A somber-hued wonderland of finials, pinnacles, pediments, towers, turrets, bay windows, stoops, and porticoes: a smorgasbord of late Victoriana and the successor to the Heights and the Hill as the bedroom of the middle class and wealthy. These three districts are together the prominent topographical precincts of old brownstone Brooklyn: the Heights sits atop a bluff over the harbor, the Hill is a major crest to the northeast, and the Slope slopes from Prospect Park down to the Gowanus Canal and the flatlands beyond. Despite its proximity to the park, the area was slow to develop. As late as 1884 it was still characterized as “fields and pasture:” Edwin C. Litchfield’s Italianate villa, completed in 1857, alone commanded the prospect of the harbor from its hill in present-day Prospect Park. By 1871 the first stage of the park had been constructed, yet the Slope lay quiet and tranquil, bypassed by thousands of persons making their way on the Flatbush Avenue horsecars to this newly created recreation area. By the mid 188os, however, the potential of the Slope became apparent, and mansions began to appear on the newly laid out street grid. The lavish homes clustered around Plaza Street and Prospect Park West eventually were christened the Gold Coast. Massive apartment buildings invaded the area after World War I, feeding upon the large, unutilized plots of land occupied by the first growth. These austere Park Avenue-like structures, concentrated at Grand Army Plaza, are in contrast to the richly imaginative brick dwellings of Carroll Street and Montgomery Place, the mansions, churches, and clubs that still remain, and the remarkably varied row houses occupying the side streets as they descend toward the Manhattan skyline to the west. | |||||||||
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Healing a Gash Among the Brownstones By MICHAEL BRICK March 27, 2004 In New York City, even the empty places are already full. This one is called Block 945, Lot 39, a vacant patch of ground where an angular and narrow street called Sterling Place intersects a boulevard called Seventh Avenue in the Borough of Brooklyn, County of Kings. Dolly Williams, who bought the lot a decade ago for $250,000, knows it differently, as a canvas of sorts. "You can actually put your own dreams into anything that's vacant," Ms. Williams said. For a vacant lot, though, this place is awfully crowded, with haunting memories and other unruly things. Here, decades ago, the sky opened up and conjured a rain of metal and fire; a crashed airliner killed scores, ruining all that came before. Since then, people have projected their own dreams all around this lot, often at cross-purposes, and have provoked questions grander than those that the numbers of a catalog system can address. -United Press International Wreckage of an airliner crash in 1960 at Sterling Place and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. And so far Ms. Williams, like others before her for four decades, has been unable to complete something new in this empty place. "I don't know what is wrong with this corner," said Ms. Williams, who counts among her accomplishments an appointment to the City Planning Commission. "Maybe it is jinxed or something." There are rumors of such places in New York. One is 18 West 11th Street in Manhattan, where the Weathermen blew up a house in a bomb-making accident. Nearly a decade passed before the resulting vacant lot was filled. And there, the only homage to the past came in the form of a stark departure from it, modernist architecture with wild angles and open spaces. Here in Brooklyn, the history is more gruesome still. But to truly know what fills this empty place, first look anew at the familiar and obvious sights around it. The crossing of Sterling Place and Seventh Avenue sits near the northern terminus of Park Slope, a leafy and bustling neighborhood peopled in the main by handsomely paid editors, lawyers and copywriters, and families with children and Manhattan money. The buildings are uniform three-, four- and five-story brownstones, done in dark colors with evenly situated windows and straight cuts, topped by carved details that draw the eye from one to the next, an urban sameness, like architectural toy soldiers. And then look back in time to the way this ground came to be a jarring, hollow break in that continuity of form. There are photographs of an airliner that tore through the brownstone that stood here in December 1960 after a midair collision with another plane. Captured on film, lying in the slush on this corner, staring out battered and dazed, Stephen Baltz, 11 years old, embodied the worst disaster in the history of aviation to that time, with 134 killed. He was the plane's sole survivor, and he lived only a night. It was into a decaying neighborhood that the airplane fell, and the blow struck hard. Jimmy Moy, owner of the laundry in the basement of the brownstone, left and never came back. Those two images from past and present are hard to square, and what is more, jinxes are a suspect explanation for anything. So, last, sit in a parlor inside one of these ornate and proud park-side brownstones and listen to Everett Ortner, 84, describe his version of the events that brought Park Slope to its present condition. Mr. Ortner, a science editor, found what would become his own brownstone during a 15-minute stopover in May 1963 on the way to do some research on scuba diving. "On Seventh Avenue, a quarter of the storefronts were empty," Mr. Ortner said. "There wasn't a restaurant. The local A.&P., which was the only supermarket, was filthy. You could have walked down our street and not seen a child." Mr. Ortner volunteered to serve as public relations man for the neighborhood, and he set out to promote it with walking tours, block parties and open houses. The point of all this exertion, Mr. Ortner said, was to make a living monument to the beauty of the brownstones and the sense of community they can nurture. "Never again, never again, never again will houses of this quality be built for the middle class of the city," he said. The beauty of the Park Slope brownstones, he said, is an abstract thing. "I suppose it's agelessness. There's a feeling of security in knowing it will look like this in the future, and there's a connection to the past, which I'm very sensitive to." A generation later, that sensitivity has been codified, and it is into this place, hardly vacant at all in figurative terms, that Ms. Williams is trying to put something new. She is not the first. In 1988, one Margaret O. Walker filed plans for a four-story building of two-bedroom apartments topped with a penthouse. Over the next few years, she sought to satisfy objections from the City Buildings and Environmental Protection Departments as well as from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. By 1991, she was missing deadlines from one agency while waiting for approvals from another, city records show. Ms. Walker ultimately gave up. Later, Ms. Williams sought to impart her own vision onto this ground, still empty. In August 2001, she won the city's approval for her proposed departures from Ms. Walker's design, including eliminating the penthouse, installing lantern-style fixtures and painting the metal panels a color called Formal Garden SW1455. But she did not get far. The Buildings Department issued a stop work order in February 2003 for failure to protect the neighboring buildings during excavation. The order was lifted the next month. In August, the Landmarks Preservation Commission ordered another halt, objecting to the placement of window openings in the shell Ms. Williams had constructed. That, too, was lifted. All the while, the neighbors campaigned to have the shell torn down. Judging by the framework, said Carmi Bee, an architect who lives nearby, the building appears poorly designed and hastily constructed. "First of all, it's on Seventh Avenue, and everyone knows that corner because of the plane crash," he said. "What's at stake here is that they can't let a precedent like this happen." In a letter to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, another neighbor, Robert W. Ohlerking, raised an objection particular to this lot. "It offers no acknowledgment of the building that was there before or the tragic historic events that caused its destruction," Mr. Ohlerking wrote. "Aren't historic districts meant to also include historic events as well?" As if in reply, a marker hangs from a lamppost directly in front of the lot. It says: Principally built between the mid-1880's and World War I, Park Slope retains its 19th Century profile of three- and four-story buildings, punctuated by church steeples, recalling Brooklyn's character as the city of homes and churches. The sign goes on to mention the Victorian Gothic, Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival architectural styles, but says not a word about any airplane crash, and certainly nothing about any walking tours, block parties or friends that Old Man Ortner can recall. In the daytime now, nannies and young mothers walk by the lot pushing empty strollers, accompanied by young girls who push toy-sized empty strollers of their own. "It's become a fertile place," Mr. Ortner said of Park Slope. "I'm amazed at the number of young people we have, too. Good looking. Well dressed." And the blank space in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York City, will be filled come Christmastime if Ms. Williams has her way. "Everybody knows the history," she said. "Being vacant doesn't serve any purpose." From The New York Times |
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From the
(1939) WPA Guide to New York City:
The Park Slope District, centering about the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway, has been since the mid-nineteenth century Brooklyn's "Gold Coast." In the quiet streets off the plaza are rows of residences that rival the mansions on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. Around the plaza itself, and towering above the huge Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, are tall apartment buildings, a solid bank of which extends down Eastern Parkway opposite the new Central Building of the Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum. Behind the latter are the grounds of the Botanic Garden, separated from Prospect Park by Flatbush Avenue. The broad, tree-lined parkway, leading straight to the arch, recalls the Champs Elysées.
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St. Saviour High School, 588 Sixth Street Ozzie's Coffee & Tea, 57 Seventh Avenue Review: Park Slope Brewing Company (January 1996) Pictures of Park Slope by Rushton Young The Old First Reformed Church, 729 Carroll Street Congregation B'nai Jacob of Park Slope, 401 9th Street |
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December 28,
2003 Rezoning, and Redefining, Park Slope By ALAN S. OSER New developments like Prospect Park Estates on Second Street, have extended the traditional boundary of Park Slope to Fourth Avenue. TEN years ago, when Karen Brenner first moved to Park Slope, she settled in a rented one-bedroom floor-through on Third Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In 2001 she moved again. She bought a two-bedroom apartment in a newly built 36-unit condominium called Park Slope Estates on Second Street between Fifth and Fourth Avenues. To outsiders that might not seem like a big change. Geographically, it isn't. But Park Slope residents long believed that housing down the slope from Fifth Avenue was much less desirable than housing on the more easterly blocks off Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Avenues as far as Prospect Park West at the park itself. Fifth Avenue was dismal as a commercial street, and it was a psychological boundary from the standpoint of housing value. In the last three years or so, this has changed. "Fifth Avenue is becoming the new trendy street, like Smith Street in Carroll Gardens," said Ms. Brenner, a television editor in her 30's. "In 1991 you wouldn't go there at night to find a hamburger. Now you can get a full meal any time of day." You can also find new housing on the side streets, as Ms. Brenner did. For the striking phenomenon in Park Slope, especially though not exclusively between Fifth Avenue and Fourth Avenue, is the presence of new construction on large midblock parcels of the Lower Slope. Most of the buildings recently completed or in construction are on land that was formerly vacant or else occupied by commercial buildings. Over the last year buyers have been paying about $335 to $440 a square foot for new apartments throughout Park Slope, based on 36 closings, said Peggy D. Aguayo of the firm of Aguayo & Huebener. Based on 43 sales now under contract, prices have risen to $368 to $535 a square foot, she said. Last month, for example, a buyer paid $369,985, or $406 a square foot, for a 910-square-foot two-bedroom two-bath condominium under construction on Sackett Street. Occupancy is to start in the spring. Now a rezoning adopted in April has set in motion plans for new 12-story buildings along Fourth Avenue. The rezoning encompasses most of the blockfronts from Warren to 15th Street, on both sides of the street, excluding those with significant commercial or industrial activity. The rezoning also adjusts regulations between Fourth Avenue and Prospect Park West to assure the preservation of low-rise buildings. (Details of the rezoning, Page 7.) "This was a perfect opportunity to balance preservation with growth," said Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission. "We were beginning to see some sore-thumb buildings, while Fourth Avenue could accommodate apartment-house construction." Contextual rezoning was adopted for northern Park Slope blocks in 1992, but the new rezoning extends the concept to a far larger area. The city councilmen from Park Slope — David Yassky and Bill de Blasio — expressed satisfaction about the new zoning in general but disappointment in its failure to require builders to provide a certain amount of moderate-income housing in exchange for the right to build taller structures on Fourth Avenue. "We're concerned about the need to maintain economic integration," Mr. Yassky said. Mr. de Blasio noted that the Bloomberg administration had agreed to make funds available to create 133 units of moderate-income housing within the new zoning district in the next five years. As broadly defined by brokers marketing real estate there, Park Slope runs all the way from Flatbush Avenue on the north to the Prospect Park Expressway on the south, and from Prospect Park and Prospect Park West to Fourth Avenue on the east. The April rezoning actually goes as far as Third Avenue on some blocks, and only to 15th Street on the south. While census tracts do not precisely coincide with these boundaries, the area had an approximate population of 62,200 in 2000, and there were 29,800 housing units. Over 20 years, the population has declined but the number of housing units has increased. The 1980 census showed a population of 65,200 and 29,000 housing units. The population decline reflects the influx of younger people replacing older households, bringing a drop in average household size. "There's been an influx of a lot of singles and people living with roommates," said Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the Department of City Planning. Concurrently, the new arrivals have raised the proportion of college graduates in Park Slope. They were 60 percent of the people over the age of 25 in 2000, census figures show. In 1990 they were 49.5 percent. HISTORICALLY, the most desirable blocks, with the highest housing prices, have been along the park and on the park-bounded side streets from President Street perhaps as far as Sixth Street, brokers say. Typical sales prices last year for one- and two-family homes ranged from $1.3 million to $2 million, and occasionally more. The Park Slope Historic District overlaps some blocks of this area and extends beyond it to the north and east. The slope of Park Slope descends gradually from northeast to southwest, leading to the terminology North Slope (from Flatbush Avenue to Union Street), Center Slope (from the south side of Union Street to Fifth or Sixth Streets) and South Slope beyond that. Residents of the southeastern part of the slope, near Prospect Park Southwest, know it as Windsor Terrace. "Originally, everything south of Ninth Street was just `South Brooklyn,' " said Billy Stephens, senior vice president in the Brooklyn office of the Corcoran Group. "In the mid-70's Park Slope went as far as 15th Street. As time went on, the whole South Slope became `Park Slope.' " Prices for existing housing in Park Slope typically diminish farther down the slope and farther from the park. Most houses have at least one rental. Resales prices for two-families distant from the park in the South Slope, for example, would probably be in a range of $700,000 to $800,000, brokers say. A two-bedroom floor-through condominium in the Center Slope between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue might sell in the range of $550,000 to $650,000. Native Brooklynites would be surprised to hear any of the blocks below Fifth Avenue defined as Park Slope at all. But the name seemed justified to Jean Miele, a landscape photographer who grew up in Park Slope and now lives in the Park Slope Estates condominium on Second Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. Mr. Miele and his wife, Carol Guasti, were living the Chelsea section of Manhattan when they decided to move. Now they and their daughter, Cally, 12, live in an 1,800-square-foot duplex. "We needed more space and we're close to a great middle school — M.S. 51," said Mr. Miele, who is president of his condominium's board. The man whose development work has been primarily responsible for expanding the concept of Park Slope to reach Fourth Avenue is Isaac Katan, the developer of Park Slope Estates. Either on its own or in partnerships, Katan Developers has put into construction 260 apartments in the area, mainly on side streets in attached four-story elevator buildings with eight units each. And Katan is in the design phase for about 400 more. "We cultivated the edge of the neighborhood at a time when nobody wanted to move there," Mr. Katan said. New projects now in construction or design on or near Fourth Avenue will have a sales value of about $350 million, he said, and will transform parts of Fourth Avenue into "the Park Avenue of Brooklyn." Park Slope Estates, with 38 condominium apartments in six buildings, was the first project of its kind in the area. Mr. Katan's partners in the project were Boymelgreen Developers of Brooklyn, which did the construction, and the Fatato family, prior owners of the land. Bricolage Designs of Borough Park was the architect of record, and Ken Yesmont of Manhattan was the design architect. Other projects in construction for occupancy next year are City View Gardens, 46 units in five buildings on Second and Third Streets, plus 75 rental apartments in a 12-story building bordering Fourth Avenue; Park Slope Terrace, with 38 condominiums in a five-story elevator building on Sackett Street; and Park Slope Gardens, 30 condominiums in three five-story elevator buildings on Second and Third Streets. Two unnamed projects - on Dean Street, between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, and on Bergen Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues - will have a total of 36 condominiums in three four- and five-story elevator buildings. "We will have 225 condominiums to sell in the spring," Mr. Katan said. The sales agent for this inventory is Aguayo & Huebener Realty Group. In 65 sales of new housing for the Katan group and other builders in the last two years, Ms. Aguayo said, 40 to 50 percent of the buyers have come from outside Park Slope. "Most are couples with a child already or planning a family," she said. The local schools have a high reputation among buyers, she said. Katan partnerships are designing 10 additional developments on or near Fourth Avenue, Mr. Katan said. They will produce close to 600 housing units. Six of them will have frontages on Fourth Avenue, with residential entrances on a side street, and some will have 100 apartments or more. As the new zoning provides, the typical Fourth Avenue building will rise in a street wall of 80 or 85 feet — eight floors — and then set back for a four-story element. It is too early to report the precise sites, Mr. Katan said. Mr. Yesmont, the design architect for most of the low-rise projects, said he tried to fulfill the goal of transporting Park Slope charm to the area with the use of copper mansard roofs, limestone arches at the entrances, smaller arches at the parapet level where the roof starts, and curved railings on the outdoor terraces. "The colors of brick reflect the colors of surrounding buildings," Mr. Yesmont said. Bricolage Designs of Borough Park has been the architect of record for many of the current projects in Park Slope and elsewhere in Brooklyn. Henry Radusky, the principal in the firm, said that over the next 12 to 18 months the eight that are recently completed or in construction by developers other than Mr. Katan would bring 200 new housing units to the market. Several of these projects are single buildings that are higher than would be allowed under the April rezoning. For example, there is a seven-story two-building project on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and President Street, nearing completion, that would be two stories too high in its President Street element, but conforming along Fourth Avenue if it had been designed under the new zoning rules. The builder is Zoriano Inc. of Brooklyn. Another builder is the Goldmedal Group, in which Mendel Goldshmid is a principal. Goldmedal is in midconstruction on a five-story 30-unit condominium on 15th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, with occupancy expected next summer. There will be three entrances to three connected elevator buildings. It will have a landscaped backyard of 4,000 square feet. At 101 Prospect Park Southwest, a new 15-unit six-story building shaped like the Flatiron Building in Manhattan, caused local controversy as a view blocker before construction. Nearing completion, the condominiums sold out at an average price of $400 a square foot, the developer, Manny Reiner, said. NOT all has gone smoothly in the new construction. At Park Slope Estates on Second Street, Mr. Miele, the president of the condominium association, spoke of excessive delay in fixing roof leaks that have been persistent for more than a year. "It's been a struggle, and it's still not quite complete," he said. The builders, meanwhile, are trying to attract buyers from Manhattan. Representative of these buyers in recent weeks were Lara Eshkenazi and James Matheson, a couple who were living in cramped space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They have gone into contract on a two-bedroom three-bath apartment with 1,500 square feet of space on Sackett Street, for occupancy early next year. Its price is $590,000. "We couldn't get the same space for that money in Manhattan," said Ms. Eshkenazi, a lawyer who works downtown. "And we have friends who settled in the neighborhood. They love it." How the Zoning Works By ALAN S. OSER THE revised zoning adopted for Park Slope last April affects almost all the blocks from Warren Street south to 15th Street and from Third Avenue to Prospect Park, excluding only a manufacturing zone nearer the Gowanus Canal. It gives Brooklyn its largest contextual zoning district, comparable to others adopted in Manhattan over the years. Its basic idea is to require new construction on built-up streets to reflect the characteristic bulk and height of existing buildings, but at the same time to encourage new larger-scale apartment construction where it is considered appropriate, which in Park Slope has meant Fourth Avenue. Fourth Avenue is a long, mostly underdeveloped boulevard of great width — 120 feet — that is served by buses and subways. The R has three Park Slope stops on Fourth Avenue at all hours of the day: Union Street, Ninth Street and Prospect Avenue. The F train stops at all hours at Ninth Street. The W and M trains run along Fourth Avenue during rush hours only. There has been new commercial construction in recent years but little residential growth. The rezoning effort began under the Giuliani administration and and led to the adoption in 1992 of contextual zoning on blocks in the North Slope near Grand Army Plaza, from Union Street north to Flatbush Avenue and west to Fourth Avenue, providing both height and bulk limits. The extension of contextual zoning in Park Slope was treated as a priority by Amanda Burden, when she was named chairwoman of the City Planning Commission by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It required a comprehensive downzoning (less square footage per zoning lot), an upzoning on Fourth Avenue and new height restrictions throughout the area. The changes will preserve the existing scale of buildings on 100 blocks of Park Slope, said Ms. Burden, and encourage apartment houses on 36 blockfronts of Fourth Avenue. Before the rezonings, R-6 or occasionally R-7 was almost the blanket designation in Park Slope. In zoning language, R-6 allows a FAR, or floor-area ratio, of 3 (three square feet of building area for each square foot of the zoning lot) on wide streets and 2.43 square feet on side streets. Commercial streets use the letter C rather than R, but the densities are the same. The new zoning refines these terms. On streets where apartment houses are the main building type, there are now R-6A and R-7A zones. The FAR is unchanged, but there are now height restrictions: 60 feet at the street, then stepping back for an element 10 feet high, typically used for penthouse units with a terrace. The vast majority of Park Slope blocks — the east-west side streets running to Prospect Park — were rezoned R-6B. The predominant housing type on these streets is attached three- or four-story buildings. In the R-6B blocks the allowable FAR has been cut to 2 from 2.43, and a height limit of 50 feet imposed. This leads to four-story buildings, perhaps with space above for duplexed apartments, and yard space at the rear. Avenues, too, now have height limits. Where existing development is low-rise residential, as along Sixth Avenue, the B designation has been imposed to cut the FAR to 2. But most commercial blockfronts will retain the FAR of the former zoning. The big change that encourages development is on Fourth Avenue, going back on side streets either 100 or 150 feet. A total of 36 blockfronts have been rezoned R-8A. This gives 6.02 square feet of building for each square foot of land, or 6.5 square feet if a community facility, like a doctor's office, is provided. It also requires a street wall of 80 or 85 feet. After that there can be additional floors up to a maximum of 120 feet. Four parking spaces must be provided on site for every 10 apartments. To maximize the allowable floor area, builders are likely to produce 12-story buildings with an eight-story base and a four-story element above. "Fourth Avenue is an area where new apartment-house construction totally makes sense," said Regina Myer, director of the Brooklyn office of the Department of City Planning. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |
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