New Conversion for Crown Heights
Nostrand Park highlights some “mad construction” going on in their own backyard. According to the neighborhood blog, after a year spent clearing out the old tenants, the four-story building is now in the process of being converted into condos. A check with DOB records confirms this news: The 10,000-square-foot building is in fact being turned…
Nostrand Park highlights some “mad construction” going on in their own backyard. According to the neighborhood blog, after a year spent clearing out the old tenants, the four-story building is now in the process of being converted into condos. A check with DOB records confirms this news: The 10,000-square-foot building is in fact being turned into eleven residential units. Whether it will be condos for sure or rentals remains to be seen. UPDATE: A reader contacted us to let us know that this is being developed by Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City. Based upon the group’s past projects (including 320 Sterling Street), it seems more likely that these will end up being co-ops.
What Goes Up? 856 Nostrand Avenue [Nostrand Park] GMAP
Photo by Abeni G.
Thanks for the invitation, snowboardqueen. But I’m rarely in NYC and v. camera-shy. Good luck with your project, though. It sounds like a good one.
Brownstoner, thank you for the picture credit in the above article.., but the link to my website is www. Jenone.org not . com. Could it please be changed? I would appreciate it!!!
NOP, I’ve been trying to connect with you. I’m doing a documentary about the changing Crown Heights. I just moved in to 770 St Marks, heard it was a gorgeous building in it’s day. Iwoukd love to interview you!
Abeni Garrett
Brownstoner:
A sure sign that a neighborhood is “improving” is the revitalization of its commercial streets — now the case in Crown Heights, where I grew up during the 1950’s and 1960’s.
A very distinguished city planner once told me that shopping streets are the first to go and the last to come back in the cycle of neighborhood change. So it looks like Nostrand Avenue, at last, is beginning to reflect long-time and new residents’ efforts at restoring their community.
This little section of the avenue was very appealing to me as a kid. At the corner of Eastern Parkway was the Kameo Theater, where my little brother and I went to Saturday matinees (and where I occasionally hid out while playing hooky from school).
Across Nostrand, but also on the parkway, was a Chinese restaurant, where we’d go with our parents on family nights out. (Back then, there were few choices in cuisine anywhere in New York. It was either Italian, Chinese, or French, unless one ventured to Yorkville for German.) The place was nicely done and, unusual for a Chinese restaurant, had red banquets and white table cloths, for Crown Heights back then, “fine dining.”
And at the northeast corner was my bank, a big limestone number with enormous arched windows, just the kind of place to entrust my nickels and dimes. (Still there but under a different name.)
Eight-fifty-six may have been the location of Buster Brown Shoes, belonging to a kids’ chain that I’m pretty sure’s extinct. By the time I was old enough to get my shoes at department stores, my little brother still had to sit through the pain and embarassment of being fitted for the funny boy’s shoe common at the time, with rounded, perforated tops and a “girly” strap. I kidded him no end. (Poor guy, he once tried to run out of the place, my mother and the shopkeeper in chase.)
I recently had drinks nearby at Crow Hill with Montrose Morris, Amzi Hill and BxGrl and was happy to see stylish singles, middle-aged ladies and — among a mostly African American/Carribean clientele — an Orthodox Jewish guy (with beard and yamalke) quaffing a beer at the bar.
Never saw anything like that in the old days!
Nostalgic on Park Avenue