Top 10 Stories on Brownstoner This Week: Tragic Shootings, Schools, & Norah Jones

This week, Brownstoner readers mourned the tragic shooting of Carey Gabay in the early hours of Labor Day, debating whether the West Indies Day Parade should continue to be held. Readers also learned that Norah Jones is the mystery buyer of an adorable Cobble Hill carriage house, and how a Bushwick painter turned his wreck of an apartment into a splendid home.

With the first school bells of the season, Brownstoner rang in School Week with a series of school-themed posts. Highlights included a photo tour of an apartment inside the former P.S. 9 Annex and a look at four recent Brooklyn school rezonings.

All that and more in the week’s top 10 posts.

Cuomo Lawyer Shot in Head and Local Cafe Owner Murdered in Same Week
In the early hours of Monday’s West Indian Day Parade, a volley of gunfire injured Cuomo administration lawyer Carey Gabay. The 43-year-old Harvard graduate and First Deputy Counsel for the Empire State Development Corporation was shot in the head by a passing bullet and, at latest reporting, is in a coma. Gabay’s tragic shooting came just days after the death of another innocent in Brooklyn, a beloved local and the owner of a recently opened Prospect Lefferts Gardens cafe, Rickie Young.

Singer Norah Jones Is Buyer of $6.35 Million “Eat, Pray, Love” Cobble Hill Carriage House
Singer, actress and Bed Stuy native Norah Jones is the secret buyer of the carriage house at 172 Pacific Street in Cobble Hill, which was featured in the film “Eat, Pray, Love.” She purchased it under the name of an LLC in July for $6,250,000, according to unnamed sources cited by The New York Daily News.

Decorative Painter Transforms Bushwick Wreck Into Whimsical Showcase
The Bushwick apartment of designer and decorative painter Matt Austin is a playground of visual creativity. He has playfully painted and paneled the third-floor railroad flat with care, and filled it with eccentric oddities — many of his own design. When Austin moved in, the apartment was a wreck, said New York Magazine, which features the home in its Winter 2016 Design Hunting magazine.

Condo of the Day: One-Bedroom With Balcony, Views in Carroll Gardens
This condo is an attractive one-bedroom in Baltic Tower, a condo building at 378 Baltic Street in Carroll Gardens. (Some might say Boerum Hill or Cobble Hill — the listing has it as the latter.) It’s on the ninth floor with a bunch of south-facing windows and a sliding glass door, so views and light are a big plus here — not to mention the small balcony where the sliding glass door leads.

House of the Day: Renovated Single-Family Brownstone With Details in Clinton Hill
For sale here is an elegant four-story, four-bedroom brownstone at 66 Clifton Place in Clinton Hill, that’s outfitted as a one-family. With original details and a thoughtful renovation, it’s got a fair amount to offer the buyer who can float the price tag without rental income.

How Workers and the Labor Movement Gave Us Labor Day
New York City was home to the first Labor Day parade and rally. The year was 1882 and the place was Union Square, at that time the heart of Manhattan. We’ve been celebrating the American worker with a special day for 133 years. In ways great and small, the 1880s through the turn of the 20th century were a great deal like today.

Report: Brooklyn’s Most Decrepit Subway Stations
A new Citizens Budget Commission of New York report lists 33 stations in the entire New York subway system found to be in the most dire straights, having less than half of their structural components in a state of good repair. Ten of these are in Brooklyn — and none on the F line! Here are the 10 Brooklyn stations in most desperate need of structural repairs.

Boerum Hill Public Housing Project to Get Market Rate Rentals
Boerum Hill’s public housing project Wyckoff Gardens will eventually have market-rate rentals, city officials said Wednesday. The de Blasio administration has selected NYCHA land at 3rd Avenue and Wyckoff Street as the site of the Mayor’s experimental building model that would be half market-rate and half affordable housing.

Peek Inside a Converted Schoolhouse With a Storied Past in Prospect Heights
The old P.S. 9 Annex in Prospect Heights is one of those buildings that everyone stops in front of and wonders, “What exactly is it and how can I live there?” The writer of this article, Bianca Turetsky, did the same thing before she moved into her architect-designed studio in the former school house.

A Look at Four Recent Brooklyn Elementary School Rezonings
The children are coming! As Brooklyn’s population grows, some areas of the borough are seeing more crowded schools. The Department of Education (DOE) can only afford to buy or build so many new buildings to house incoming students. But with or without new infrastructure, a common tactic used by the DOE is to rezone schools to move children from overcrowded districts and into less-crowded ones.