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
It does seem that you can paint in brownstone, the recently announced new color by Crayola, part of the Historic Home 8 pack.
I’ve read today on this blog that painting is illegal, yet i see painted and repainted facades ALL THE TIME.
What is the specific LPC guidelines about painting facades? Furthermore, what does it say about color schemes?
I brought up the Garfield house because most people will agree that the painted hot purple color scheme doesn’t ‘fit’ the surrounding brownstones. Yet, LPC has done nada over the years to address this.
I’ve searched the LPC site and haven’t seen anything.
“If we’d waited until we got home this evening to go knock on the door, the whole thing could have already been painted.”
Come, Mr. B. Don’t tell me you thought you’d hit post and the wailing sirens of the LPC police would show up in 10 minutes to stop the painter in mid-stroke.
I will agree that if this is landmarked, they shouldn’t be painting. But this is distasteful: using your publication to pursue your own beef to improve your block. Unless you plan on posting something equivalent about every Landmarks violation anyone sends you.
I think you’re trying to have it both ways. Sometimes you want to be a professional journalist, running Brownstoner as a full-time job for money. And sometimes you want to be treated as a regular-guy blogger, doing a labor of love for which he deserves to get cut extra slack.
Ask yourself: would it be appropriate for the owner of a newspaper or a corporate-owned blog to do the same thing about an issue on their own block?
white boots are tacky.
It seems like you have a greater responsibility than the average homeowner if you have an historic / landmarked property. If cared for properly, these buildings will long outlast all of us. And I would like to believe that Manhattan and Brooklyn’s beautiful brownstones will be standing for many generations to come. If painting these buildings can degrade the stone aside from simply looking out of character, that is a valid reason to voice concern to your neighbor as well as the LPC.
It is incredibly difficult to remove paint from these buildings. An incredibly beautiful brownstone co-op designed by Frederick Clark Withers and Calvert Vaux (the architects of the Jefferson Market Libary in the West Village) in my old Manhattan neighborhood stood beneath scaffolding for ages while being soaked and treated in various test patches to remove its white paint. Much have cost a fortune to remove the paint, but it was well worth it in the end. The building is stunning in its original form.
i havr ead all your comments and brownnoser or stoner i am coming to your house to kick the shit out of you
you are an ass and will lick my white boots now
get a freaking life you self absorbed morons
This blog never fails to entertain. I love it – I really Love It. Yes the white paint (if it is final) is NASTY. But it does not rise to the Level to cause such Public Alarm… Landmarks most certainly does don’t always have the right answer. In the Grand Scheme of the Possibilities of Nasty Eyesores that Occur Daily on the Brooklyn landscape this hardly registers. Put the energy ino the Real messes – like the Horrible Infill Houses Being built all over BedStuy – Now those folks should be Subject to a Public Flogging!
If we’d waited until we got home this evening to go knock on the door, the whole thing could have already been painted. Besides, as noted above, this isn’t some old grandma who’s been living here for 50 years and is unaware of landmarks law. this is a company called 373 Grand Avenue Housing Development Fund Corp that was deeded the property by the city in 1996. ACcording to LPC, the property has a series of landmark violations that it has made no effort to rectify.
There are a few key points here.
Should property be Landmarked and if so who should decide the guidelines? It seems easiest to stick with the original vision of the architect. I think that’s what Landmarks tries to do.
Is white so bad? Not in theory but if you deviate from the guidelines, you are opening a Pandora’s Box. Should white be acceptable? What other colors? Who gets to decide?
The last and I think the most interesting is the “outing” of the owner. It feels a bit wrong, but it is done all the time on this site to developers and no one runs to their defense. It would have been neighborly to contact them first.