Curtains for Bed-Stuy Building
A reader forwarded along a tip that 535 Throop, a four-story building at Lafayette, is being torn down. It’s in foreclosure and listed for $355,000, but HPD declared that the “building is vacant and has not met requirements for reoccupancy.” Still, as our tipster says, “It’s a real shame. Not the best building in the…
A reader forwarded along a tip that 535 Throop, a four-story building at Lafayette, is being torn down. It’s in foreclosure and listed for $355,000, but HPD declared that the “building is vacant and has not met requirements for reoccupancy.” Still, as our tipster says, “It’s a real shame. Not the best building in the area but the last thing Bed Stuy needs is another vacant lot.” GMAP DOB
There is the little FD x sign on the facade, which means it’s structurally unsound.
Bed Stuy has an unprecedented number of fires every year, some of which eventually turn into tear-downs.
it has to be an immediate emergency for the city to shell out its own money to pay for the demolition.
I second Stargazer’s building comparison. This is EXACTLY why a community has to get militant on these neglectful, absentee property owners who abandon buildings to rot. At a certain point the cost of building an entirely new interior inside a shell of a building costs far more than the property would be worth when finished.
what good is the DOB if nothing ever gets done about these abandoned buildings.
ie: 7th ave in park Slope…
A DOB “emergency demo” order can also mean that the building’s owner doesn’t want any community outcry about an unnecessary demolition, as was recently the case in my neighborhood when a boarded-up, but structurally sound, tenement was demoed in the space of about three days, with no safety precautions, such as protection from asbestos dust for surrounding residents, because the building’s owner, a non-profit organization that had bought it from HPD, wanted to put up a new building with a zoning variance for a “community facility” which will be nothing of the kind.
Right on MM; this will end up being another empty lot for rats, and then worse, a fedders atrocity.
The city needs to find a way to get attractive but rundown buildings like this into the hands of investors who could rehabilitate it rather than tear it down. There isn’t a building anywhere around this one that is less than 100 years old, and people need to realize that that is really, really remarkable. Why start now to put empty holes for low-end modern buildings into this veritable museum of of late nineteenth century architecture?
Brooklyn gets a little bit uglier every day and I don’t understand why that’s ok with so many people. It has been a long time since somebody built a small scale building that is genuinely attractive AND had any consideration for context. Williamsburg, for instance, is now an utterly hideous hodgepodge of architectural masturbation and I really wish Brooklynites would recognize that that type of short sighted sacrifice is not acceptable for the entire borough.
I refuse to take for granted that old neighborhoods are improved by the addition of new buildings. Or empty lots.
has the DOB declared an “immediate emergency” if not, I don’t think the building is coming down. An immediate emergency demo order usually involves a big crack or bulge or other indication that the building is about to self-destruct.
I think the DOB is partially to blame for the entire situation.
My last sentence made no sense. What I mean to say is that a streetscape is the sum of its parts, and is weakened when cavities like this are created.