Water Street Showdown: Guttman to Gut Dumbo?
If you’re wondering what the next preservation fight is gonna be, we’ve got a pretty good idea. Joshua Guttman, who has earned almost universal contempt for the lack of respect he has shown for both his tenants and the building code, is prepping to tear down 205 Water/188 Plymouth Street in Dumbo, we hear. The…
If you’re wondering what the next preservation fight is gonna be, we’ve got a pretty good idea. Joshua Guttman, who has earned almost universal contempt for the lack of respect he has shown for both his tenants and the building code, is prepping to tear down 205 Water/188 Plymouth Street in Dumbo, we hear. The way things are shaking out, it’s going to be a sprint to the finish line. Preservationists (including the DUMBO Neighborhood Association) are scrambling to save the 19th Century foundry, which was built by E.W. Bliss, a builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, just as Guttman is erecting a scaffolding. Landmarks may hold a hearing as soon as next month but it’s not clear whether Guttman will have already received the green light to begin demolition before then. As an aside, it looks like Scarano was the architect of record on this project last Spring until he lost his self-certification rights. GMAP DOB
must … have .. . . glass … . . uh … front .. . . .. fronted . … .. . uh .. uh .. . . glass fronted .. .. . buiding . . .. new .. . .. uh uh .. .. everything . .. . . everything new . .. …. only .. . . .. stainless . . .. appliance …. brand new glass front . .. . .. uh uh uh … . buiding . . .. all else .. …. must be . .. .. uh . . .. . destroy . .. . .uh uh . …. . i .. cut .. off . my .. own .. broken …. leg and .. replace .. with . crappy … metal .. copy . … . . i win . . .. uh uh .. i win . . . again!
AW shaggy-scooby dooby doo. live work be dumb in D-U_M-B_O
yo, four-pee-em: LPC was created to preserve buildings like Penn Station AND neighborhoods (e.g.: the first, Brooklyn Heights) where the sum is greater than the parts. i won’t belabor the context issue; several earlier posts have it right.
and 7:37, NYC (and all governments) have a responsibilty to protect the health and welfare. courts have long established that this includes historic preservation. that’s one way your proverbial ‘highest and best use’ gets defined.
Burn it.
I go by there all the time.
NYC has a responsibility to allow owners the highest and best use of the real estate. Preserving a burned out warehouse that _not_ a piece of art hardly qualifies.
What I’m hearing is ‘I moved to this fake gritty area but I live in an overpriced and overhyped condo’. If all the grittiness gets sanitized and too many condos get built, we’ll just be another version of manhattan, but with terrible noise and no transporation. Then my property values will go down.
Quit whining. This isn’t a ‘landmark’; it is just old
Thank you shaggy, and well said!
I’m interested in context. DUMBO is being slowly dismantled, and with it goes the history. I’m not saying it is the most beautiful building around, but it does add to the brick aura of the area, and deserves to be included in the Historic District that the LPC will hopefully be designating soon.
PS – artist Tom Otterness was renting studio space in either this building or the building just next to it – but he has recently left. If buildings such as this were protected, the landlords might be less inclined to kick great atists like Otterness (or lesser known but just as valuable artists) to the curb hoping to tear down their low rise, expansive light filled spaces so that they may build tall, shoddy, cramped studios and make more money.
Hey – have any one you posters who have written snotty comments like “it should burn down” or that this building is a not extraordinairy or worth saving in anyway ACTUALLY SEEN IT??
Well if you had bothered to look and perhaps educate yourself before you expressed yourself, you would have seen that this building is a remarkable example of 19thC waterfront industrial architecture. It is actually large, goes all the way through the block from Water Street to Plymouth Street with beautiful brick detail covered up by a crappy ( and hazardously falling to the sidewalk) stucco job. It is one grand open space with huge celestory skylights – it would make a fantastic museum or studio or a light manufacturing space – THAT goes out to the snots who talked about Dumbo’s context. Just so you know, there are plenty of people who wish to maintain Dumbo’s mixed-use zoning and therefore preserve Dumbo’s unique sense fo place – to keep the industrial /manufacturing / artisitic vibe real, while allowing for responsible CONVERSION of existing irreplaceable structures.
So – if you are a fan of tearing down and building up, then go move into those hideous apartments the Orthodox built in Williamsburg, or maybe Co-Op City. Why are you even reading this blog, which describes itself as “Writing about an unhealthy obsession with historic Brooklyn brownstones and the neighborhoods and lifestyles they define” ? This building helps to define a historic neighborhood, it is valuable, it is beautiful, and it is re-usable.
when people want to preserve buildings like this, I start to see why these buildings mysteriously catch fire.
I live in Dumbo and I’m on the fence about this one. While I agree that being old is not in itself justification for reclamation, the fact is that Dumbo is very small area, and it would only take a handful of additional knock-downs and bad build-ups to fundamentally alter the style of neighborhood. Also, this particular building, though modest, has distinctly 19th Century characteristics; a lot of the old buildings in Dumbo are by contrast early 20th Century and have nowhere near the same “handmade” appeal…