Restoring Original Concrete Wall Pattern


When our apartment building was first constructed in 1927, the interior walls in the hallways and stairs (plaster over concrete) were patterned to look like stones in a castle. See the attached photo. I believe this was part of the faux-medieval look that you see in many of the pre-war apartment buildings in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Flatbush.

Two questions:

(1) Does anyone know the name for this style of plasterwork?

(2) Can anyone recommend a plaster-worker or restoration team that can recreate this style? (Our building is undergoing elevator work, and we do not want to have scars visible in the plasterwork around the new elevator call panels.)

Thanks!

Categories: Restoration
By winthrop | 11/10/2010 9:45 AM | Comment

How To Compare Maintenance


Can anyone recommend a tool or resource or database for doing neighborhood-by-neighborhood comparisons of coop maintenance fees? I live in a coop in PLG, and we have a lot of conversations about whether or not our maintenance is reasonable, and it would be nice to be able to get beyond anecdotal evidence.

Let me describe the thing that would make me happiest: A spreadsheet, where each row was a New York City neighborhood, and where each column was a category of coop building (“large, w/ doorman,” “small, w/o non-doorman,” etc.), and the cells contained a rough estimate of average or reasonable maintenance figures for that kind of building in that neighborhood … perhaps expressed in dollars of maintenance per square foot of apartment.

(Apparently what would make me happiest is a robot real-estate broker.)

Thanks, everyone.

Categories: Maintenance
By winthrop | 10/07/2009 10:27 AM | Comment

Ah, Coop Board Politics


I have a question relating to coops and the rules that control how a sponsor may (and may not) vote its shares during a board election. I’ll spell out the scenario below, in case any of you want to take a crack, but I would appreciate any recommendations for reliable & reasonably-priced lawyers in Brooklyn or Manhattan.

Let’s assume that a coop has a 5-member Board. Let’s say that 1 of those is an automatic designee of the sponsor, and the other 4 are elected by the shareholders. The question is, what are the qualifications required of the 4 elected members. Specifically, is it legal for any of those 4 elected members to be employees of the sponsor?

(If you’re still reading, you’re probably enough a legal buff to want to know this tidbit, too: The Bylaws contain the famous, and famously vague, clause about “not exercising voting control” that led the to Rego Park, etc. case.)

Categories: Legal
By winthrop | 05/06/2009 8:09 AM | Comment

Southern Lights?


Hello.

I realize this is an unusual question, but if no one at Brownstoner knows, then I throw up my hands. It’s about 10:30pm on Thursday night. And, for the last two hours, looking south by southwest from Prospect Lefferts Gardens, there is a strange glow on the horizon, as if enormous lights were shining at the Dyker Beach golf course. Does anyone have an explanation?

Categories: Lighting
By winthrop | 04/16/2009 10:41 PM | Comment