59-Orient-Avenue-Brooklyn-1208.jpg
When 59 Orient Avenue, a 6,000-square-foot shingled house in Greenpoint, was for sale in the spring of 2007, we feared that the unlandmarked beauty would be the victim of its own large lot. After all, the $2,500,000 asking price was such that only a developer looking to take advantage of the 13,000 square feet of unused FAR could afford it. The house ended up selling for just $1,725,000 in August of last year. Based on the photo, at right, from last month on Flickr, the damage has begun. It’s unclear what the new owner’s plans are for it, though, since the only application on file with DOB is one to remove and close up existing windows from last winter. Anyone heard any chatter about what lies in store for this place?
House of the Day: Endangered on Orient Avenue [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
Left photo from Property Shark; right photo by markamav


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  1. This place need to go ASAP. Having lived here all my life, Ive seen this place go from semi-decent but old and in need of restoration (that old picture did it justice over what it was in reality), to decrepit and nothing but a crackhouse, drug den, flophouse, squatter ridden filthy hellhole. The developers who bought it should be fined $10000 a day until they tear it down or build an impenetrable fortress around it. An empty lot would be better than what it is now. They obviously are not going to try to restore it – its too far gone and probably full of toxic chemicals by now. I hear from the hood talk they were trying to make meth in there a couple months ago. Not sure how that worked out for them but at least it didn’t explode. Regardless, yes what a shame, but tear it down now please.

  2. Dittoburg. I don’t see much character here. It’s an old wood framed victorian with horrible siding one block from a huge NYCHA development, one block from a huge obsolete industrial district, and is surrounded by shacks. Practically any city in the northeast has far superior wood framed houses. Go to Waterbury, New Haven, Newburgh, or a host of other places and you can get the same kind of house cheap.

    Obviously, no one thought the building was worth anything.

  3. I heard that place would have taken A LOT to save even 2 years ago. At the very least, stray cats had taken it over and the house was saturated in their piss (same thing that happened to the mansion in Grey Gardens).

  4. They left a bunch of windows open for the winters. Makes me so mad. This house was in livable condition two years ago, and now it’s a wreck. Looked to me like the owners were deliberately sabotaging it so they could tear it down without any grief.

    Of course, now they don’t have the funds to tear it down, one assumes.

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