116 3rd PlaceHow to bastardize a Carroll Gardens row house
A Recipe
In order to succeed:
1) You need a developer
2)You also need an architect
3) You need greed, lots of greed. That's the main ingredient, so the more you add to this recipe, the better the result.
4) Also indispensable, a real-estate agent who will peddle the resulting horror.
5) Whatever, you do, do not add any consideration for your neighbors.
Then you:
6) Make the row house stand out from all the other houses on the block.
The best result is achieved by bumping the roof up. If you can get away with it, add some weird two story box that can be seen from blocks away.
7u)Then, get rid of the stoop, dig up the garden and add a main entrance right onto the basement level.
Voilà, your very own bastardized townhouse.
Now, wasn't that easy?
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9 comments:
Yikes!
If I did that to my house, I could retire!
And I'm on the end of the row, so I wouldn't block too much sun from neigbhors.
Thanks, Katia -- I'll walk by and find the builder and architect.
But I promise not to put a cell tower on top.
Oh my god. I didn't see the front since they tore it up and thanks for the backside views. HORRIBLE!!!!!
But you need the cell tower for full effect!
And don't forget to call Corcoran. They seem to have a never ending supply of buyers who will fork over way too much money for these places.
You will make out like a bandit and you can retire in Florida!
Florence, not Florida, was actually the anticipated destination.
I was only semi-serious about doing an add-on like this. I would have to move because my neighbors would kill me.
However, you do see that a few of the brownstones do have quite attractive Queen-Anne style fifth floor mansards with gables, done with real slate tiles.
Adding one of those to a classic fourth floor might not be too bad.
a few years ago, you could add a floor to your brownstone for about 200k, and if you rented it out for 2.5k a month, you'd pay off in ten years and the rest would be gravy (or florentine sauce). Plus you'd have increased the value of your home without wrecking the aesthetics of your block.
Three problems:
Plywood, copper, etc for these additions all have gone (pardon pun) through the roof as so much material's been diverted to Iraq.
The city has really stepped up permitting fees et al for everything from dumpsters to demos, one builder I respect a lot told me.
Classic additions like this don't match these suddenly de rigeur cell towers!
The thing is that the first part of the addition to the roof, the mansard part, actually would be all right. But the two story modern box penthouse on top of that just screams "greed". And when I saw the doorway and the dug up front yard, that just was too much.
The best part is the prices. $2.7MM for the "penthouse". I will give the builder this - they did not skimp on the quality of materials. But that box on top is offensive, and the renderings on the Corcoran site are a joke. Are you really selling a $2.7MM apartment on the incredivble view of the back of my old tenement building on 4th Place?
As for the cell towers, I think that would be a compromise shy of the spirit of this audacious design. I'd go with a radio telescope like the ones NASA and NSA use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_telescope
The prices are obscene! But as I said, Corcoran seems to find enough suckers.
For those prices you can buy an entire brownstone.
I assume there's an illegal bathroom in the basement level like "the lofts" on Luquer? Typically, the apt. is sold without fixtures, just plumbing and the fixtures are added (illegally) after.
People will pay over $2mm to hear the subway every 10-20 min? Condos on 4th place (built without insulation) are a better deal and will hit 1 year vacancy next month!
ever think that people may be putting those awful structures in place as a sign that they don't care about you(snobs) coming into the area--we who have lived there know the rest-
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