Building of the Day: 349 Park Place
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: 349 Park Place, corner of Underhill Ave. Name: Mount Prospect Laboratory, now Community School District 13 offices Neighborhood:…
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: 349 Park Place, corner of Underhill Ave.
Name: Mount Prospect Laboratory, now Community School District 13 offices
Neighborhood: Prospect Heights (Prospect Heights Historic District)
Year Built: 1938
Architectural Style: Moderne
Architects: Aymar Embury II
Why chosen: The Laboratory was built by the Dept. of Water Supply, Gas & Electric, of the City of NY to test water samples from the city’s reservoirs and waterways. Built at the end of the Depression with WPA funds, it replaced a lab built for the same purposes in 1897. It remained the main testing lab in the city until the 1960’s. The Board of Ed has had it ever since, and it is now offices. Embury was one of the giants of NYC public works, designing or supervising the building of the Triborough Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, Orchard Beach, Prospect and Central Park Zoos, Bryant Park, and McCarren Play Center, all under Robert Moses. GMAP
A rubber room is where they put teachers who are accused of something, though they don’t necessarily tell them what they’re accused of. They sit and do nothing all day and go slowly insane according to stories I’ve heard. It’s where they send whistleblowers and others who stand up to the principal as as well as the incompetents, criminals, etc. Ira Glass did a good story on it. You should find it and listen.
They should teach kung fu in that place.
What’s the DOE’s “rubber room?” Please enlighten us non-DOE employees…..I have long had fantasies of buying this building from the DOE and turning it into a 1-family home. Though not the most typically attractive building in the nabe it has always appealed to me, for some reason….
Oh i love to read about these buildings, they are really very fantastic and have a unique value for all people.
Home Loans
Hmmm – been to some meetings there. The exterior is lovely, the interior is a mess (and also home to an infamous DOE “rubber room”)
The Olmsted Center, the parks department’s design headquarters, “is named in honor of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), co-designer of Central, Prospect, and Riverside Parks, and its hallways commemorate Parks architects Gilmore D. Clarke, Aymar Embury II, and Theodore Kautzky.”
This quote, from the agency’s historical sign, is not completely accurate. The three design divisions at Olmsted are landscape architecture, architecture and engineering. Clarke, Embury and Kautzky were Moses’s right-hand men in each of those respective disciplines.
All three are proof that public works can inspire, as this post and some of the comments attest.
I’ve often wondered about this building.
Now that you mention it, it kind of looks like it was built by the Dept. of Water Supply, Gas & Electric, of the City of NY to test water samples from the city’s reservoirs and waterways. Or, like a public library.
It’s not a bad looking little place, nevertheless, even if the look doesn’t really suit the brownstone neighborhood.
It’s easy to imagine this building being re-purposed.
But, what would be its new use?
His Riis Park buildings are terrific. Always loved those.
Funny you should mention, Bxgrl. Embury designed the NY State Building at the 1939 Fair.