42 Remsen: Lightning Strikes Twice
File under: Gigantic Bummer. It’s been a rough six months over at 42 Remsen Street. First there was a fire over Thanksgiving weekend forced residents to move out. The cause: Apparently, according to comments on Brooklyn Heights Blog, there’s an older woman who lives on the top floor of the co-op who hoards piles of…
File under: Gigantic Bummer. It’s been a rough six months over at 42 Remsen Street. First there was a fire over Thanksgiving weekend forced residents to move out. The cause: Apparently, according to comments on Brooklyn Heights Blog, there’s an older woman who lives on the top floor of the co-op who hoards piles of cardboard and paper in her apartment which was the source of the fire. Fast forward to late March: The top-floor resident was the first to move back into her apartment but before anyone else could return, she started another fire, this one even more damaging than the first. “The family that lives on the ground and parlor floors, who financed the rebuilding of the outside staircase which won them building a Heights Assn award a few years back and had a very, very nice apartment were understandably beside themselves,” according to a commenter named Jo Ann. Any other details about this tragic story? Is there anything co-op members can do to remove a problem resident? GMAP P*Shark
You couldent pay me to live over there anyway.
I would petition the court for an Order of Protection that would prohibit the fire starter from coming within a hundred yards of the front door.
Otherwise she’ll be back.
I think 12:49 was just getting down on commerce taking priority over safety.
This is making me think of the abandoned houses and buildings that are allowed to just sit there year after year falling apart. Like the big building on 7th Ave in Park Slope at the corner of 2nd Street. Or the house on Berkeley between 5th and 6th. It’s only a matter of time before one of those things goes up in flames and takes out a couple beautifully renovated brownstones with it. As for the mentally ill, why is it mentally ill people are allowed to live completely unsupervised by anybody, and ruin other people’s lives is beyond me. Sure they have rights, but their rights stop where society’s begins. PERIOD.
12:49, what mansion do you live in? and in which city? must be nice to have so much money in the bank that you can assume everyone has a choice about choosing a rabbit warren vs. a 2 bedroom on park avenue.
These nineteenth century houses generally make terrible multiple dwellings. They are entirely constructed of wood inside, and only have one riquety wooden stair as a means of escape. It’a just not safe or decent. New Yorkers accept such inferior housing. Cutting up rowhouses like this into miserable airless one-room apartments should be against the law. People deserve better. And “tony” Brooklyn Heights is full of these rabbit warrens. Sometimes you see eight or nine buzzers on a single house. Pathetic.
I was genuinely startled to read this item as, in 2004, I almost went to contract on the top-floor studio at 42 Remsen. Whether or not this was the apartment in which the two fires started I’m not sure, as I can’t recall if the top floor had 1 or 2 units. The unit I was looking at faced the back. (I ended up withdrawing my bid.) To clear up some of the confusion in the comments so far, the building is a 5-unit coop. What a terrible tragedy!
Last summer there was a hoarder in Prospect Heights who had filled up a whole brownstone: http://www.brooklynian.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=53261#53261
I think he got found out because he had to go into the hospital and there were a whole bunch of dogs in his backyard, going hungry and fighting each other… Sad.
Very interesting, 11:57. Thank you.