Brooklyn Inside & Out

That's my house on the left!!!

For 20 years I have lived on this block, delighting daily in this magnificent nearly 200-year-old house, sitting proudly on its slight rise above the street. It turns my stomach to think that Lambrechts and Kleiman are turning this rare bit of Brooklyn's history into splinters for the sake of mammon. They'll surely replace this beauty with the most dispiriting architectural dreck. That's what happened when Lambrecht sold the 19th-century row-house at 164. It was replaced by a hulking parody of a Parisian mansion, with conspicuously cheap brick and PVC moulding, right up to the sidewalk. Out of context even with the neat cornices and brick facades of the city's Atlantic Commons development, much less the several remaining brownstones. We must brace ourselves for even worse at 158 South Oxford.

Has the commission never heard of restoration???? Alterations such as those this home has suffered are still popular among the fashionable set, and their shallow, inexperienced architects who want to express their inner whatever sacrificing miles of old growth walnut, mahogany, oak, pine, and burled woods of all sorts, woods that cannot be found today if you are buying legally. We are left with interiors that look like community college dorm rooms. That destruction includes ornamental plasterwork and other details. The idea that we tolerate that everyday vandalism, and condemn this home for exactly the same alterations show the commission should be renamed the The Developer/Demolition Commission! Look at the lame excuses that have been given for shallow and destructive decisions over the last couple of years, like the, in my opinion, messy Dangler mansion debacle and the destruction of the carriage repository and showroom, both of which were pure vandalism to please developers. The decisions were so questionable, it left many wondering if money had changed hands. Perhaps the commission knows of another carriage showroom by a nationally important Gilded age architect of the first quality?? As someone who has been involved in historic preservation of more than 60 years, I am disgusted.

This is sickening that this beautiful house and property was not considered worthy by the Landmarks Committee. This beautiful property will be replaced by some boring piece of architecture. New York City is losing so much of its significant architecture to more glass and steel high rises.