My Life In Brooklyn

Yesterday I mentioned the two construction sites in this area, one on Caton Avenue the other on Crooke Avenue.  This area has many large apartment buildings, but I did want to mention a very nice section of buildings on the east side of St. Paul Pl., extending from Crooke to Woodruff, and then around the corner on Woodruff itself.

The image below (taken about six weeks ago) is a view from the corner of Crooke and St. Paul Pl., looking toward Woodruff.  These happen to be similar to the group of houses (all with terraces) Brownstoner mentioned  a couple of months ago.  Eight houses comprise this group on St. Paul Pl; around the corner on Woodruff, the style changes and while there are no more terraces, they are still very nice.  Of course in this image you can see the car park in the front yard, a pet peeve of mine, but I haven’t seen the others in this group following suit.

The following image is the group of houses located on Woodruff, photo taken from the corner of Woodruff and St. Pauls Pl, looking east:

I can’t say much about the neighborhood in general as I don’t know it well, other than walking around the area a few times a month.  It is close to Prospect Park, the Parade Grounds and the Q train.  By virtue of the fact there are stop signs and no traffic signals, suggests it could be a relatively quiet street, at least in terms of traffic.  The people factor could be another issue given the amount of apartment buildings.

High-res images available here and here for a closer look at the terraced buildings. Photographed yesterday.

Late this afternoon a chatty and enthusiastic man rang my doorbell with a petition and pen in hand.

“This is for the basketball stadium,” he told me.  “We all know its going to be built.  This is to ensure local residents will get the construction jobs.”

I read it over.  Not a word on it about construction jobs, however it was collecting signatures in support of Atlantic Yards development.

When I began to talk to the signature collector, noting there was nothing on the petition about jobs and asking who he represented, the man backed off and was on to the next house before I could say another word.

As usual, read before you sign.

This construction site has been ongoing for a couple of months now also.  I haven’t managed to grab many pics that decently display the site itself and frankly I more or less forgot to mention it before.  It is boarded up very efficiently to prevent viewing.

The site is located on the south side of Crooke Avenue between St. Paul Place and Parade Place.   This is another large site, and also another site that is in process due to a teardown.  If you look at a map, this site is slightly west of the Caton Ave site on the very next block.

While I was at the site, attempting to grab some images, one of the plywood “doors” to the site opened and I had a chat with a low-level manager, who allowed me to take a couple pics (though he didn’t want the boss to see me).  He told me this would be another six story building, condos, and they are moving along quickly now.  I’ll check on the progress of this one over time.

I haven’t published pics of this construction site before, though I have a few images archived during earlier stages of this build.

It is located on Caton Ave, almost directly facing the intersection of East 18th St.   I am guessing this will turn out to be condos, though with all the press lately about condos becoming rentals (or in some cases hotels or discarded plans) one cannot predict.  Sadly, at this point the slots for the requisite air conditioners are evident, looks like there will be balconies, and I can only guess the roof level will be some sort of penthouse offering.

Now, while this is indeed Caton Ave, there are some elements of this neighborhood I like quite a bit.  It is a short walk to the Parade Ground, Prospect Park, and Q train.  It is just on the outer edge of Victorian Flatbush.  There are some really nice larger buildings in the area as well as limestones, though ultimately I am not able to say what the place is like at night, for example.  But I can’t imagine it to be very bad.  On the down side, on Woodruff, which isn’t too far away there are three buildings I suspect to be SROs: broken windows and shades, graffiti and generally poor shape.

Again I have to remind people to have a look at various online mapping resources, you will note there was a teardown in order for this structure to be built.  I am not saying all teardowns are unjustified, but I plan to continually remind everyone that they are consistently happening.  My own personal opinion is teardowns balance out to be more on the unjustified side in terms of how it ultimately will modify the nature of a neighborhood, but that is how I feel.  It isn’t just the teardowns that are worrisome, but moreso the poorly designed buildings that replace them.  The city needs to establish some serious guidelines.  The following image shows what was torn down for this building (the red “pushpin” is pointing to the intersection of E. 18th and Caton Ave):

Image from Microsoft, Local Live

It couldn’t have been a more perfect day to be outside for a lengthy walk.  Seems like I have been away forever, in blog time at least.  However, Thanksgiving is over, the houseguests have returned to their respective cities and hopefully I will be able to catch up here with comments and a couple of entries.

To begin, today I grabbed another shot in the progress of the commercial building on the northeast corner of Church Avenue and Ocean Ave.  As you can see from the image, new sidewalks have been created, lots of retail space is evident, some with windows and security gates installed, others still boarded up.  It will be interesting to see what stores finally open their doors — and also interesting will be a visual on the completed structure.

The four retail windows on the left in the image appear to be one large space with a partially finished interior.  A number of months ago the New York Times published an article on retail rentals in this area, describing it as nearly 100% and of interest to larger chain stores.  So, we shall soon see what happens here.

Today I decided to head south and walked as far as the intersection of Flatbush and Bedford, then headed north again on Nostrand, weaving back and forth on some of the streets just on whim. Some notable (and large) constuction projects almost everywhere.

I decided to head west on Tilden and was glad I did. I saw a really striking building on the southeast corner of Lott Street and Tilden (Number 139 Lott St., if you wish to look it up.) Some really beautiful details in it, but clearly no evidence of use that I could see. Taking some time to speak with a few people in the area, no one could help me out with the building past or present in terms of use, other than to say it had been locked up tight for many years. At first I thought it seemed almost armory-like in nature, but as I walked to the rear of the building via Lott, I saw what looked like truck bays, again totally locked.  It is an odd building with few windows and to be honest I am not even certain where the entrance is/was.  In any case it is quite interesting and a mystery, to me at least.  It has made me very curious. I admit the above image doesn’t do it justice, especially with the grafitti, but check out the details below the cut.

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I was taken with this building the first time I saw it, located on the northwest corner of Ocean Avenue and Beverley Road.  PropertyShark info states it has thirty residential units and is dated 1912.

I’d like to do a little more research on this building.  There is no name visible on the building, but given the suggestion of both visual arts and literature depicted in the corbels (below), I can’t help but think there must be an interesting story attached to it.  And if there isn’t, there should be. I’d love to see what the apartments look like, with only thirty apartments in the building they could be quite large. 

This is an excellent example of why I love walking around Brooklyn. A few more pics and hi-res versions on flickr.

 

Today I walked around the perimeter of Prospect Park, it was just that kind of day for me.  I spent too much money at the Farmer’s Market at Grand Army Plaza, took lots of photos, and then heading home decided to pop into the former Panda-Chuchifrito-Sajoma place.  Now it will be called Brothers Seafood.  I am excited because in the 4+ years I have lived here, this is the first time I have bought sliced deli meat.  Locally that is.  It’s probably not a big deal to most of you but a decent deli has been on my retail wish list since I moved here.  One of the owners told me he worked for Dean and Deluca prior.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I am very happy with this place so far!

Above: Ocean Avenue; below: Lincoln Road.