New Owners Start Work at 56 Cambridge Place

When considering what is involved in renovating an old house like this, you have to ask yourself what exactly constitutes a "big job". This building is 150 years old and while it has not been taken care of for the last few years, the core of the building is surprisingly whole. The building may be wood-beamed for load bearing purposes, but the exterior walls are brick-filled and in good shape. This holds up better than you would think over long periods of time. Had someone bother to fix the leaky roof in the last ten years, the interor wouldn't actually be that bad.

It's strange to me on a site touting the joy of brownstone Brooklyn that the average person's opinion is that the restoration of this building is something that "I wouldn't wish...on my worst enemy". Does it seem like so much less of a daunting task to the people making those sorts of comments to tear down a landmarked building and build condos?

There are some of us that find joy in taking a diamond in the rough and returning it to its former glory. In some cases, this isn't possible, but often it only takes imagination and a renovation loan. In most cases, the money spent renovating such a building is far less than would be necessary to tear the building down and build condos. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the neighbors on the block and the surrounding community would rather have a beautiful home restored than demolished and made into cookie-cutter condominiums.

Posted by: Shahn Andersen at September 20, 2005 6:22 PM

The real story about the person who purchased the building at auction is a variation of what you heard. They purchased the building hoping that they would be able to convince Landmarks Preservation that the building was so dilapidated that it could not be salvaged and would have to be torn down. After a few months of negotiating, the owners paid for the scaffolding to be put up as part of their plan to convince Landmarks that the building had become dangerous and was about to fall down.
Eventually, they realized that Landmarks was not falling for their ruse sold the building.

Landmarks has already been contacted about a pending renovation of the building and has given a permit to clear debris and demolish all that is rotten or unstable on the inside while the plan for the exterior goes through the approval process.

Posted by: Shahn Andersen at September 20, 2005 9:17 PM

While it is true that certain parts of the floor are collapsing, the core of the building itself is really not in that bad of shape. In particular the exterior walls are in good shape. There are a few wood beams in the basement that have rotted away significantly, and that is obvious in the floor above them. Where that has happened we have shored the rotting beams with new wood.

Part of demolishing the rotten interior walls is shoring up any load bearing beams that are rotten. When the renovation plans are approved by Landmarks and the Department of Buildings, this temporary wood shoring will be replaced by steel I-beams running down into the foundation. Since there is a significant amount of water damage, a lot of the flooring will have to be torn out and new floor joists put in that tie into the new steel. While this structural reinforcement with steel may be a little bit of overkill, we feel it is the best thing to guarantee the building does not collapse.

I reiterate my "diamond in the rough" statement, because what you saw when the building was rotting and filled with debris is different than what it looks like with the basement cleaned out, a lot of debris removed, and some temporary reinforcement in place in any questionable areas.

Posted by: Shahn Andersen at September 21, 2005 9:24 AM