My RSS and Twitter feeds are suddenly alive with new posts from Gowanus Lounge. If you go to the site, you’ll see that it has a new design and all new content. (If that picture of Little Italy at the top of the page seems a bit familiar (and yet a little unBrooklyn), you may be remembering this post.)

It turns out that the domain name has been sold by Bob Guskind’s widow, and there is a new proprietor at the lounge. And while the content of the new Gowanus Lounge is certainly not what we all came to expect from Bob’s posts, happily, that historic content is being preserved at a new website (bobguskind.com). It’s the old familiar place, with all the old familiar posts. And that is nice to see.

Heather (who, with her husband, set up the bobguskind.com site) has more details.

Sunset, 2 January 2010.
Five development projects, in various states of completion.

291 Bedford Avenue
Rosenbaum Design Group, Architects

This building has been going up on the corner of South 1st and Bedford for some months now (one of many green shoots on the Southside). Textbook example of how a small building can be completely out of context. Not surprising given the architect’s speciality – shopping centers and supermarkets (their website doesn’t even mention residential).

349 Metropolitan, all-weather blight.

Mental health break, NYC architecture edition.

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).

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.

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).

Juliet Linderman has the latest on the Broadway Triangle – which is that it is still stuck in Council subcommittees. This is datelined yesterday, so it is possible that there was a vote today (Thursday). If so, I haven’t seen anything yet.

Basically, the Council is still negotiating with itself, choosing sides over the issue. Diana Reyna continues to push her colleagues to deny the project outright, while other council members seem to be trying to find modifications that will make the project better (here’s a hint – the Community Board had a number of good modifications that would make the rezoning a lot better).

Reyna seems to be letting her passion for the issue overtake the facts. In the article, Reyna is quoted as saying “This plan isn’t about planning for a community, it’s about pushing through a political deal… It hasn’t taken into account an overcrowded elementary school…or corporations like Pfizer that promise jobs”. Unfortunately, if Pfizer is promising jobs, they aren’t in Brooklyn – the company has closed up shop here after 150 years, and is taking 1,200 jobs out of the community. (I don’t think the numbers support her statement on schools either, but I’m not so well-versed in that area.) The other night, Reyna told CB1 that the Broadway Triangle rezoning would result in “only 150” units of affordable housing. The actual number – affordable units to be developed on city-owned sites – is at least 488 and may be as high as 650.

Reyna is right to criticize the process. The sole-sourcing of city-owned sites to UJO and RBSCC is wrong, and it should have been an open process1. And those are issues that Council could take up. But on the other stuff, she should get her facts in order.

1.Not that HPD’s open processes work to the community’s advantage. HPD has a host of RFPs still unawarded, including Greenpoint Hospital (the RFP for which was issued almost three years ago). And the RFPs that have been awarded recently have all gone to private developers from outside the neighborhood – not local non-profit developers. The latest are the four small sites that were awarded to Yuco Development – one at Bedford and South 4th, the other three in the Maujer/Ten Eyck area. A number of local non-profits were vying to develop those sites. So sole-sourcing might suck, but an open RFP process doesn’t always help local developers or non-profits.

Hyde & Co. Insurance Map of Brooklyn, 1898
Plate 34
Source: NYPL

The Times profiles life in New York City’s wood-frame houses – a building type that definitely has its charms and pitfalls (I live in a 175-year-old wood house, so I know both). But while they are rare in Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, north Brooklyn – Greenpoint in particular – is positively overrun with wood-frame houses. The map above shows the north section of Greenpoint (north of Greenpoint Avenue) in 1898 – the yellow represents wood-frame buildings and the red masonry. Other sections of Greenpoint have similar ratios of yellow to red among the rowhouses. Northside Williamsburg and East Williamsburg also have a high percentage of wood houses. The Southside has a much higher percentage of red (brick) buildings, and South Williamsburg would actually show a lot of brown (for brownstone) and very little yellow.

Most – though by no means all1 – of the artificially sided houses in Greenpoint and Williamsburg are either all wood or wood sides and rear with brick fronts. (And most of those are worse for the artificial siding, which traps water and hides water damage, but that’s another story.)

The wood houses of Greenpoint and Williamsburg are generally not as nice as the Civil War-era wood houses of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, although there some very nice examples in the Greenpoint Historic District. Most of the wood houses in Greenpoint (particularly east of McGuinness) are late-19th century tenements, not traditional row houses.

1. With the advent of EIFS (stucco over styrofoam), there is an unfortunate trend of covering over historic masonry facades. The results are usually awful, and the benefits to the building are much less than a decent pointing job would have been.