Taking Stock at the Two-Year Mark
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input. It’s that time of year when we ask you to tell us what you’ve liked and haven’t liked on the site over the past year and what you’d like to see more and less of going forward. We’ve said it before, but we’d…
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input. It’s that time of year when we ask you to tell us what you’ve liked and haven’t liked on the site over the past year and what you’d like to see more and less of going forward. We’ve said it before, but we’d like to have more architectural appreciation posts. Given our own lack of formal training, we’d be interested in hearing from anyone who would be interested in writing occasionally about the borough’s architectural past and present. Other than that, we have an exciting (we think) new feature coming out in January that will being some order to the service component of the Forum. Also on our wish list: Video house tours of brownstones. And while there are times we wish there were less bashing of new developments on the site, we feel duty-bound to continue to hold bad developers’ feet to the fire. And, of course, we wish people could be a little nicer to each other in comment threads, but that comes with the anonymity of the medium.
I love your site. It has given us the courage to renovate our home which we have owned for many years, and which is comfortable but needs work. The many contributors to your site give us the enthusiasm and couirage to go on. Please keep after bad developers. Someone was killed at a site being demo’ed in Harlem yesterday.
And finally, one request. You seem to keep a rolling 2 year archive of the forum -could you keep the even older archives around on the site somewhere where they can be searched – some info and recommendations don’t get stale and would be good to be able to find them.
Happy New Year, Mr. B.
bob999: …”Attractive, functional, context-sensitive architecture for regular people”
Agreed, but good luck:) If you find any, please let us all know. In all seriousness, I’d like to have some positive examples. We have a few of upper income/luxury developments with decent developers and their architects, contractors, etc. But none are affordable in the “middle to low” income bracket. 🙁
Bob999: Great comments. Regarding resources, I generally find what I want by searching on the categories in the forum on the left–you have to scroll down…
It’s true it’s necessary to hold bad developer’s feet to the fire in Brooklyn. Because Brooklyn is still (relative to Manhattan) inexpensive for bad developers to make a fast buck on selling units in cheap, badly made buildings, Brooklyn needs watchdogs. Or else these bad developments will be eyesores that hurt the market and blight the blocks they’re located on. G-d knows the DOB isn’t doing anything about bad or illegal construction.
You know what I’d like to see more of (in Bklyn, and celebrated on the blog)? Attractive, functional, context-sensitive architecture for regular people, not just the rich. (It’s rare, I know.) A concerted effort to hunt down and praise those special developers that manage to do this–that would be a good thing.
“…we feel duty-bound to continue to hold bad developers’ feet to the fire”
Besides being a wonderful architectural/brownstone-centric resource and forum, THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK you have done is repeated in your statement above.
Building in Brooklyn WILL ALWAYS BE HERE: whether it be historic architectural reno’s to Brownstone Bklyn, clean-up and refurbs in emerging nabes, responsible new construction/development in “up-in-coming” and existing tony nabes AND the unfortunate ever-present dirt-bag development projects looking for the quick “in-and-out” with cash in hand…no matter the illegal activity, dangerous work sites (another worker dead in the Bronx yesterday!) and the eventual destruction to the nabe!
So, the good, the bad and the ugly should ALL still be reported-on and commented-to on this great blog.
Keep up the great work in 2007.
I, my wife and our community are indebted to this blog as a solid resource…and a damn good read!
Oh and 10:23’s suggestions is really good too.
I’m an addict too! I’m ashamed to let my husband see that I’m on the site, whenever I’m checking out the latest featured houses. It’s a great site, unique, and I bet many copycat sites like this will pop up all around the country eventually (you shoulda done like Craigslist did spreading it all over the country after it started in San Fran; but maybe franchise it so you don’t have to oversee other location’s sites). Bob999’s suggestions are good, I’d agree with them. Also I would suggest to keep up with the new “featured apartment/condo” you started fairly recently because even though the original intent of the site is to be all about brownstones, many co-ops and condos ARE inside old brownstones and mansions. Plus when analyzing the brownstone market, you gotta include the luxury condo market because just as those condo’s realtors say in the listings, they are “brownstone alternatives” for big spending buyers. Maybe that falls under an idea like “Featured Brownstone Alternatives” where you list condos, and houses in other areas like Staten Island or that historic section of the Bronx with all the old mansions. Just for fun and for context. As for reno videos, maybe once a month link to a video on Youtube of a “house and garden tour” of a recently finished brownstone, limestone or Victorian someone offers to show off.
I’ll jump in and start with a thanks for two years of fun. I always enjoy the blog even when the trolls attack and slime the place up. My favorite entries are the featured houses, I liked the neighborhood explorations that give context to the properties. The least useful to me are the NY Times excerpts as I read them in their original, but the Post and News, etc are always interesting.
Great job.