Author: Halden
Serge Gainsbourg ♥ NY
Mental health break, NYC architecture edition.
Tonight: The Origin of Paper
If you are looking for something interesting to do on a rainy December evening, head on down to the foot of Grand Street and check out the opening at the International Museum of Paper. The museum is displaying its enormous collection of Chinese handmade papers and unusual artifacts pertaining to how papermaking was invented in China and developed through the centuries. The collection has been amassed during field expeditions to remote villages of China where traditional papermaking still exists.
The opening reception is tonight (December 13) from 5 to 8 p.m. The museum is located at 31 Grand Street (corner of Kent Avenue). The exhibit continues through June 6, 2010, with regular hours on Thursdays, 2-6 p.m.
Grand Street Adventure
Over the past few years, Grand Street west of the BQE has evolved into a great shopping and eating district. Which makes sense, since Grand Street has been the commercial core of Williamsburg going back to its village days in the 1820s.
Starting tomorrow night, the merchants on Grand Street will give you even more discounts, freebies and other incentives to shop, eat and drink there. You’ll find some of Williamsburg’s best retailers (Sprout, Moon River Chattel, Tracy Feith, Sodafine, Bird) and eateries (Mercat Negre, Santorini, Walter Foods) on the list (full list after the jump).
Grand Adventure takes place this Friday (11 December) and next Friday (18 December). To find participating establishments, just look for the lit farolitos in front of each store.
December 11: OSA Silent Auction and Benefit
NAG has some really great items on its silent auction list (tonight!). But if art or open space is more your thing, check out OSA’s silent auction going on now at BraveBrooklyn. (Better yet, bid at both auctions – they both support good local causes.)
The auction features work donated by artists Fred Tomaselli, Richard Serra, James Case Leal, Nathan Koch (shown here), Adam Taye, Chris Burnside, James Woodward, Robbert Jan de Oude, Bradly Brown, Matt Jones, Monica Cook, Jesse Witkin, Khris Graves, Karen Bausman, Skewerville, Paul Campbell, Sean Hemmele and more. There are also signed books by Matthew Barney, Joel Shapiro and Mark Di Suvero.
You can online at BraveBrooklyn or show up on Friday December 11th from 6-11pm for the closing reception and final bidding at 30 Nassau Avenue, at Dobbin Street.
Reminder: NAG Party Thursday Night
A quick reminder that this Thursday (10 December) from 7 to 10 pm there is a benefit for NAG (Neighbors Allied for Good Growth – the second G is silent) at the Woods on South 4th Street. No cover, but donations are welcome. There will be plenty of booze, and a silent auction featuring goodies from local institutions (a lot of new additions since my last post on this), such as:
- Word Bookstore
- The Brooklyn Kitchen/The Meat Hook
- Alter Clothing
- Southside CSA
- Third Ward
- Mast Brothers Chocolate
- Treehouse Brooklyn
- Teddy’s Bar & Grill
- The Lecture Series/Book Thug Nation
- Sodafine
- The North BK Compost Project
- Eyebeam Atelier
- Three Kings Tattoo Parlor
- Franny & Rooey
- Cafe Grumpy
- Enid’s
- The City Reliquary
- The Gym Park
- Miranda Restaurant
- Charm School Design
- Transient Pictures
- Kingsland Printing
and even some Polish and ESL lessons!
McCarren Pool Groundbreaking
l to r: Assembly Member Joe Lentol; Marty Markowitz; Mike Bloomberg; Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Jules Spiegel; NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe; David Yassky; and OSA’s Stephanie Thayer.
Photo: BP Markowitz’s office
Progress at McCarren yesterday – Mayor Bloomberg and others “broke ground” on the renovation of the McCarren Park Pool (work has been underway for a while, but it’s nice to recognize that).
Rose Developer is “Bankrupt”
I use quotes in the headline here because contrary to the Brooklyn Paper’s headline, it’s not Isack Rosenberg himself who is bankrupt, but rather one of his other development projects.
Rosenberg is trying to raise money by seekign a city rezoning of his lumber yard site from manufacturing to residential — a move that would vastly increase the property’s value.
True enough. But the rezoning isn’t going help Rosenberg meet his December 21 bank deadline to settle a $45 million debt on the Warehouse 11 project (aka the Roebling Oil Field).
A few points with regard to how this impacts the Rose Plaza development:
1) For the most part, it doesn’t. Rose Plaza is a separate project, which may or not get built by this developer. Whatever rezoning passes will run with the property (and increase the value of the property). Whatever special permits are approved will also run with the property, but a new owner could decide not to use them and do an “as-of-right” project.
2) One important way that it does effect the project is that a new owner (or even the current owner) could decide to opt for a different architect or landscape architect, ditching the nice designs that are being presented now in favor of something of lesser quality (this, perhaps?). Such bait-and-switches are not unheard of – Douglaston Development did it at the Edge, dropping Enrique Norten in favor of Stephen Jacobs. That is why the CB1 resolution rejecting the proposal made such a big deal about giving the board a role in future design changes.
11211 Tech Note
I’ve recently upgraded the blogging software that keeps this running, and it has not been without hitches. One of those, I have been informed, is that the site looks worse than ever on Internet Explorer. Since I a) don’t use Windows very often and b) use IE even less often, I hadn’t noticed. But I checked and it’s true.
Everything seems to be OK with Firefox, Safari or Chrome on Windows XP, and it’s possible that IE8 behaves properly, but IE7 (and I assume earlier versions) are definitely not OK. If the content you are viewing is half a page down and you are not seeing a little icon for the NAG party on the right of the screen, something is wrong with your browser. Switch to Firefox (or any other modern standards-compliant browser – it works fine in ) and things should be better.
But I will try to fix it.
Rose Plaza: Then
Mollenhauer Sugar Refining Co. (between South 10th Street and Division Avenue)
Source: King’s Views of Brooklyn, 1905
The photo above (click for a larger image) shows the Rose Plaza site as it looked 105 years ago. The building the “M” on the smokestack is the main refinery of the Mollenhauer Sugar Refining Company, and was located on Kent Avenue between Division Avenue and South 11th Street. The shorter building to the left on the river (technically on Wallabout Channel), a warehouse for the sugar refinery, was between South 10th and South 11th Streets.
The tall building beyond the warehouse is probably part of the Brooklyn Distilling Co., which once occupied the site where Schaefer Landing now sits. To the right of the Mollenhauer refinery is a building with a small tower and a mansard roof – that is one of the buildings of the former McLoughlin Brothers printing company. The building still stands on Wythe between Division and South 11th (it is now artists live/work lofts).