Illegal Paint Job on Landmarked Block of Clinton Hill
We just got a tip that someone just started painting one of the brownstones on Grand Avenue between Gates and Putnam white this morning. (Yes, a certain blogger does live on this block.) Something tells us the Landmarks Preservation Commission didn’t sign off on this. If any readers are nearby, we’d appreciate a photo asap….
We just got a tip that someone just started painting one of the brownstones on Grand Avenue between Gates and Putnam white this morning. (Yes, a certain blogger does live on this block.) Something tells us the Landmarks Preservation Commission didn’t sign off on this. If any readers are nearby, we’d appreciate a photo asap. If anyone from LPC is reading, please get on the stick! Update 7/27: Here’s the photo from about 11:20 this morning. The address is 373 Grand Avenue. LPC confirms that there are no permits out on this.
Update 7/29: As the Daily News article reports, it turns out that—luckily—the owner was only repainting the area around the door. While we understand that some people feel it was an overreaction on our part to post about this before all the facts were known, here’s why we think it was warranted: First of all, had the painters been intending to paint the entire facade, every second counted when we got the tip (we were in fact in Dumbo, and not just across the street, when the tip came in, so popping over for a friendly chat was not an option); secondly, we were on the phone with LPC within five minutes of getting the tip, and LPC told us that (1) the owner had no permit for the painting and (2) that he had racked up, and failed to cure, several other landmark violations over the years. All these factors led us to conclude that, on balance, it was not worth taking the risk that something really destructive might happen. You know, better safe than sorry. With 20/20 hindsight, this was clearly the wrong call. Apologies to the owner—our obsession with historic brownstones may have gotten the better of us on this one.
Bottom photo by Rosier for the Daily News
get a life patrice.
Are you the same people ripping out your plaster to put in central?
It’s clearly evident that many poster here have used this locally important issue as a spring board for broader rants against the “rich”, against “gentrifiers”, against “preservationists” against whatever group they so happen to have an ax to grind against. The truth of the matter is that this is an important issue, we all know there is a war, and there are national healthcare issues and such. These do not go without notice and have any of you stopped to think that perhaps the folks who care about historical preservation also have the sense to commit to other larger causes as well? Because I myself can chew gum and walk at the same time! That being said, there is a fashionably ambivilent streak in many posters here who see nothing “cooler” than to lambaste those who would dare to set down roots in a place and actually give a damn. God forbid you should actually take pride in anything in this age of sardonic/ironic detachment. Why care for anything when it’s so much easier to wear an old T-shirt with a catchphrase and smell of 3 day old cat litter. But I digress, allow me to point out one successful campaign against the so-called “small” infractions that occur in society, that ultimately led to the turn around of this entire city. That being the Giuliani administration’s implementation of the comp-stat program in conjunction with the actual prosecution of fare-beaters and welfare cheats and thugs and muggers; turns out, that many of the same folks committing these “small” infractions were also the ones inclined to go on to larger infractions, in fact many had outstanding warrants or were previously convicted. Miracle of miracles, taking care of the small things led to a decline in overall crime and in particular murder rates from as high two thousand a year to less than 500 in a city of 8 million. And don’t be a smart ass and try to say that I’m comparing housepainting to any serious crime, it is the larger issue at hand, a respect for community and society at large. Let me leave you with these two tidbits nonetheless, Hitler was once a housepainter and the Taliban had no respect for historical preservation either; witness their demolition of 2000 year old bhuddist statues in the mountains of Afghanistan. A world heritage site destroyed because nobody gave a damn, and our world’s cultural heritage diminished further. I’m only half-kidding you folks about the Hitler part but then, I’m not the one calling preservationists nazi’s.
your superiority complex, justin, is exactly what’s killing brooklyn’s spirit.
Maria (11:34am):
Yes, I do and yes, I do!
It almost seems I have a right to as well, based on the fact that regular readers of this blog, including the blogger himself will go to such great lengths to protect Brownstone Brooklyn from the evil people who put white paint on the entrances to their homes.
I am completely for landmarking and its benefits (obviously), but the entire thing has taken it just slightly too far.
I see 3 different houses in that photo and all three of have different-looking facades. So what is the big deal?
Justin do you own one? And do you somehow feel superior to someone who does not?
“I’m surprised at the hostility to landmarks on this blog (of all places).
Most of the old houses in prime Clinton Hill and Fort Greene would be in the process of demolition right now and being replaced with bigger buildings if it were not for landmark protection. How dumb to be questioning landmark regs at this stage of the game.”
Perhaps if the landmark law was applied equally across the 5 boroughs, it would be better accepted. But since it is only employed to retain the character of neighborhoods where the already well-to-do live, then it should be overturned. If citizens throughout a constituency don’t have equal protection under a law and it is applied arbitrarily and capriciously, then it is unconstitutional and must be abolished.
The irony of it all is that 95% of the lowlifes who have posted on this comment board/gone up in arms about paint on the entrance to a brownstone do not own one themself and never will.
Get.
A.
Life.