This three-bedroom, two-bath condo for rent in eastern Crown Heights seems solid like a solid option if you’re looking for a spacious, relatively new construction apartment. The bathroom is modern in style, and the kitchen has stainless steel appliances and a dishwasher. Hopefully the other two bedrooms are as large as the one pictured. The listing says there’s a garden, but we’re not sure if it’s private or shared.
The development was built in 2007 and is located four or five blocks from the A and C trains at Utica. But the rent is probably still above average for this area. Do you think it’s worth $2,900 a month?
This rental apartment comes to us from the beautiful Sunnyside co-op building at 45-08 40th Street. It’s a very nice apartment, with two bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms, but the rooms do look cramped. There’s no square footage listed so it’s impossible to tell how big the space actually is. Would you pay $2,300 a month to rent here and get the perks of a co-op courtyard? Seems like a high price to us.
One of the first of a recent spate of new townhouses in Brooklyn designed in a traditional style is finishing up at 67 Greene Avenue in Fort Greene. When we stopped by, workers were busy completing the interior of the garden level.
The architect is Rachel Frankel, who is also handling the reconstruction of the wood frame houses at 578 and 580 Carlton Avenue in Prospect Heights. All three had to pass muster with Landmarks.
This one will be a two-family. Click through to the jump to see the rendering posted on the construction fence. How do you like the way it looks so far?
Queens is the biggest borough, and has some of New York City’s longest streets. And like everything else, those streets are the result of evolution. Let’s take a look today at two of the borough’s longest routes and review their origins, while taking a look at their humble beginnings, or endings, depending on your point of view.
Roosevelt Avenue
Seen here is Roosevelt Avenue’s eastern end, where it meets Northern Boulevard at 155th Street in Flushing. Here is a soon-to-be defunct McDonalds, an IHOP restaurant, a branch of the Queens Public Library, a shopping center, and flags aplenty. Roosevelt Avenue, named for President Theodore, is relatively new on the Queens map; it’s soon to celebrate its centennial. It is a product of the Flushing elevated train, since when the line was constructed between 1914 and 1928, it required a right of way. It was decided to cut a street through that followed the unofficial border of Elmhurst and Jackson Heights, and then through the heart of Corona, and build the el along that route. Roosevelt Avenue serves as a de facto eastern extension of Greenpoint Avenue beginning at Queens Boulevard.
Initially Roosevelt Avenue ran only as far as what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, as the el was not extended east of Willets Point Boulevard until it was completed as a subway out to Main Street in 1928. That year began downtown Flushing’s transformation as a quiet seat of a sleepy Queens town into the crossroads of Queens it has become today. In 1928 a preexisting east-west street running through Flushing, Amity Street, was widened and then extended through to a junction with Northern Boulevard, giving rise to the Roosevelt Avenue known today.
From the point shown in the photograph, it’s possible to bike, walk or drive all the way west to the East River in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Metropolitan Avenue
This major east-west route from Williamsburg to the edge of Jamaica is seen from its eastern end at the junction of Jamaica Avenue and Kew Gardens Road, another ancient route in itself (it was called Newtown Road decades ago and ran to what became Kew Gardens in the east end of the former town of Newtown). Here you find the relatively new Kew Gardens subway stop serving the E train, open only since 1988.
Metropolitan Avenue was opened in 1815, give or take a couple of years, as the Williamsburgh and Jamaica Turnpike and was once a toll road with toll gates and a “pike” or a lengthy log that would be move aside when the toll was paid. It was mainly a farm to market road used by eastern farmers bringing their produce to New York City via East River shipping. In future decades Williamsburg would lose the “h” and the W&J would lose the toll, and was renamed Metropolitan Avenue. Oddly, this busy route has never gained extra lanes and the considerable widening comparable roads like Northern Boulevard and Queens Boulevard have, and remains a four-lane road throughout its length.
The neighborhood of Middle Village was named because it’s approximately halfway between Williamsburg and Jamaica, the two towns the road was built to service.
A summer day’s journey to the beach at Coney Island has long been a destination for hot and city-weary New Yorkers. The history of Brooklyn has long been connected with the goings-on at Coney Island.
Monday, the city put out a request for proposals for the last two towers in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Now the city wants to make 30 percent of the possible 430 units there affordable, according to a story in The New York Times.
Apparently Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp. President Regina Myer is now on board with the plan. She said even with the affordable component, the two towers on Pier 6 will “generate more than $70 million in acquisition fees and $3.5 million a year in revenue for the park.”
The two additional towers would go in where parking lots are now. They would be located between One Brooklyn Bridge, pictured above, and Atlantic Avenue.
As has been well covered here, park and housing activists are all over the map on the proposal, with some opposing any additional housing of any sort in the park. Further thoughts?
Update: While the Times said the city put out the RFP Monday, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp. put out the request for proposals along with a press release today. You can see them here.
This weekend, Elmhurst’s First Presbyterian Church of Newtown, which was founded in 1652, will celebrate its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. To accompany the celebration, the church is participating in the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Sacred Sites open house weekend, which includes talks on the church history and architecture, walking tours, and an unveiling of a National Register of Historic Places plaque. The schedule for this Saturday includes the talks on history and architecture at 10:30 am and 2:30 pm, followed by a walking tour. The church will be open to the public from 10 am to 4 pm. On Sunday, there will be a church service followed by the National Register of Historic Places plaque unveiling at 12:30 pm. The open house will last until 3:30 pm. Check out all the event details at the Rego-Forest Preservation website.
The 362-year-old church is now in its fifth building, constructed in 1895, and boasts one of New York’s oldest congregations. It has been under three governments — the Dutch, British and American. The Gothic-style sanctuary, pictured above, features Tiffany stained glass and the original furniture. There will be historic photos and documents out on display during the open house.
Photo by Michael Perlman via the Rego-Forest Preservation Council
As controversy swirls over future development in Brooklyn Bridge Park, construction is under way at Toll Brothers’ hotel and condo project, Pierhouse. The 108-unit development includes two buildings, which will sit at either end of a large site next to Furman Street. At the northern edge of the property, there will be a 10-story, 192-room Starwood Hotel with some condos. Most of the construction is happening there, and about two and a half stories have risen above ground so far. The southern end of the site will have a five-story condo building with one- to five-bedroom apartments. But at the moment, it’s mostly a mud pit. Most of the units will have private outdoor space, and prices start at $1,050,000 for a one-bedroom and go as high as $11,000,000. Forty of those condos are already in contract, as we reported earlier this month.
Silvershore Properties recently struck deals for three buildings in East Williamsburg, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens for a total of $6,200,000. PR reps for the property management company say 400 5th Avenue in Park Slope, a 4,000-square-foot walk-up building with three apartments and a storefront, sold for $1,800,000. Next up was 103 3rd Place in Carroll Gardens, an eight-unit walk-up that also sold for $1,800,000. And the third buy was a six-apartment building with a storefront at 754 Grand Street in East Williamsburg (pictured), which changed hands for $2,600,000.
The company plans to keep the buildings as rentals, said an exec for the real-estate firm, which owns more than 50 multifamily properties in the city. In December, the company purchased four apartment buildings for $7,225,000 in Greenpoint, Crown Heights, Clinton Hill and Sunset Park, The New England Real Estate Journal reported at the time.
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