A Last-Ditch Effort to Save Admiral's Row
Until the Navy Base at Wallabout Bay was closed in 1967, if you were a married officer, you got a chance to shack up in one of the ten historic row houses looking out over Flushing Avenue (drawn here as they were in 1855). When the Army Corp of Engineers took over the location, the…
Until the Navy Base at Wallabout Bay was closed in 1967, if you were a married officer, you got a chance to shack up in one of the ten historic row houses looking out over Flushing Avenue (drawn here as they were in 1855). When the Army Corp of Engineers took over the location, the houses were left to decay, though some Navy families continued to live in the houses into the 1970s. In 1996, the New York State Historic Preservation Office signed off on an agreement that gave the Army Corp the right to demolish the houses without any landmark review. The city, which took control of all of the Navy Yard except Admiral’s Row in 2001, is planning to knock the houses down to make way for a supermarket when it finally takes control. (The transfer is still hung up in bureaucratic red tape.) Despite the efforts of various preservationist groups in recent years, the Bloomberg shows no signs of budging, citing the $25 million cost of restoration as being prohibitively high. Now a group known as Brooklyn’s Other Museum of Brooklyn has made an eleventh-hour appeal to Governor Spitzer in a letter last month:
I am but one American, yet Admiral’s Row is mine and belongs to every citizen of the United States of America. Don’t allow the Mayor of the city of New York to demolish a national heritage site to satisfy a political favor. It appears you are the only person who, with a stroke of your pen, can undo this madness and insure longevity for Admiral’s Row. Please rescind the A.R.M.O.A. (Admiral’s Row Memorandum Agreement).
Does anyone know more about the “political favor”? How about a timeline for the expected demolition>
Admiral’s Row [B.O.M.B.]GMAP
Retail May Trump Admiral’s Row Preservation [Brownstoner]
City Trying to Demolish Admiral’s Row [Brownstoner]
Group Asks for a ‘Pardon’ for Admiral’s Row [Curbed]
As much as I would LOVE to see a real supermarket come to the neighborhood (and by the way, WHICH supermarket are we talking? Dare I whisper Fairway? Anybody know?) why on earth does it have to entail tearing down historic buildings when there are soooooo many blighted, empty lots in the area?
Admirals row should be restored and turned into shops or something, if they ever build the Greenway it will pass right in front of these houses so they would get plenty of traffic. the navy yard brig is right near this spot (bloomberg demolished it probably two years ago with the thought that they’d put a supermarket in there too) so why not use that spot for a gigantic supermarket. contrary to popular belief everyone CAN win.
Bloomberg should require a RFP in order to see whether anybody is able to retain any of the original historic details of these buildings when developing this site. Yet he refuses to do so. Why? My guess is because nobody in power in Brookyn has asked him. David Yassky refused to bring up the issue in the council and as it is mainly in his district there was nothing much anybody could do. Community groups and community activists very much want to make something more than a horrible box store viable on this site. And the closest residents, the residents of the local housing projects, have also spoken up in front of the local community board to say they do not want or need a supermarket box store. Many people in the know are gravely concerned that something like Wal-Mart is brewing for this site. That would be the worst for this area and for city shopowners and city residents!
If it were left up to me, as preservationist, I would preserve the Row. However, I am a realist, and I know that’s not going to happen. What I don’t understand is the carpet bomb mentality of the city. OK, we need businesses like a large supermarket in that neighborhood. But why tear down everything? Surely one of the houses could be saved. It could be restored as a house museum, or as some kind of community space, or even as a not for profit group headquarters. They could even rent it out as office space for companies such as architects or Brownstoner Media. Why not incorporate the rest of the building shells into a larger building, and have a really unique and beautiful supermarket? Use some creativity instead of just bringing in the wrecking ball?
The mad rush in this city to develop every inch of land has to be tempered with some thought to history, density, and some plain, common, good sense. The lesson this city should have learned from the destruction of Penn Station is that once history is torn down, it’s gone, and what replaces it is never as good as the original, and is often banal and ordinary. Let’s think outside of the box here. Admiral’s row is a unique piece of history, and deserves to be saved. It does indeed belong to all of us.
The only way to save them is to present a economically viable use for them in today’s society. Determine the best use for these properties, and get creative
As someone who actually knows alot of the intimate details of this project, I can say that there is no political favor. The author of the letter is just a paranoid conspiracy theorist who assumes that there must be some favor otherwise why would Bloomberg do this. What he doesn’t understand is that these buildings are basically one stiff wind away from falling down on their own. I’ve been inside these buildings – you can still see how beautiful they once were, but you can also see how far gone they are. The cost to renovate them would be astronomical, and the Navy Yard and City have decided to dedicate their limited preservation funds towards other historic buildings in the Navy Yard which are more “savable”.
National physical heritages are great until they get in the way of national physical futures and national physical business interests.
Tear it down. Now.
Americans do not cherish their national physical heritage. Once its gone, its gone. I can’t understand you lot!
Save them and renovate them: there are plenty of supermarkets, and plenty of places for them, but if they can be saved these houses should be.
http://www.forgotten-ny.com