(photo credit: Ricardo)
Reader Riccardo took the photos above earlier today of the long neglected building at 130 Third Street in Gowanus. Pieces of cement broke from the building's façade, perhaps after yesterday's heavy rain and wind. Though someone attached yellow caution tabs around the debris, Ricardo points out that this certainly is not enough to keep the public safe.Riccardo writes:
"This morning I went outside to find large chunks of concrete had fallen from the facade of the 'for sale' factory building at 130h Third Street on the corner of Bond.
This building has been for sale through Massey Knackal as long as I've been here and it's always been an eyesore and magnet for trash. Now it's a deadly safety hazard and the response seems to be half assed at best. It appears that the lintel from a third floor window fell away from the building and onto the sidewalk below. Some one, maybe the police cordoned off the debris with yellow police tape yet the rest of the sidewalk below the other possible hazards is still open to the public.
If you were approaching from the canal you may not realize that anything had fallen from the building until you got up close to the debris an realized that it wasn't just a cracked sidewalk but death from above. In my opinion if the police responded to this they didn't do their job fully. The entire area beneath this building should be taped off and some sort of danger warning sign should be put up. I'm sure the constant rumble and vibration from trucks and buses at this corner could shake another piece off at any moment. Obviously the owners will have to put up a shed and deal with this issue immediately."
Thankfully, no one was hurt this time, but it may be a good idea to cross the street instead of walking past the building.
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4 comments:
Such a shame - that building has some nice Deco detail and could be cleaned up and reused (assuming there's nothing odd or toxic inside).
The BSA turned down the owners request to convert the building from business use to residential more than ten years ago. And while the owner has every right to allow the building to sit empty, his representatives have not opened the building for commercial and business uses of the building in all these years. He repeatedly fails to clean the sidewalk that is covered in ice much of the winters--sometimes due to water pipes leaking inside the building.
And now we begin to see the extent to which this building is in a state of structurally dangerous disrepair. And will a simple Building Department violation writeup be enough to protect the community form conditions like these?
Alas, some of the old-timers aren't here to comment... But I was here for the FIRE that closed the warehouse, saw FDNY trucks blasting water in & waves of water rushing out... I don't understand why the building hasn't returned to warehouse/commercial usage other than the owners taking the insurance $$$ and using it elsewhere... I didn't think of it at the time but I wonder what caused the fire, hmmmmm... If someone did some light digging, they could probably find the original reporting on this, inc. the then fairly laudable Brooklyn Paper (it's been a long way down).
Note too the buildjng to the side on Bond St has been in regular use all (most?) this time; it also attracts lousy "street art" (which I'm not against, per se, just these are lousy examples of it) on its loading platform but that's another story...
DOB was out Wednesday night and yesterday a crew put up a street shed. I assume this shed is now a permanent eyesore.
Thanks for the info on the building 10:17 and 11:14!
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