Demo Planned for Wood Frame House on Franklin in Bed Stuy
The Building Department Monday approved a demolition permit for a wood frame house at 123 Franklin Avenue in the northwestern corner of Bed Stuy. The freestanding three-family house sits on an oversized lot. The developer also owns the neighboring empty lot at 125 Franklin Avenue. That lot is long and narrow, running alongside the house and then wrapping…
The Building Department Monday approved a demolition permit for a wood frame house at 123 Franklin Avenue in the northwestern corner of Bed Stuy. The freestanding three-family house sits on an oversized lot. The developer also owns the neighboring empty lot at 125 Franklin Avenue.
That lot is long and narrow, running alongside the house and then wrapping around the back and extending the depth of the back yard. This is yet another in a long line of 100-year-old-plus wood frame houses around the borough to meet the wrecking ball recently.
An LLC bought the lots for $660,000 in January of 2012 and filed an application a year later to build a new structure on the lots. Plans called for a 47-foot high, four-story apartment building with seven units. But the developer needed a variance. The building at 123 Franklin is zoned for light manufacturing so it only had a FAR of 1 and the developer wanted to increase that to 2.54 so it could build a larger structure. The architect for those plans was Barry Holden of Barry Holden Architect in Manhattan. The application was disapproved.
The department of buildings does not show any additional plans submitted for a new building so it’s unclear why the building is being torn down now. Does anyone know anything else about the building and what is planned for the site? If the developer can’t get a variance, any new structure would be quite small.
Three Wood Frame Houses Demo’d for Karl Fischer-Designed Apartments [Brownstoner]
Slew of Wood Frame Houses Slated for Teardown Across Brooklyn [Brownstoner]
Tear-Down Planned for Three More 19th Century Wood Frames in Bushwick, Flatbush [Brownstoner]
Wood Frame House Coverage [Brownstoner]
Image: Gregg Snodgrass Via PropertyShark
I lived on the ground floor from 2000-2001. It was kind of crappy. There was an illegal studio in back that somehow controlled the heating for the building. They were poor and never turned the heat on. I used to open the door of the oven and blast it to compensate. I’ve since heard that this is a “bad idea” and might cause “brain damage” but didn’t care.