I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

And things must be getting mighty desperate at the Rialto1, the Gene Kaufman designed “carriage house conversion”2 that runs through the block from North 5th to North Streets, just east of Bedford. If you are really interested, the Developers Group has the details here. But if you do need a vacation, I would suggest paying your own way, and using the money you would have spent on a down payment to upgrade to first class. Putting 20% down on an overpriced, world-class ugly condo is not the best way to get yourself to Italy.

1 Although according to Streeteasy, the project is just over half sold (16 of 31 units are listed as sold).

2 The marketing on this job is priceless (as if naming it the Rialto or putting “This is not an April Fool’s Joke” on their poster hadn’t tip you off already). The 31 “architectural apartments” (wtf does that even mean?) were “conceived to create special homes for design conscious urbanites”. The “carriage house” part probably refers to stables that were once located on this site (at least as far back as 1898). The buildings (there were four of them) look to have been completely redone circa 1932 – 1934 (see photo, after the jump), at which time they housed a “wet wash” laundry. In the 1960s, a cardboard box manufacturer was located there.

So yes, there were once horses and maybe even carriages here, but lets be honest and call a stable a stable. Sure, the project “combines the flavor of old construction methods and prewar elegance [of a stable?] with sleek and modern finishes”, but if you can find the carriage house in this mess in this mess of sleek modern finishes, they should give you a free vacation.

On the jump, the Rialto in its “carriage house” days.

149 North 4th Street, before the “conversion”.
Photo: PropertyShark