Lots of Love for the Schermerhorn House
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet…
The Schermerhorn is not your average affordable housing project, as The Times makes abundantly clear in its profile this weekend. (As we put it a couple of weeks ago, “This place is about as sexy as supportive housing gets.”) Stand-out amenities include a gym with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ground-floor performance space. (The Brooklyn Ballet will be the anchor tenant.) Designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, the 217-unit building will end up being split fairly evenly between arts-related professionals who don’t make a lot of dough and those who qualify for supportive housing, typically the formerly homeless and others in need of help. The interior photo in The Times story is pretty darn slick for this type of thing, seeming to confirm our suspicions that lack of creativity and resourcefulness is usually more to blame than small budgets when ugly new buildings are put up.
New Homes for a Varied Cast [NY Times]
Schermerhorn House 1/3-Rented [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Nears Completion [Brownstoner]
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Gets Its Skin [Brownstoner] GMAP
Development Watch: 160 Schermerhorn Tops Out [Brownstoner] P*Shark
Development Watch: Schermerhorn House Rising [Brownstoner] DOB
Some More 411 on the “Schermerhorn House” [Brownstoner]
“I don’t consider art a luxury. It is a part of my being and of utmost importance next to food, clothing and shelter.
And I was raised without a nanny. My parents would have considered A NANNY to be the ULTIMATE luxury.
But that just shows how out of touch you are with reality.”
LOL!!!! why don’t you tell some hungry children in africa that art is a “part of your being” and right up there with food, clothing, and shelter. they will tell you exactly who is out of touch with reality.
(and yes, a nanny is a luxury too, just like listening to jazz on your ipod or reading books at a cafe or looking at a board mounted on a wall covered with glue and ten thousand coils of the artist’s pubes.)
“11217, it’s obvious from your post that you are not a working parent in New York City whose employer requires them to return to work after six weeks, or, if you are lucky, four months.”
Honestly by the amount of daily posts on this blog from
“working mothers” and those who are out of work, I’m almost surprised how anything could be so obvious anymore.
I don’t get the argument that the arts require a subsidy because they are “essential”.
First – not all arts do get subsidies, only those which meet certain tastes.
Second – if they were that essential to people in general then they would be self-funding.
“It’s absolutely shocking to me that some people on this blog don’t seem to understand that without the arts, New York City is nothing.”
Not that I would really know – but isn’t NYC pretty insignicant when it comes to the arts nowadays? I’ve read articles and heard from friends that other more affordable cities have a more thriving arts scene. Perhaps more buildings like this will help stimulate creativity in this city which seems to have shifted more to a playground for rich euros/finance types over the past 10+ years.
I would hope that would be obvious, Heather.
That doesn’t make nannies any less a “luxury” than the arts.
Are you people for real? You are really at the point of claiming that nannies are a necessity?
If you need to go back to work, then you should have bought a 500K home instead of a million dollar one if you truly consider a nanny a necessity.
11217, it’s obvious from your post that you are not a working parent in New York City whose employer requires them to return to work after six weeks, or, if you are lucky, four months.
“people in the arts create things that are luxuries”
Perhaps to you. I don’t consider art a luxury. It is a part of my being and of utmost importance next to food, clothing and shelter.
And I was raised without a nanny. My parents would have considered A NANNY to be the ULTIMATE luxury.
But that just shows how out of touch you are with reality.
> “Uh-oh! Saying that some artists produce crapola!!”
I think we can all agree that 99% of the art produced is crapola.
But we’ll never agree on what the good 1% is.
Oh sorry Benson!!
You all are making this place out to be the Plaza.
Artist or not, how many of you in Brownstoner Land would want to live in the same building as a bunch of formerly homeless people. Yet you are making it seem like this place is a new construction Eden. This will not be a glamorous life in the Schemerhorn house. It will be surviving for those who live there.
z – you are crazy if you are trying to say that nannies are vital to society and the arts aren’t. nannies are for rich people. you do realize that MOST people on this planet raise their own children, correct…?