WGPA

"Waterfront basketball--A spacious Park Department playground on Kent Ave. at the foot of Broadway provides ideal athletic facilities in the very shadow of Williamsburg Bridge."
Caption & photo: Brooklyn Public Library

Effective Saturday, East River State Park is closed for the season. State Parks had been saying they were going to do it, but there was some hope that a deal might be reached to keep it open. We hear that both Friends of BEDT Park and Assemblyman Lentol are still working to reach a deal that would allow public access to the only significant waterfront open space in all of north Brooklyn. Meanwhile, all of the other state parks in NYC (including Fulton Ferry in Dumbo) remain open.

Coincidentally, we came across this picture while trolling the Brooklyn Public Library's website this evening. Taken in 1950, it shows a former NYC Department of Parks playground on Kent Avenue between Broadway and South Sixth Street. The site is now home to a city DOT facility. Even more coincidentally, this is the exact same location that OSA and others have proposed DOT turn over to Parks in order to create additional waterfront open space. If it ever came to pass, it would provide a nice terminus to the proposed Domino espanade.

Star Building (Eberhard Faber).
Photo: Porter Hovey Polaroid Project

Williamsburg photographer Porter Hovey has been busy with her Polaroid camera, and has a blog dedicated to the project. In addition to this shot of one of the Eberhard Faber buildings (we're pretty sure its 59 Kent Street), there are a lot of other nice shots of Greenpoint & Williamsburg. Well worth a few minutes of exploration (definitely check out the Harte Building photo).

Fillmore Place, looking east towards Roebling Street.

Fillmore Place is about to take the first step to becoming Williamsburg's first Historic District!

Next Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a hearing calendar the proposed Fillmore Place Historic District for a public hearing. This first step is largely a formality, and does not entail any public testimony (which is why its listed as a five-minute item on the LPC Calendar [warning - pdf link]. The next step in the process will be the public hearing itself, at which LPC staff will present a complete report on the proposed district and members of the public will be allowed to testify about the proposed designation.

This is one of the designations that WPA has been advocating for, and we are pleased to see it finally moving forward. Councilmember Diana Reyna has been instrumental in helping to move this towards fruition.

In today's City section, Jake Mooney writes about the irony of the many twists and turns in the Austin Nichols (184 Kent) story. As it turns out, the building is historically significant. And for a building that was held up as a "piece of trash" by Councilman Simcha Felder, it sure is looking good.

Also, contra Dan Reardon, 184 Kent was never in any danger of winding up "in a landfill somewhere". In a City where FAR is king, an overbuilt building will always be "saved". The issue with Austin Nichols was that the original plan to save it was a fate worse than demolition.

In case you've forgotten what started it all, here is a reminder:

184 Kent, proposed rendering
Architect: Karl Fisher (ca. 2005)

As reported in Curbed and Gowanus Lounge, Steiner NYC, the developer of the former Old Dutch Mustard site, has a new ad running in New York magazine, in which it claims that it "has converted the Old Dutch Mustard Warehouse at 80 Metropolitan Avenue... to a residential development".

This, of course, is fantastic news. We had assumed that since the Old Dutch Mustard had long ago been reduced to a pile of rubble that any "conversion" was out of the question. Hence the red "LOST" designation on the picture to the right. Clearly, though, Steiner NYC has found a new model for adaptive use of historic structures - one that does not actually require that you have an historic structure to adaptively reuse.

This is also a clearly a major victory for the 4 Boro Neighborhood Preservation Alliance, who listed ODM on their landmarks wish list of 2007. 6 months after the building had already been reduced to a pile of rubble.

This latest bit of marketing is brought to you by the same geniuses who back in March claimed "80 Metropolitan will [...] incorporate the character of the neighborhood, which was once dominated by factories and warehouses." By "incorporate" they, of course, mean reduce to a pile rubble.

Gowanus Lounge has an update on the rehabilitation of the New York Quinine Co. building, aka 44 Berry Street. The developer is claiming that the large HVAC holes riddling the building's facade will hardly be noticeable, a claim that is a little hard to swallow.

(NY Quinine is on WPA's list of significant historical buildings, and has been nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.)

Justin Farrow has a slide show of lost buildings, most of which will be familiar to WPA readers. Many nice shots of Greenpoint Terminal Market (American Manufacturing) and of Hope Street.

Following on the calendaring of the Fillmore Place historic district last week, there have been a couple of articles in the local press, including the Brooklyn Paper.

USS Monitor, Watercolor by Oscar Parkes (via Wikipedia)

Today marks the anniversary of the launching of the USS Monitor, the first iron-clad warship of the U.S. Navy, from Greenpoint's Continental Iron Works. The (new) Brooklyn Eagle has a nice little write up of the Monitor. Wikipedia also has a long article on the ship, including the above image (which we like because its one of the view pictures of the Monitor that gives one a sense of the scale of the vessel - it was not small).

Continental Iron Works was located near the Bushwick Inlet, roughly where Quay Street meets Franklin Street. The buildings of the ironworks are long gone. There is a museum dedicated to the history of the vessel - it is currently without a home, although hopefully someday soon it will open as part of Bushwick Inlet Park (where exactly is a matter of some controversy).