Just Say No To Any More Yellow Brick Buildings
There’s a pair of large apartment buildings going up at the three-way intersection of Wallabout, Marcy and Union (top photo). It’s too early to tell anything about the aesthetics but, man, do we hope it looks nothing like the massive yellow-brick eyesore just to the South (bottom photo). GMAP
There’s a pair of large apartment buildings going up at the three-way intersection of Wallabout, Marcy and Union (top photo). It’s too early to tell anything about the aesthetics but, man, do we hope it looks nothing like the massive yellow-brick eyesore just to the South (bottom photo). GMAP
Unbelievable but true – when I was doing a facade repair on my house, I went out to one of the brick suppliers to chose brick. While I was there, a Hasidic man came in and actually asked them to give him the ugliest, cheapest brick they had. Maybe he was just building a barbeque not a building but one of my theories is that besides needing to build economically to accomodate large families, some of the buildings around Flushing Ave are being built so no one but the Hasidim will want to live in them thereby keeping the neighborhood closed to outsiders.
Seamus, perhaps you are not involved too much in construction, cause you should know that whenever any brick color becomes “hot” it jumps in price 50-75% more then the not-so-hot colors.
Brownstoner you are right to bring attention to the color of bricks. Seems so mundane, but the color of bricks and mortar go a long way towards “helping” a poor design and enhancing a great design. Many of the postwar bricks, from the horrible whites of the Upper East Side, to the multicolor of 50’s queens (complete with stamped texture), to the yellows and pinks and beiges that seem to accompany most of the new Fedders buildings… Yuck! To me the quintissential brick is the red used in many of the city’s armories. Just looking at a plain wall of old red brick with muted mortar is wonderful, seeing the new brick structures, wrenching.
Now they still manufacture nice brick and mortar, can it really be a purely cost issue? What’s the cost per brick for ugly brick vs. the cost per brick for more traditional red brick? What would be the cost difference for a 6 family building? Architects/Developers please comment.
Perhaps a “Use Nice Brick” campaign… subsidies for not using yellow or beige… Long Live Red Brick!
You are totally wrong here, first of all, not all buildings for the Hasidim are build of light colored bricks, a lot of them are made of brown or red, (Bedford cor. Flushing for example), but the Hasidic developers are forced to build it the cheapest and most economical way, simply to make a few bucks.
The Hasidim all have large families, so you have to build big units, 1500 sf. and up, so that alone brings down the price psf, plus the Hasidim all want to live in the hood, but they don’t have the big bucks to shell out over 400 bucks psf, so you charge much less, otherwise you will be left with everything, that’s basically why most of the buildings build for Hasidim will always be an eyesore to some people
My long-held, totally unconfirmed theory is that the Orthodox guys make these buildings out of yellow brick because that’s the color of all of the stone buildings in and around Jerusalem. In fact, I’m pretty certain that this golden-colored stone is mandated in Jerusalem’s building code (Yerushalyim shel zahav — Jersusalem of gold). Granted, the Satmar are totally anti-Zionist, so maybe this is all wrong. Can anyone confirm?
i hope it’s yellow out of spite.