as adults, moving back in with mom and dad. The trend is seen as having a lot to do with brownstone neighborhoods now being hip and yet frequently unaffordable for recent grads who might otherwise make a go of it alone:
All the graduates interviewed for this story agreed that living on your own in New York City was possible, especially if you had a well-paying corporate job. But for those who hope to someday own property in the areas where they grew up, or to make a career in a less lucrative field, living with your parents makes a certain kind of sense; you can’t afford not to.
The bigger question, maybe, is how much more prevalent this phenomenon is in brownstone areas (which often have bigger houses than in other parts of the city) than it is in other NYC neighborhoods or even the U.S. as a whole. Could this just be part of a larger cultural shift in which more kids are coming back home post-college, or is it indeed more common in brownstone Brooklyn?
Full Brownstone Nests) [NY Observer]
Photo from Orchard Lake.
December 17, 2007
Living in a Cobble Hill Townhouse/Time Capsule
Talk about old-school. According to the cover story in this weekend's City section, the house at 312 Clinton Street in Cobble Hill has been in the same family for five generations, and it's filled with mementos ("collections of bottled fainting remedies, thigh-high men’s socks, and mint-green sales slips for coal") and obsolete appliances, like an Easy brand washing machine built around 1940. The house was purchased in 1866 by the great-great-great-grandmother of its current resident, Nora Geraghty. Geraghty says the house's collection of antiques and lack of some modern amenities have occasionally made her feel like she couldn't "live a modern, normal life," but that the way it connects her to her family's past ultimately justifies the clutter and lack of some mod cons. “The way I feel about my great-great-grandmother,” says Geraghty, “my great-great-grandchildren will feel about me, unless New York is gone by the time they’re born. Because in a thousand years, this place will never be sold.” Are there readers who have been living in the same house as their ancestors and can relate to Geraghty's reluctance to change her property?
The Ghosts of Clinton Street [NY Times]
Photo of 312 Clinton by Kate Leonova for Property Shark.
December 10, 2007
Why Townhouses Are Priced at a Discount
Between 1997 and 2006, townhouses in Manhattan appreciated at a slightly slower rate than condominiums, according to Radar Logic. The reason, according to The New York Times, is basically that a house is a hell of a lot more work than an apartment.
“You hate when you come home from a trip with a lot of luggage and have to drag it up the stairs, or you’re in a huge hurry to leave and you have to run back up to the third or fourth floor dressed up in high-heeled shoes because you’ve forgotten something,” said Barbara Fox, president of Fox Residential Group, who lived for two decades with her husband, James Freund, in a 7,000-square-foot town house on West 73rd Street near Central Park. “And you hate when you have to have repairs because there’s always got to be somebody there to answer the door.”
So, townhouse dwellers, what are your greatest gripes about non-doormaned, vertical living?
Town House Living: The Untold Story [NY Times]
Photo by Littlekim
April 17, 2007
More Nor'easter Wreckage, Prospect Heights Edition
And you thought your house got hit hard by the torrential rains of the last two days! A reader sent in this photo of the tree that used to stand in her back yard. Since it's as tall as a five-story house it reached as far as four-yards away when it toppled yesterday. The estimated cost of removal? $1,800. It's pretty amazing it didn't crush any fences or nice garden furniture. (Gotta love those 130-foot lots they got over there.)
Rain, Rain, Go Away [Brownstoner]
April 16, 2007
Rain, Rain, Go Away
Anticipation of the Nor'easter which began yesterday morning gave us uneasy flashbacks to the biblical floods of October 2005. A month after moving into our newly renovated house, we learned the hard way that the original waste line (which was made of out clay pipe back in the day) had basically disintegrated. When the pounding rains came that fall, the rain collected on the roof, ran down the drain pipe (which fed into the waste line, we learned) and smacked into the pile of earth that our century-old pipe had become. With no place else to go, the water surged up to the first point of release--the tenant's tub and toilet. We ended up having two episodes of major flooding in the apartment. Amazingly, there was only a couple of thousand dollars of damage and the parquet floors emerged unwarped. Still, to say it was a traumatic experience would be an understatement.
So we felt some sympathy for the poor Park Sloper whose clogged drain pipe (above) caused his basement to flood. There have also been some three posts (count 'em one, two, three) on the Forum so far; if you have any experience in these matters, please take a moment to lend your advice. We'd also be interested in hearing other stories of rain damage from the last 24 hours. Watcha got?
The Great Flood of Aught Seven [Flickr]
April 11, 2007
Arch Prof: Brownstones, Good. New Construction, Bad
Over on Stay Free! magazine's blog, there's a great interview with Robert Zagaroli by editor (and limestone owner) Carrie McLaren, associate professor of architectural technology at New York City College of Technology and life-long Brooklynite. The Topic: Were older buildings in general (and brownstones in particular) really built better than today's new construction? Here's what Mr. Z had to say:
It's a cliché, but brownstones truly were built to last. New construction tends to be cheaper in two senses: it costs less and is lower quality. Today, it's perfectly legal to build with half-inch gypsum board, but most people can put their fist through it. If the house gets wet or moldy, the walls can't handle the wear and tear. The standard in brownstones was plaster. You still have plaster walls in 200-year-old houses because plaster is very durable. The materials used in 18th and 19th century construction lasted longer: plaster, brick, and wood from old-growth forests. Today, the labor doesn't exist to install those products. The technology has changed. All wood now is farmed. There is no old-growth forest to tear down, so the wood industry has harvested trees for the last 30 years. It plants fast-growing trees, but the wood shrinks and therefore it's not as reliable, not as durable, not as sturdy, accurate, or dimensionally accurate. Newer wood has a shorter shelf life.
More on planned obsolescence, the NYC building code and why stainless steel kitchen are so 'nineties on the link.
Are Old Houses Really Built to Last? [Stay Free! via Curbed]
April 10, 2007
Front Page Forum: Brownstone Trim Color
Over the weekend, the owner of this brownstone in the Capital Hill nabe of Washington D.C. posted on the Forum, looking for some input on what color to paint his window trim. Since we're partially color-blind, we won't weigh in too much on this one, except to say that we think white should be avoided at all costs on brownstones and even many brick houses (unless it's clearly a Georgian thing). We're probably overly biased against white windows since it's the predominant color of the vinyl windows that mar otherwise beautiful facades in many of the less expensive parts of Brownstone Brooklyn. We went with black, which is pretty much the default color. There were a couple of commenters on the Forum banging the table for dark, dark green. Where do you stand on the issue?
Help Selecting Trim Color for Brownstone [Forum]
February 22, 2007
Brownstone Renos: A Contrast In Styles
The House & Home today section compares the renovation approaches of one couple who went for a bold modern approach to renovating part of their brownstone overlooking Fort Greene Park with that of hardcore preservationists and Clinton Hill old-timers Jim and Sharon Barnes. Here's what we had to say about the modern reno after seeing it last May on the Fort Greene House Tour:
Clearly the boldest departure from brownstone tradition on the Fort Greene House Tour was the parlor floor renovation at 203 Washington Park which featured poured and buffed concrete floors as well as an open-plan loft-style kitchen/dining/living area. We thought the modern approach was largely successful but agree with an earlier commenter that the juxtaposition to the shlubby traditional hallway was a little jarring. Perhaps the coolest part of the design, though, was the giant wall of windows overlooking the garden.
Interestingly, modern and spare does not mean cheap: The Phillips spent $400,000 renovating the bottom two floors.
By contrast, the Barnes have painstakingly restored their Clinton Avenue house over the past twenty years, along with seven other rental properties in the neighborhood. Preservation, to the Barnes, is a kind of calling. “Every one of the people who I met over the years who’d bid on this house were going to tear it to smithereens," says Ms. Barnes. "What is unique about this house is that it is intact.”
A Flood of Foreclosures, but Should You Invest? [NY Times]
FGHT: Modern on the Park [Brownstoner]
Photos by John Lei for The New York Times