Piece of Historic Wallabout Threatened by Developers

The group of four large commercial properties that take up the entire western side of Hall Street (at left in the bottom photo) between Flushing and Park Avenues in Wallabout—two of which (30 Hall and 12 Hall, pictured at top) are of architectural and historic significance—quietly changed hands last December for $10 million. The new buyers, the team behind HK Management that includes Harry Kotowitz, Howie Klaus and Jeffrey Sitt, have been taking pains to keep a low profile as they seek the city’s complicity in their plot to destroy a piece of Wallabout history.

Architectural historian and Columbia prof Andrew Dolkart discussed the buildings in his 2005 survey of the Wallabout area:

The buildings that survive on the west side of Hall Street were erected by two wholesale grocery businesses. E. Le Grand Beers, who also erected buildings on the east side of Washington Avenue, commissioned the large, seven-story, brick (later stuccoed over), cold storage warehouse at 30-38 Hall Street from George Chappell in 1898. This building was extended to the north (Nos. 24-28) in 1918. Charles Hutwelker commissioned two cold storage buildings to the north, both designed by C. E. Huntley & Co. Hutwelker was a meat packer who went into business in Brooklyn in 1884. The Hall Street warehouses were initially occupied by the Charles Hutwelker Beef Export Company. No. 14-16 was designed in 1909 and No. 18-22 in 1919. These buildings could be included within a Wallabout Industrial Historic District.

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As some of you may be aware, earlier in the 20th century, the city’s biggest open market used to be held across Flushing Avenue from these buildings in what’s now the Navy Yard; as a result, the large buildings in the immediate area were home to many of the city’s biggest grocery companies. In addition, as was pointed out to us by one of the preservationists working on the Wallabout Historic District application, the large awning (photo on the jump) that runs along the entire front of 55 Washington and 30 Hall, is also significant. These two buildings also sit directly across the street from the complex of reinforced-concrete buildings built for the Mergenthaler Linotype company in the earlt part of the 20th century. According to Dolkart, “The entire complex should be designated as a New York City landmark as soon as possible in order to preserve the original features of this architecturally and historically significant complex.”

The ability of these buildings to be included in the Wallabout Historic District (which is still pushing to get in front of LPC) is now threatened by the recent assumption of ownership by HK Management, whose recent track record includes snubbing Dumbo preservationists and pulling the rug out from underneath buyers at 99 Gold Street. HK has already been taking the temperature of local politicians to see if they’d support an application to the BSA to tear down all the buildings to build new residential. What’s interesting is that the four properties (2, 12, 30 and 40 Hall Street) are already overbuilt: Collectively they have about 200,000 square feet of interior space on about 70,000 square feet of lot space, well in excess of the 2 FAR for the area.

If the city does ultimately consider granting a variance for residential in this case, we sincerely hope it will look to the current Domino Sugar Factory situation as a model and insist on the preservation and integration of the buildings at 12 and 30 Hall into any kind of a proposal by the developers. If you have any strong feelings about the future of these buildings or what kind of neighbors these developers are likely to make, we’d encourage you to drop an email to Council Member Letitia James at james@council.nyc.ny.us. Maybe the spectre of this destruction will be enough to get Tierney et al to focus a little harder on designating the Wallabout Historic District. We do hear that Tierney’s planning a tour of the area at some point this summer.
Wallabout Cultural Resource Survey [Myrtle Avenue] GMAP P*Shark DOB