The Reconstruction of Williamsburg . . . More

Wythe Ave. looking northwest toward Kent Ave.

When the towering apartment buildings were being thrown up along the river on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, I naively thought that it was just the available space and the river view that was responsible, and that that kind of building could probably be kept to that side of the neighborhood. People will pay for a view of the East River and the skyline of midtown but who is throw away good money to look down on a pizzeria or bodega or some run down apartment building from the turn of the last century.

Bedford at South 4th.

Stupid, stupid. That’s why I am just scraping by in publishing instead of making my fortune in real estate. I don’t think like a realtor; I don’t thinking terms of trends or what’s a hot neighborhood and what’s not. In fact, when I first moved to Williamsburg some nine years ago, I even thought it could go the way of the Village or Nolita or Little Italy.

Grand Street between Bedford and Driggs.

Sure, it would attract the well-heeled who would drive prices up but the neighborhood would remain essentially the same (like Grand Street, above) since that’s what drew people here to begin with, and there would still be places for the not-so-rich since you can’t tear down all the old apartment buildings and drive everyone out.Though as it turns out, you can try. Actually, in the summer of 2001, it hadn't even begun attracting the really wealthy trenderati, it was still a pleasant place with a few bars and some outdoor eateries and nothing too chic in the way of stores.

South 1st near Havemayer.

Now I wonder how long it can last before it’s just another extension of midtown, a high density area full of gleaming metal and glass high rises. It’s going in that direction and I don’t see much to stop it.

Driggs at North 10th.

I am talking mainly about the Northside, from around Broadway north into Greenpoint, and from the river east into, well, there’s really no stopping it going east; the swamps of Maspeth, maybe.

A couple of postings ago when I was talking about the new building in the eastern side of Williamsburg, the Italian neighborhood centered on Graham Avenue, Lorimer Street, and so on, I forgot one really tall high rise I had wanted to show. At the time I was taking the photos, I ran into an older gentleman who had lived there most of his life and who allowed that when these developes started coming in and picking off the lots and small buildings, only two people tried to fight it, he and one other man. Then he pointed to this tall building nearby and told me that that one didn’t even have a permit when it went up; so he told me, I can’t prove it one way or another. He was pretty disgusted by the whole thing.

Richardson and Humboldt Streets.

You don’t really get a good sense of how out of place these tall buildings are until you view them from a distance and see how they tower over their neighbors. It’s like the effect the Empire State Building gives. When you are walking nearby it seems like just another tall building n midtown. You don’t get a good sense of the height in the midst of all the other buildings there. But look at it from New Jersey and you see that there is nothing that even remotely touches it for scores of blocks around. These tall buildings in Williamsburg are not the ESB but the effect is similar.

And then there is this building on Humboldt Street that I confess I have a sneaking liking for. It’s very clean looking. I don’t know if I’d like to live there (I hate a.c. so I need windows that open and most of these new places look like the windows don't) but it’s not terrible. Then too, I really wouldn’t want to live in a neighborhood where this is all there was. But I think that’s likely to happen.

Humboldt between Withers and Frost.

But the real fertile ground for the new Williamsburg begins over around Union Avenue near McCarren Park. There is acre after empty acre waiting for the economy to improve a bit more, probably so someone can develop large chunks of it instead of piecemeal building. This is the intersection of Union Ave. and North 10th St. Stand in the middle of the street and you are almost completely surrounded by empty lots.

This map may give you a better idea of the amount of empty space at that intersection just waiting to be filled in with tall, gleaming new silvery glassy towers. It's the area outlined in yellow. Driggs ave., which I will talk about further on is a block past, and parallel to, Roebling St., out of the picture on the left.




Before I get back to that Northside section of Williamsburg from Driggs to the river, I want to take a short detour up Union Avenue toward Broadway to see another neighborhood facing the inexorable tide of glass and steel and one person's reaction to it.

Ainslie is around seven blocks or so further south from the photos above, on the other side of the BQE and of Metropolitan Avenue.


These are all within the space of two blocks or so of each other on both sides of Union.


The 2- and 3-story buildings in the foreground and background give you an idea of what the avenue was like not too many years ago.





And, further up Union Avenue, closer to Broadway, one person sees what's coming and doesn't appear to care for it.


What do you want to bet they get it in the end?

And a detour in the other direction back to McCarren Park where we just were.


Those three buildings face McCarren Park. I guess that they are actually in Greenpoint, I'm not sure off the top of my head where the neighborhood line is, though in reality there is little difference these days. They are just about the tallest buildings in the vicinity and I wouldn't be surprised if their brothers and sisters were awaiting birth in those empty lots behind the board fence.

Here is a shot from the front.

Driggs and Union Avenues; part of McCarren Park.

Thank god McCarren Park is large and includes the old municipal swimming pool (below) and Automotive High School and some parkland on the west side, otherwise you'd feel you were running on a track at the bottom of a canyon.



Of the streets that run up through the Northside, Driggs Avenue seems to be the center of activity now. Along Bedford Avenue, Berry Street, and Wythe Street the buildings are too well-established to be easy targets . . . for now. But Driggs was always more commercial than residential and a lot of the buidings were old and the owners saw a nice profit in the offing if they sold them. There is feverish activity on almost every block now where only a year or two ago almost nothing was happening. Near the top of this posting is a shot of Driggs looking from North 10 to North 11. Below is North 11 looking from Driggs to Roebling.


These buildings have been going up so fast and I was out wandering so little during the winter that I only noticed them for the first time last weekend. That's when I realized that there was very little to stop the neighborhood becoming this.

North 11th in the opposite direction, toward Bedford.



And when I said that Bedford Avenue was unlikely to see this kind of reconstruction soon, I forgot about this immense empty building site along Bedford and North 12 bordering McCarren Park, seen here from North 11. Something is going in there, but what and how big?


The row of buildings in the background is on Bedford and McCarren Park is out of sight down to the right. You get a nice view of the Manhattan skyline from that far corner.


Looking down North 10th from Driggs to Roebling.

North 9th and Driggs.

North 8th and Driggs.

Well, we do know that nothing is going up in that lot behind the green fence. Incredibly, it is now a beautifully blacktopped parking lot. As New York City found out from decades of Robert Moses-built highways, traffic increases to fill the available space, so rather than taking cars off the street this will probably just attract more cars to the neighborhood. Progress, ain't it wonderful?


North 7th looking toward Driggs.

And just to give you an idea of what parts of the neighborhood used to look like, and what some still do today, below is a stable residential block, North 6th looking from Roebling toward Driggs.



More later.

Stuyvesant Heights Brownstone Saved

An interesting story from today's New York Times about Stuyvesant Heights where I wandered one day during the winter (and where I decided that winter walks weren't worth it):

Stuyvesant Heights Brownstone

See my blog entry from January 13:

No Winter Walks!! Stuyvesant Heights and Other

It was a very nice neighborhood and should be looking nice right around now with the spring flowers and trees in bloom.

In this picture, which is the same one that appears in the Jan. 13 entry, I think the brownstone mentioned in the article is one of those first two or three in the background, framed in the crook of the tree.

SPRING!

And . . . It's . . . About . . . Time!!!

Vernal equinox . . . 1:32 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

And as the sun was slipping across the celestial equator from south to north, I was slipping through a warm and sunny Brooklyn marveling at the soft curtain of green that is beginning to appear on the tree branches, the spring bulbs that had managed to shove their way up through the soul, and the flowering trees and bushes that had suddenly burst forth. YES!

Just some random shots from a walk to the library through Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights . . .



The tips of the branches just starting to bud . . .

I love watching day to day as the soft spring blur on the trees transforms itself into the green barrier of summer . . .



Because there are so many things the trees of summer are good at hiding . . .


Each year when I see the forsythia I take a deep breath because I know we've made it through once again . . .


Shorts and tees out of the closet . . .





But we all know there is only one absolutely and positively reliable signal of the coming of spring . . .

As I Was Saying Last Night

And today turned out even nicer than Saturday and Sunday. And where was I? In an office, slogging through manuscripts, galleys, and what not. Oh, well. Back to Cooper Park, which I've been looking for an excuse to talk about since I discovered it last summer. The new building around there gives me my opening.



Cooper Park is tucked away at the far end of Williamsburg. To the east are the swamps of Maspeth, to the south is industrial Bushwick and to the north the BQE and a wedge of Greenpoint along Dutch Kills or Newtown Creek or whatever name it goes by. I can't say that no one knows about it, there is a project nearby and houses bordering the park and along Maspeth Avenue, and Metropolitan Avenue is nearby, but it's on the way to virtually nowhere so you would more or less have to know it was there to go there, or else stumble on it by chance as I did. To give you an example, a friend of mine said her boyfriend had lived within a few blocks of the park for several years, blissfully unaware of its existence.

I wanted to get the feel of the park here when it's at its prettiest so I am adding photos from last June, not from this past weekend. That's the view from Maspeth Avenue above. Below is a shot of the other side, Sharon Street, where the park is lined by small brick attached houses with a few faux Tudor touches, some of them almost smothered in foliage.


It's hard to believe, when you are strolling around the park, or sitting on a bench watching a soccer game, or the dogs in the dog run, or just reading a book, that Metropolitan Avenue is only a short block away.


But even here (et in Arcadia ego) there are some hints of breaches in the walls . . .





Now there is nothing at all exceptional about this row of small red brick dwellings except the way they all relate to each other and the park. It makes a very satisfying whole. But even these small intrusions are nothing after you look at the Maspeth Avenue and Olive Street corner of the park . . .





I have to admit that by the time I discovered Cooper Park that enormous building on the corner was already a fact on the ground so I don't know what it replaced. I always suspected it was something similar to the small brick apartment buildig to its left. If anyone knows or has a photo, I wouldn't mind knowing.

The street leading to the park from Metroplitan Avenue is called Orient Avenue and has what I like to think of as its own version of the Bates Motel.






It is just about time to call it a night once again, but I wanted to slip in a couple of map images here to give you an overview of Cooper Park and to show how close Maspeth Avenue, for example, is to Orient Avenue. Then I want to show you what Maspeth Avenue now looks like.






Looking down Maspeth toward it's intersection with Metropolitan Avenue at Bushwick Avenue.



Those trees at the far end are Cooper Park.



Colorful anyway.


The developers have already pushed themselves around the corner to one end of the park. Will they keep going; who's to stop them?

Nice day, nice day

Nice day, nice day (that's one each for Saturday and Sunday); who could believe that only a week or so ago, this was Williamsburg local color (OK, I'm cheating a little, the bottom photo is Prospect Hts.):

white!

And yesterday it was in the mid-50°s (!!) and I was walking around practically in shirtsleeves. And, a friend of mine reminded me that Daylight Savings Time begins next weekend. Cause to celebrate and get out in the sun like these folks wandering the sun-washed streets of Williamsburg . . .

Lately, when I walk around Williamsburg I have the feeling that I’ve stumbled onto a huge film set under construction (or maybe even abandoned) where the set designer was given the script for a few movies all jumbled together: Alphaville (make it big and sleek and silver), The Bird Cagetoo pastel, it’s Brooklyn, keep it sober), some early Fellini (lots of vacant land, dirt, no vegetation), with a little dash of Mon Oncle (sleek and silver and futuristic). Try to make it big, at least make it stand out, dominate the neighbors. (South Beachy but not

I was thinking a bit about this again lately because of a story I read last week in the New York Times that I may give a link to later on. It makes life interesting anyway; you don’t know from one week or month to another what’s going to shoot up around the corner or down the block.

I thought this weekend was a good opportunity to walk around and see what’s cooking. Not all these building are recent by any means but they’ll give you a pretty good idea of what’s been ‘abuilding in these parts; a Williamsburg architectural style, if there is one. I’ll try to suspend judgment on them if I can, though I don’t know how successful I’ll be. And it’s not that I particularly dislike many of them, but at times they do seem wildly out of place.

I don't want to be repetitive, either, but I may drop in several pictures of a building or street from different angles just to give a general idea of the street and put a particular building in perspective, like Skillman Avenue above, not untypical of the Italian section of east Williamsburg, mostly unpretentious two story row houses with a few taller ones thrown in here and there.

Five floors isn't exceptionally tall, but it does stand out among the others. Maybe it's that solid unrelieved black, unlike the one below of mellow red brick.

A block further on is Leonard Street, similar to Skillman in the types of houses . . .

Until you reach the end of the block at Conselyea St. . . .

Then back to Skillman Avenue . . .

Those are just a tad . . . imposing.

Now, to be fair, there is an old paint factory on the street that is also pretty large, though I didn't get that midtown Manhattan feel when I walked by; I didn't have the feeling of a cliff looming above me. Then again, maybe I'm not very objective about it.

Skillman Avenue near Graham Avenue. At least the colors match . . .


Before I head over toward Cooper Park there is one more image I have to put in here. I actually took this photo last June when I was wandering around there for the first time. I know I said that I would suspend judgment but for me this is the poster child for incongruity. It is on Humboldt Street between Frost and Withers Street.



Which is not to take away at all from the striking appearance of the building. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure but that of all the contemporary buildings dropped down into that neighborhood, this could be my favorite. It's just that where it is does no justice to either it or the block it's on.

Now as you get further north or east or whatever, you start to leave the cozy blocks of two story family homes. Kingsland Avenue, which comes to a screeching halt at Maspeth Avenue, is more commercial with a housing project nearby, and Maspeth Avenue itself, after it skirts Cooper Park, heads out into the industrial wasteland of factories and salvage yards along the Brooklyn-Queens border.

So, you could even say that these blocks add a welcome splash of color to otherwise drab surroundings . . .




But then there is Maspeth Avenue and Cooper Park. But I have to deal with that later because it is late. I hadn't intended to start this post tonight after switching the blog back here to the old host, but I did and now it's too late to finish. More later . . .

Not Migrating After All

It turns out that the blog host I intended to switch to was much less "user friendly" . . . at least for me . . . than this host. I decided that, in the end, it wasn't worth my trouble. I was spending too much time trying to format the posts when I should have been writing and uploading my images. I think it was great for someone who knows HTML well, but it wasn't for me.

I had hoped to get a post uploaded about the past weekend but it will have to wait a bit now. It's time to hit the sack.