Montrose:

Thanks for this discussion of your namesake, and for the reference to St. Marks Avenue, which I remember from my boyhood in Crown Heights during the 1950s and early 1960s.

On my recent walk through the neighborhood with you, Amzi Hill and BxGrl, I was shocked to see conditions on St. Marks, which back in the day was still one of the handsomest and most prestigious in Crown Heights. True, most of the great houses has been demolished, but several remained and they created a very elegant setting for the big apartment houses where many of my friends lived.

Today, virtually all of the houses are gone (except above Brooklyn Avenue) and the apartment houses are sometimes in very bad condition. Worse, the landscape of the street has disappeared, the trees and shrubs that combined with well-polished canopies to create an appealing residential atmosphere. And to add insult to injury, perpendicular parking now stretches from Nostrand Avenue to Brooklyn Avenue, turning what had been Crown Height's broadest and "best" street into a parking lot.

One of the ugliest buildings in Brooklyn, an elders housing complex, has replaced two of the remaining limestone beauties on the block. When I was a boy, these were in poor condition but with their setbacks, lawns and trees made a wonderful landscaped transition to Brower Park, which before the misguided location of the new Childrens Museum, graced views up and down St. Marks Avenue. One of houses, very similar to the Seamans house, was an orphanage or foster home for boys, who were always available for pick up games in the house's drive. They were a tough little group, rowdier than the middle-class kids in the apartment buildings, but helped to create a socially-mixed network of associations and friendships for neighborhood kids. Were the two houses opposite the Seamans house also by Montrose Morris?

As Crown Heights is restored under the eye of the Landmarks Commission, I hope attention will be paid St. Marks. With New York Avenue, it formed the neighborhood's cardinal axies: the crossing of two of the best streets in Brooklyn, if not New York.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at November 19, 2009 3:07 PM in response to Walkabout: Montrose Morris - Full Circle

This is a good one, Montrose.

Having grown up among Morris' buildings in Crown Heights, I wonder how much kids might be affected if they knew about the designers and builders of their environment. Maybe more of them would get the design and planning "bug" and help us get out of the mess we're in.

I loved Morris' work, but just assumed it'd been there forever, arriving full-sprung in the distant past. As you've pointed out before, Crown Heights is full of interesting architectural personalities, including the occasional woman builder, who if described to school kids might inspire them to become active participants in the development and conservation of the physical environment.

Friends of mine in Chicago are old enough to remember being taught Burnham's "Chicago Plan" in school. This was a common point of reference for all public school kids and a matter of civic pride. Kids in Brooklyn should be learning about Olmsted, Morris, and others. (I didn't -- not until college!) Maybe they'd help better take care of their neighborhoods, as well as teach their parents a thing or two.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at November 10, 2009 10:59 AM in response to Walkabout: The Architects - Montrose Morris, Part 1

It's in threads like these where I miss the What.

Posted by: NOP at November 4, 2009 3:14 PM in response to Church Reboot on Clinton Avenue

Brownstoner:

Having lived in Crown Heights as a boy during the 1950s and early 1960s, it’s very interesting to see the map of the original Crown Heights North Historic District and its extension.

These are the blocks where I spent most of my time, dipping in and out to visit relatives in Park Slope and Manhattan; make the occasional trips to the Brooklyn, Metropolitan, and Natural History museums; and hit the hills for sledding in Prospect Park. Otherwise in them was virtually everything a kid needed: the pals, the doctors and dentists, the bank, the library, the toy shops and (even!) the bowling alley (for nights out with Dad). And just on the fringes were Brower Park and the Childrens Museum, P.S. 138, and movie houses at Eastern Parkway and Grant Square.

In other words, a complete town!

The local folks were a diverse lot: working people, professionals, “bohemians” (like my parents), European refugees, old-line WASPS, African Americans, and Jewish and Irish Americans, the last two groups speaking classic Brooklynese. And although during this period Crown Heights was torn by block-busting and “white flight,” numbers of these people mixed and mingled, their kids attending the same schools, birthday parties and impromptu ball games and served by probably the most racially-integrated cadre of teachers, doctors, nurses and dentists anywhere in Brooklyn at the time.

On a recent walk through the neighborhood with Montrose Morris, Amzi Hill, and BxGrl, I was surprised by how little Crown Heights has changed, physically. Its architecture is older and greyer but most of its outline and detail are intact. The big apartment houses on St. Marks Avenue. The creamy ridge of town houses on New York Avenue. Millionaires’ Row opposite Brower Park. The “taxpayers,” shops and tenements on Nostrand Avenue. Combined, these features rival – if not surpass – the quality found in other designated historic districts and beg the question: What took so long?

Brownstoners comfortable in their landmark digs may not have a memory as long as mine. Most of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Cobble Hill, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene were considered irredeemable by middle-class people of my parents’ generation. And as for Williamsburg, Red Hook and Greenpoint? Slums!

It took 50 years for Park Slope to re-assert itself as one of the most desirable in the city. (I know. My family’s lived there for generations.) It took 30 years for Crown Heights to get landmark designation. In 20 years it may be considered superior to the Slope (my grandmother's opinion back in the 1930s). Whether it becomes so or not is less important than that it has at last received its due as one of the handsomest and architecturally rich neighborhoods in the city.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at October 28, 2009 12:13 PM in response to LPC Tees Up Phase 2 of Crown Heights Landmarking

Montrose:

I've seen drawings for Union Temple's sanctuary, which was to have been built on Plaza Street. It would have brought the old library's classicism across Eastern Parkway and given a very strong "frame" to the arch. Not built, though, because of the Depression. (Instead, we have Meier's glass house.)

I know, I know, this area is called Prospect Heights. But back in the 50's and early 60's when I lived in Brooklyn as a boy, we called it Crown Heights. I had friends both on the plaza and in surrounding streets and we never differentiated their area from my side of Washington or Franklin -- or wherever the "border" with Crown Heights is currently located.

Watch for the day when realtors extend Prospect Heights all the way to Nostrand Avenue!

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at October 20, 2009 1:30 PM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: The Road to Prospect Heights

Everyone:

Made my daily check-in at Brownstoner at a cafe table far from NY and found myself totally absorbed in the OT -- so much so that I continued reading into the street, where it's raining, forcing me into a galleria.

I must look very strange leaning against a shop window pecking this out, but I just have to say "thanks" for the entertaining and informative thread. (The casting of Brownstoners was terrific. But who'll direct? John Waters?)

Regards from the Brooklyn Diaspora,

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at October 8, 2009 11:36 PM in response to Open Thread

As usual, out of town that day, Biff. Congratulations on your multiple "wins."

Bxgrl, maybe some time in the fall. I thought October was likely, but my short time in the city will be filled. November's certainly possible, though. I'll keep Montrose posted.

NOP

Posted by: NOP at October 7, 2009 12:33 PM in response to Open Thread

Brownstoners:

Thanks for the nods in Categories 8 and 26 above.

For a relatively placeless person, Brownstoner's become something of a neighborhood for me.

And the three bloggers I've been able to meet -- Montrose, bxgrl and Amzi Hill -- are terrific people.

I do miss the What. Somehow it's just not the same visiting him on his blog.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at October 7, 2009 12:23 PM in response to Open Thread

That's an idea, Brooklyn Greene. But co-housing implies sharing responsibilities -- and I'm totally undomesticated. I could bring along my NY personal assistant, but she'd only boss everybody around, the way she does me! NOP

Posted by: NOP at October 5, 2009 8:52 PM in response to House of the Day: 276 Berkeley Place

Re. HOTD:

What a joint!

How could anyone possibly complain about it -- if they could afford it? (With the exception of Brownstoners, of course!)

And by the looks of the house's furnishings, the folks currently there live quite nicely, thank you.

Posted by: NOP at October 5, 2009 3:57 PM in response to House of the Day: 276 Berkeley Place

Nomi, of course what I meant to write is that boards, landlords or agents can't discriminate in selling or leasing apartments in NYC, whether coops, condos or rentals.

Good night.

Posted by: NOP at September 29, 2009 1:03 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 35 Prospect Park West, #14A and 15A

Minard,

I'll quote you for your own benefit. And from today's Brownstoner, September 28, 2009 at 1.42 pm in the Slope synagogue thread:

"My goodness, if anyone has been involved in the real estate or architecture business in New York City for longer than ten minutes they know about which are the Jewish buildings and which are the Gentile buildings and which are the buildings with the rich Catholic families, etc etc. Same with private clubs. It's not the sort of thing that is enforced by law, it is enforced by human mores, for better or worse.

Twenty years ago the racial boundaries in Brooklyn were as hard as those in Johanesburg. Apartheid was not a state law but it may as well been.

Are you all that young?"

That's your quote, in its entirety, which sets the general context for my personal experiences, those of my friends and visitors, and those of people confronted by discrimination at New York cooperatives as reported in the Times.

And Nomi:

It's not cooperative boards' right to discriminate by race, gender, religion or sexual orientation in New York City housing, whether it's a condo in Park Slope or a cooperative on Fifth Avenue or a rental unit in Flushing.

It's against the law.

Not that agents won't steer people away from certain buildings to avoid conflicts. That's against the law, too.

Know your rights. You may some day have reason to want to use them. :)

Posted by: NOP at September 29, 2009 12:03 AM in response to Co-op of the Day: 35 Prospect Park West, #14A and 15A

Minard Lafever:

As to the co-op review process working "super well" for "real folks" that depends on your definition of real folks.

For real folks outside the co-op's social profile it doesn't.

For people of color it doesn't.

And even for rich gays, it sometimes doesn't.

Just read the New York Times to learn about blacks who've been "politely" shown the door; Asians and South Asians bringing suits against co-op boards; and the occasional "social" gay who can't get into Sutton Place.

And discrimination isn't limited to the Upper East Side but can be found in middle-class precincts in Queens. (Again, read the New York Times.)

I have rich friends who've moved to New York from India who've passed on the indignity of appearing in front of another co-op board, opting for a multi-million dollar condominium and paying a 30% premium over the cost of a comparable co-op. (Why do you think condominiums are more expensive than all but the very best co-ops? Because in many cases they're less "exclusive," the transaction direct between buyer and seller -- without intrusive boards -- making them more valuable on the open market.)

Just recently, Indian guests of mine from London were shown the service elevator by the doorman at my Park Avenue building! I let him have it, believe me, but his behavior is so culturally ingrained that he was less upset than bemused by my response. (His look was quizzical, not ashamed, as in, is there really a problem about this?)

Yikes!

Posted by: NOP at September 28, 2009 9:03 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 35 Prospect Park West, #14A and 15A

You can say that again, Minard.

Emery Roth, architect of today's co-op of the day, was a Jewish immigrant from Hungary who was denied admission to the AIA and wouldn't be allowed to own or rent in several of the buildings he designed. (He ended up building his own pile on the West Side and moving into the penthouse.)

More recently, my parents, who were in the arts, were friends of Harry Belafonte. He couldn't find an apartment for his family so he bought an entire pre-war building just so they could move in. Eventually, he sold off all the other units as co-ops, making a bundle.

Justice of a kind, I suppose.

Posted by: NOP at September 28, 2009 2:01 PM in response to Ceiling Collapse Shuts Down Slope Synagogue

Tybur6:

That second entrance is a housing code requirement: the second floor needs access to the public hall and fire stair.

Two combined apartments?

Not likely. Everything is too well-organized, from functional adjacencies to hierarchies of "public" and "private" spaces.

You have to love that second stair to the kitchen. Originally meant to separate family from the staff, it makes a great "back stair" for today's kids. They can get straight to the cookie jar!

Emery Roth was a master of the apartment building, and this unit shows his touch. My New York place is in one of his 1920s co-ops. I know it's not a brownstone, but in its way, it's just as good.

Posted by: NOP at September 28, 2009 1:32 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 35 Prospect Park West, #14A and 15A

Interesting note on the congregation's website: Park Slope was all but "impenetrable" to Jewish families in the mid-20th Century.

As late as the 70's, acquaintances living on Prospect Park West bragged how their buildings were "restricted."

Good grief!

Which is why Eastern Parkway is where middle- and upper-middle-class Jewish families lived and Turner Towers at 135 Eastern Parkway, according to a Jewish friend of my family's, was built to be "better" than buildings on Prospect Park West.

These fine points of distinction still exist, at least in Manhattan, right down to the wings of the same building.

At 740 Park, the Park-Avenue side of the building has proportionately more Jewish owners than the rear-wing, where "old money" WASPS use a separate elevator core.

My own grandparents left Park Slope in the early 1930s because, as they put it, the neighborhood was "declining." They lived a couple of blocks from the temple and its new community house.

I never correlated their decision with Beth Elohim's arrival and expansion. But I have to wonder.

Posted by: NOP at September 28, 2009 12:59 PM in response to Ceiling Collapse Shuts Down Slope Synagogue

Montrose:

It’s probably too late New York time for you to read this, but thanks for re-introducing me to two of my favorite Brooklyn apartment houses, The Imperial and The Alhambra, which figured in my 1950’s Crown Heights boyhood. The first was a fun house for kids. The second was where I was introduced to the world of adults (or, more specifically, the world of adult males, as represented by my father and his friends).

My pal “L” lived at the Imperial. From the street, the building was so big that my small brain couldn’t take it all in. And inside, there more twists and turns than could be counted: gloomy stair halls, creaking steps, long passages -- spooky for a kid.

L’s apartment seemed to extend forever. There were the “children’s” parts of the apartment – the hall leading to his room, his room, the kitchen, various nooks and crannies – and the “parent’s” parts, which were off limits. There were fire places, which were never lit. And monumental doors. No amount of modernizing touches could lighten up the place. This was deep in the heart of Victorian Brooklyn.

You must understand. Brooklyn in the 1950s was as close to the 19th Century as it was to the Twenty-First. And Crown Heights, mid-century, was transitional, parts of it still “proper” where people spoke in antique accents (inserting “R’s” in every vowel, as in “water” pronounced “warter”) and rustling among the tea cups, other parts rocking to R+B.

And The Imperial fit right in.

L’s parents were “cool” bohemian types (like my parents, or today’s hipsters) but had the wood-fretted Suburban waiting at the curb to haul us out to their house in the Hamptons, back when they were real “summer colonies” and not plutocrats’ redoubts. Casual, but correct!

Poor “L” was ahead of the curve. The little guy had braces before any of the rest of us and would lather at the mouth like a mad pup (all those rubber bands). “The Foamer,” Dad called him. But he was sweet and funny, and his parents always welcomed his friends. That is, as long as we stayed clear of the adults’ part of the joint, which was cordoned by velvet ropes (I kid you not!).

Meanwhile at the Alhambra lived a good friend of my parents, “R.” An elderly artist, whom I remember as club-footed, greeted his visitors with great formality and led them slowly to his parlor at the end of the hall. His paintings lined the walls and his furniture mixed Mexican and Indian influences (cheap, back then).

One of my basic childhood memories is from R’s living room. In this dark, high-ceilinged room, he and Dad spoke about politics and art while I ate date bread with raspberry jam. The light from the arched windows gave them a spectral appearance, emphasizing their voices, which were deep and – because of the topics – mysterious. But I was so happy to be included in their company (even if, as I now realize, I was parked to the side with my snack). Very different, I knew, from my mother’s “visits” where children were often the focus of attention. With Dad, I was expected to occupy my time, just like a little man. Or what a man was presumed to be at the time.

By the 1950s, buildings like The Imperial and The Alhambra were coming to the end of their first lives. Who would live in them except the bohemian, elderly and/or poor? Everyone else was moving to the suburbs. But for those who remained behind, they were proud places. Which makes my heart sink when I think of the abuses they suffered by the 1960s.

Now, they’re wonderfully restored – at least from the street. Sure they’re chopped up and probably indistinguishable on the inside from any other affordable housing. But how their brick glints in the sun! And how their turrets pierce the sky!

For this Brooklyn kid, peerless.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at September 22, 2009 10:46 PM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: All Things Luxurious

Miss Priss:

It took Fifth Avenue 50 years to improve. No kidding. For decades it was a danger zone where Park Slope members of my family never ventured.

In the cycle of residential neighborhoods, retail streets are always the first to go and the last to come back. If the blocks around Fulton are improving markedly -- and they appear to be -- the street may finally have its "moment."

But beware! As Oscar Wilde said: The only thing worse than not getting what you want can be getting what you want. If this stretch of Fulton becomes Fifth Avenue, you and your neighbors may be priced out of the neighborhood.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at September 17, 2009 12:22 AM in response to Money Starting to Flow to Fulton Street

Didn't the character played by Jack Nicholson in "Prizzi's Honor" live here?

Can't imagine Mafia hit men would pass the co-op board.

But maybe the film was made about the days when the place was a rental (which would enable hit men to be grand-fathered in).

Posted by: NOP at September 14, 2009 11:44 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 57 Montague Street, #4A

And to think my grandparents gave up their house on a "name" street in Park Slope during the 1930s because the neighborhood was "declining."

Oh, well.

(Still, the market's done better than real estate over time. Then again, to have a place like this in the family would be v. nice.)

Posted by: NOP at September 14, 2009 11:39 PM in response to House of the Day: 591 2nd Street

NYU had a beautiful campus in the Bronx, CG ups. They moved there in the late 1800s when the Village was becoming crowded and unpleasant and they had the opportunity to move to a pristine palisade above the Harlem River.

Eventually, they moved back. With the Bronx's collapse in the 1970s, they were only to happy to re-consolidate around Washington Square.

Now all the McKim Mead and White buildings belong to a City University division. Definitely worth the trip, but a reminder of false hopes in the bucolic.

Posted by: NOP at September 11, 2009 2:26 PM in response to Pratt: Not In Our Front Yard

And Montrose, we never looked with "derision" at Pratt.

We never thought of it.

Which is probably worse.

Posted by: NOP at September 11, 2009 2:13 PM in response to Pratt: Not In Our Front Yard

When I was at Columbia during the 1970s, the administration seriously considered moving the entire university out of the city and to Westchester, where the Harriman family had donated an estate. The students wouldn't hear of it. Why come to Columbia in the first place if it weren't in Manhattan? "We're not Dartmouth," we argued.

Not that anything we said determined the final decision to stay in town (although I'm sure there are faculty and admnistrators who'd be happy to split, even now).

But we had a point. City universities are different from ones in the country. City life is tense, sometimes threatening and (occasionally) dangerous and for students who dive into it, exhilerating, enriching and maturing.

Columbia and Pratt contribute to New York. But New York contributes a great deal to them. Herman Wouk (still alive back then, is he now?) told us that what we'd learn outside the Columbia gates would be as important as if not more important than what we learned inside. New York in th 70's also gave us swagger because we'd been tested in one of the toughest urban environments anywhere. And once we graduated, it made us impatient with the "small town" life of Cambridge and Boston where lots of us continued school.

And yes, Columbia's 116th Street gates were always open.

Posted by: NOP at September 11, 2009 1:59 PM in response to Pratt: Not In Our Front Yard

Wasder: What happened is that Pratt student who was mugged and so badly beaten recently. The incident may have occurred off-campus, but it was just the kind of incident that sets off alarm bells among college administrators for whom crime (and the perception of crime) is a major "marketing" issue. Better to cordon off the campus and provide the illusion of safety than leave prospective students (or more likely their parents) in fear.

Posted by: NOP at September 11, 2009 11:09 AM in response to Pratt: Not In Our Front Yard

If Pratt wants to be so private, perhaps it should start paying taxes.

Posted by: NOP at September 11, 2009 10:35 AM in response to Pratt: Not In Our Front Yard

That should be Norma Desmond.

Posted by: NOP at September 4, 2009 1:32 PM in response to Bay Ridge McMansion

Calling Norma Desomond!

Posted by: NOP at September 4, 2009 1:31 PM in response to Bay Ridge McMansion

BrooklynSoFar:

Eastern Parkway's decline came in two waves:

With the Great Depression, many of its big apartments were subdivided to make them affordable (just as they were in middle-class areas of Manhattan). Then, in the early 1960s during suburban "white flight," many landlords let their buildings go.

Today, the parkway is still one of the city's most beautiful streets, and the astronomical price (from my standpoint) asked for a little apartment like the one at 125 speaks of its rediscovery by middle-class people. The buildings, however, are strictly hit-or-miss.

Turner Towers, Copley Plaza, 125, The Woodrow Wilson and other co-ops and condos appear to have held on or are in the midst of coming back. Some, like the Martinique, apparently a rental, look to be in bad condition from the street. Because it's always been monumental and rather lonely at night (even when I was a boy), potential buyers should measure the importance of having the convenience of the park, museum, library, gardens and subway against having to walk or drive to shops and services (and walking from the subway to their front doors in the dark, which is why my mother didn't move the family to Number 201, even though it was a "good" address at the time).

I'll admit that when I visit Eastern Parkway I grow a little wistful, especially when passing Number 25. When I was a boy, my friend K lived there in a comfortable, rambling apartment. Now this neo-Georgian building is entered through rusty metal-plated doors, the rest of it appearing in very poor shape.

But with the opening of On Prospect Park and new condos rising at Franklin Avenue, I imagine this part of the parkway will pick up in the next real estate cycle. (How long from now, who knows?)

Four hundred thousand for a one-bedroom here? Not in today's market!

NOP

Posted by: NOP at September 3, 2009 6:19 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 125 Eastern Parkway, #5E

Turner Towers is, I believe, 135 Eastern Parkway. It and this building share prime Eastern Parkway frontage, one of the best stretches of my old neighborhood, Crown Heights (which is what we called it back in the 1950s).

The buildings range from the restrained neo-Georgian Theodore Roosevelt and Martha Washington, to the neo-Italian Renaissance palazzo Copley Plaza, to the over-the-top Martinique, which looks like it stepped from Paris by way of Budapest. A terrifically eclectic brew representing Brooklyn at its peak just before the Great Depression.

This little unit appears symptomatic of the street's decline. The plan and inconsistent wall treatments indicate it was carved from a much larger apartment. Even during the 1950s there were enough such places left along the parkway: sprawling three- and four-bedroom pads as big as houses, making visits to my pals real fun. Down the wide parkway, across impressive lobbies, up elevators and into homes that seemed to stretch forever (with, from the upper floors, knock-out views of the Botanical Gardens or, from the back, the Manhattan skyline).

I had friends on the parkway from Brooklyn Avenue to Grand Army Plaza. One by one they left as the neighborhood "changed." Interesting to see a little one-bedroom asking nearly $400,000 now, a fat multiple of the prices for the suburban houses where they moved. (Of course, you could buy a three-bedroom at the Dakota back then for $25,000!)

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at September 3, 2009 2:40 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 125 Eastern Parkway, #5E

Petebklyn:

Apartment houses weren't always welcomed by the neighbors when they first appeared.

Fifth Avenue denizens attempted to restrict their street by covenant to "first-class" single-family houses and then, when that failed, to limit the height of buildings to six floors, thinking that would discourage the big apartment houses.

By the 20's, the courts overturned these limits and the big Candella and Roth buildings changed Central Park's eastern skyline.

NOP

Posted by: NOP at September 1, 2009 11:33 AM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: Lux Living: Apartment Hotels

Thanks, Montrose. Buildings of this type were -- and are -- "machines for living." The latest version is William Beaver House in lower Manhattan, with hotel services, screening room, swimming pool and cleverly laid out, postage-size apartments with every electronic gadget and built-in.

My own place in New York is similar to the buildings pictured above. Built in 1928 by Emery Roth, it still has a restaurant that sends up my food, a valet who takes care of my clothes, and a concierge who'll receive and store my packages while I travel (which is most of the time) -- the kinds of services made affordable by sharing them with other members of the co-op. (Another reason for the development of the New York apartment house, which emerged as the cost of domestic help escalated.) My favorite feature: the central air-conditioning system, probably among the first in the city, which whines and rasps like an historical relic.

Although the building's demographic is increasingly young, there are still some holdovers from the "glory" days. Ladies in Chanel suits. Old duffs in tweeds. Truly a step back in time.

But families have rediscovered the place and the lobby can feel like a kindergarten. During summers, the place shakes as the newcomers rebuild and recombine apartments. That's fine, but like a good Brooklyn brownstone, fine old apartment houses should be left intact. Which is why I'll never change a thing, happy in my apartment's antiquated "modernism."

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at September 1, 2009 11:01 AM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: Lux Living: Apartment Hotels

Thanks for the advice, Brooklyn Greene.

As for Fifth Avenue, the restaurant was French and at a street corner. My hosts told me it was "so much like Paris" that the new Nora Ephrom film about Julia Child used it as a location. The warm leek appetizer was very good, the duck breast also good. With desert, cocktails and a bottle of Margaux, the bill came to less than $200 for three people. (Try getting that in Midtown!)

NOP

Posted by: NOP at September 1, 2009 8:46 AM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

Brooklyn Greene:

Hello.

Actually, I broached the topic of consolidating households in a Brooklyn brownstone with my relatives a couple of days ago, but they're nicely fixed and not looking to move. (Because I'm busy traveling most of the year, I'd want a place that's well-occupied.)

Their counter-suggestion: Let's consolidate our country places in Maine or Vermont as a family compound.

Not convenient for me. (Who needs a fourth place to live?) But the seeds have been planted and I see a new family project on the horizon. (This always happens. I drop an idea and everyone runs with it in an entirely different direction.)

Brooklyn looked wonderful, though. The rain's really made the streets green and leafy. And the air, after weeks of city grit in Europe and Asia, seemed unusually fresh.

The food on Fifth Avenue was good, too -- and a fraction of what it costs abroad (or Manhattan, for that matter).

Will meet you again on Brownstoner.

NOP

Posted by: NOP at August 31, 2009 3:27 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

FAN OF PITBULL ROB

Just got back to USA to discover Rob's been "banned."

That's too bad. His stream-of-conscious musings -- good and bad -- often offered interesting insight into a New York personality.

And what happened to the What? Is this the same country I left only a few weeks ago?

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at August 31, 2009 2:55 PM in response to Open Thread

Critics on this thread must live in extraordinary luxury.

Who wouldn't be happy in this house?

And if you can afford it, you can fine tune it to just what you want.

Still, with the commercial real-estate market about to melt down, better bide time before taking on such a big-ticket item.

(By the way, walked on Eighth Avenue the other day while visiting family in the Slope. Still one of the most beautiful streets anywhere in the country.)

Posted by: NOP at August 31, 2009 2:32 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

Fort Greene = Murray Hill.

Yikes!

Posted by: NOP at August 10, 2009 10:33 PM in response to Streetlevel: Der Schwarze Kölner Now Open

Well, I guess "old" Brooklyn is gone for good.

When you see post-collegians in summer skirts and yellow t-shirts coifing beers in a Fort Greene beer garden's open plate-glass window, the borough's moved beyond -- even! -- the hipster phase.

It's now in full Hanover/Ann Arbor/Palo Alto mode.

The hipsters are dead. Long live post-collegians.

Until the next "set" comes along. (Which is any day now.)

Posted by: NOP at August 10, 2009 6:51 PM in response to Streetlevel: Der Schwarze Kölner Now Open

Don't hold your breath, Six Years.

Posted by: NOP at August 5, 2009 11:36 AM in response to Broadway Triangle Creates a Wedge in Williamsburg

Back in the mid-60s there was a lot of controversy about beginning an urban renewal project here.

And they're just getting around to starting?

Yikes!

Posted by: NOP at August 5, 2009 10:36 AM in response to Broadway Triangle Creates a Wedge in Williamsburg

"French flats" were tenements!

One of the the lessons I picked up from Jackson's history course at Columbia was that ALL New York City multiple-family buildings containing three or more apartments were legally classified tenements (unless they were hotels) until a new housing law in the 1920s changed the designation "tenement" to "multiple-family dwelling."

And that means that a lot of grand buildings, including ones along Prospect Park West, Eastern Parkway, etc., if built before the 1920s, were tenements, although their builders may have advertised them as French flats to appeal to an "up" market.

Granted there were changes in tenement laws from the 1860s to the 1920s, but even the fanciest buildings on Park Avenue were guided by their rules regarding windows, room sizes, construction standards, emergency egress, etc. (Ever see the backs of a lot of high-rise Fifth Avenue apartments? They have fire escapes!)

And yes, Montrose, many of the three- and four-story buildings on top of shops in Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant would be classified as tenements.

I had a friend who lived in one of them back in the 50s, when I was a boy. His place was a classic railroad flat, sharing the floor with an identical apartment. With two floors above a storefront there were four apartments in the building, making it a tenement.

W's apartment was cramped, dark and simply furnished. Different from any of my other friends' fathers, his dad wore overalls to work. One thing tenements did was accommodate working-class families in otherwise middle-class neighborhoods -- a social benefit for kids of all backgrounds, who mixed. And with stores on the ground floor, these homely little buildings offered services to everybody -- as they do to this day along Brownstone Brooklyn's Seventh and Fifth Avenues, Fulton Street, and Nostrand Avenue.

Posted by: NOP at August 4, 2009 2:06 PM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: Tenement Living

Montrose:

The historic photo at the top of your post is a great one!

Who were these people? What became of them? How did they see themselves in Brooklyn of the time?

Housing is, above everything else, about people, the vast majority of them anonymous.

Were the ones in these tenements told they were to depict life in a "slum" (as noted on the photograph)? Or did the photographer merely ask them to pose? Blowing up the image, it's possible to see a woman bent over her child giving what appears to be the smile of a proud mother.

There are families and individuals here, not slum "types."

Taking Kenneth Jackson's History of New York City course at Columbia many years ago, I learned that around 1900 75-percent of the city lived in tenements because most people were poor, the Lower East Side had a population density the same as Calcutta, the city's murder rate was over 700 people year (with today's much larger population, the equivalent of 2,300), the jails were filled with immigrants and their children (approximately one third of them Jewish, which correlated with ethnic poverty rates at the time), and there were 50,000 homeless children roaming the streets.

Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Heights, etc. represent only a small piece of the city back in the day.

What did the people pictured above think of Brownstone Brooklyn, if they thought of it at all?

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at August 4, 2009 12:16 PM in response to Walkabout with Montrose: Tenement Living

Mopar:

Note that Ocean Avenue meets other streets at an angle, according to the Google photo above. My guess is that the architect tried to "reconcile" the geometries in his apartment plans.

The effect is weird, though!

Posted by: NOP at July 29, 2009 11:01 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 416 Ocean Avenue, #12

Bon Temps (2:03): Thanks!

Checked the building's floor plans on Street Easy. Some of them look interesting.

Wonder how I missed this one. Thought I knew all the big pre-war apartment houses in Brooklyn.

The lobby's definitely worth a sneak peak. Reminds me of some of the great ones in my boyhood neighborhood, Crown Heights.

Just wish they were all in such great shape these days. (They were when I was a kid in the 1950s.)

Dig that ceiling's coffers!

And the polished elevator doors!

Looking at the street view, my guess this place went up in the 1920s and the builders may have imagined a new "Gold Coast."

Then the Depression hit, alas.

Posted by: NOP at July 29, 2009 6:02 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 416 Ocean Avenue, #12

That's one of the oddest apartment plans I've ever seen.

Makes me wonder if back in the day it was a doctor's office and later rigged up as an apartment. Many buildings in Brooklyn this vintage had similar places on the first floor but converted them to residential use as neighborhoods changed. (Think Eastern Parkway and St. Marks Avenue.)

That said, the building's a beauty.

With the right architect (and a couple of hundred grand) this apartment could work. Although I'd negotiate the price way down, given the economy and the market.

Posted by: NOP at July 29, 2009 1:44 PM in response to Co-op of the Day: 416 Ocean Avenue, #12

Biff: I call it "The Loop." Whenever I mention it my friends and family glance away, avoiding my invitations to join me. But I'm happy to do it on my own. NOP

Posted by: NOP at July 28, 2009 4:13 PM in response to Open Thread

RE. BROOKLYN WALKS

I encourage everybody to take up Montrose Morris on her offer to walk around Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant. She, Amzi Hill, BxGrl and I covered part of the Crown Heights leg one recent Sunday and it was terrific!

Here's a long walk everyone may consider. I do it when I get pangs for Brooklyn:

-- Taxi or subway to Court and Montague
-- Weave around blocks adjacent to Montague to waterfront
-- Walk back to Clinton Street then south to Cobble Hill
-- In Cobble Hill weave between Clinton, Court and Smith Streets
-- Continue to Gowanus
-- Cross Gowanus into Park Slope, hitting Fifth for refreshments.
-- Get to Grand Army Plaza by way of Prospect Park
-- East on Eastern Parkway to Brooklyn Museum
-- Wind through nearby blocks back to Vanderbilt Avenue
-- North on Vanderbilt to Atlantic
-- Wind through Clinton Hill/Pratt Institute
-- Connect to Fort Greene and park
-- Pass Brooklyn Tech toward downtown
-- Catch subway or taxi at Municipal Building.

It's a good walk, but makes a wonderful cut through "brownstone" Brooklyn, mixing residential, institutional, commercial, industrial and park spaces -- and its good in most any weather (except rain, of course).

I get the craving about once a year.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at July 28, 2009 4:03 PM in response to Open Thread

Thanks, MM.

These developers and their architects have evolved an interesting housing "type" at this site and others down Pacific Street.

Brownstoners may recognize the historic "open-stair" Home and Tower Buildings elsewhere in Brooklyn, built during the 1870s, and their translation here, which makes for an unusual, and potentially lively, facade.

And 32 units should bring some welcome pedestrian activity to that side of Pacific Street, which I remember as rather dark and lonely due to the parking lot.

Regards to BxGrl and Amzi Hill.

NOP

Posted by: NOP at July 23, 2009 4:15 PM in response to Development Watch: 1311 Pacific Street

PS:

The last image of one of the lofts' interiors looks toward my old apartment through its big plate glass windows. As a boy, I'd sit in our window seat and watch the street. The photo-shopped rendering brings me back half a century!

Hope these units are able to sell, although even at $300,000, given these times and the project's location, that seems high.

NOP

Posted by: NOP at July 23, 2009 3:54 PM in response to Development Watch: 1311 Pacific Street

Brownstoner:

These condos are rising on the empty lot that sat opposite my family's apartment on Pacific Street, where we lived during the 1950s and early 1960s.

I was shown them on a recent walk through Crown Heights and was happy to see them.

Although the old lot opened a view from our place all the way to the tower of the old Boys High School in Bedford Stuyvesant, it was always a kind of forlorn place, a big gap in a row of architecturally interesting buildings. An old slate parapet wall at its edge made me think it may have been the site of a free-standing mansion, similar to the one next door to us (a former "house of the day" on Brownstoner).

Pacific Street was then, and still is, a mixture of row houses, tenements, and walk-up and elevator apartment buildings. The Tuscan-inspired building next to the new condos, seen to the left in the photograph, was the first harbinger of change on our block. It turned from a stable apartment house to a transient place where young single men and women (some of the latter prostitutes, according to my parents) would hang out on the street and trouble passersby, prelude to the kind of block-busting that raced through Crown Heights during the 1950s and early 1960s, turning our building, 1280, into a rooming house where suspicious fires encouraged the remaining families to leave.

It was good to see that the building appears recently renovated, along with several others on the block. My own building, after near abandonment, has been renovated, too, although a number of its beautiful features, like our leaded-glass French windows and the wrought-iron lobby doors have disappeared.

Once the condos are opened, there'll be only one eyesore on the block, a tall, handsome house currently abandoned and surrounded by chain-link fencing and a pack of guard dogs. As New York eventually gets out of the recession, there'll be pressure to fix this building. Then Pacific Street between Nostrand and New York Avenues, which I remember as a racially-integrated block of working, middle-class, and professional people, will finally be complete. And with the introduction of modern architecture, visually refreshed.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at July 23, 2009 3:44 PM in response to Development Watch: 1311 Pacific Street

RE. GATES

Gee, the professor's predicament is ricocheting around the world! Even here, on Brownstoner.

Now he's speaking about turning the incident into a "teaching moment" by making it a film.

Here's a suggestion: Drop by Spike Lee in Oak Bluffs this summer (no doubt you reside just a stroll away) and set it up. Spike's even old enough to play you. (And is starting to look like you, too; just give him a cane).

I imagine a version of the street action, Cambridge style, of "Do the Right Thing" (the best Brooklyn movie, ever), featuring doddering Harvard profs and administrators, wise-cracking undergraduates and skater kids, and "ethnic" cops with New-England accents.

With a special appearance by President O., calling for calm, just like Da Mayor.

Since nothing else seems to get us out of our racial quagmire, maybe satire will.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: NOP at July 22, 2009 4:44 PM in response to Open Thread