Building of the Day: 386 Halsey Street

The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.

Address: 386 Halsey Street, between Marcus Garvey and Throop Avenues
Name: 2 family house
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: 2003
Architectural Style: Pseudo-Mediterranean?
Architect: TSL Architects and Planners
Landmarked: No

Why chosen: Bedford Stuyvesant can easily boast that it has some of the best preserved row house architecture in New York City. Currently, there is a concerted effort by preservationists, homeowners and community leaders to get vast swaths of that very large community protected by landmarking. This is why. Once this address belonged to the first of a group of very fine Italianate brownstones, the rest of the row still stretches unbroken and undisturbed, halfway down the block. By the 1970’s, when the tax photo was taken, this brownstone was boarded up and abandoned, and was now owned by the City. The building was torn down in 1991, the lot, like many others in Bed Stuy, was allowed to lie fallow, until this two family house was built in 2003. I’m sorry, but they could have done better. The original house was 20×40 on a 100′ lot. This house is 14×69, the missing width taken up by a parking corridor. The house itself is just odd. The side windows are certainly necessary, since the house is now so long and narrow, but the sizes are stingy, as are the front windows. The upper doors and the small balconies are superfluous, especially if this is a two family. The top floor set back and roof garden are probably the best features of the house, but should have been done at the rear of the house for the best curb appeal. The ornament in cement is not working either. There certainly is no context here. It seems to me that the city should have simply rehabbed the brownstone, easily making a double duplex like this is. Too many of Bed Stuy’s empty lots were carelessly built on. There are many examples of decent in-fill houses across the city, but most of them seemed to have missed being in Bed Stuy. Landmarking can’t come soon enough.

(Photo: NYC Records, via PropertyShark)

The balconies of 386 can be seen at the end of the row to the far left.