Monday, May 19, 2008

110 Amity Street: first impressions

Earlier this evening, the Cobble Hill Association hosted a presentation of the new plans for 110 Amity Street by the developer, Jonathan Wachtel, and his two teams of architects—RKT+B for the Lamm Building, and BKSK for the townhouses. The plans for the Lamm Building remain the same: seven apartments with a glass-enclosed loggia on the roof. The townhouses have been redesigned from scratch since the last set of plans was shot down by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The tale of the tape:
-Four townhouses, one on Amity Street and three on Henry. The Amity townhouse will be 8 feet from the Lamm Building; the Henry townhouses will be 15 feet.
-Each townhouse will be occupied by a single family.
-The townhouses are 16 to 18 feet wide with heights of 50 feet and chimneys at 53 feet.
-The rears of the townhouses are flush with the one-floor rear-yard additions of the adjacent neighboring homes.
-The top floor of each townhouse is a penthouse set roughly in the east-west middle of the building. The penthouses are thus the fifth floor.

And the æsthetic features:
-The windows and facade of the Henry Street townhouses will be in line with those of the neighboring buildings and the streetwall.
-The front surface will be a combination of brownstone on the ground and parlor floors and brick on the upper floors.
-Each townhouse will have a traditional townhouse stoop but with an asymmetic feature: one side will have a rail and the other a solid face.
-The front lintels will be flush with the building. The lintel above the door will be a bronze plate with a light fixture behind it.
-Most of the side walls and all of the rear will be covered in zinc siding.
-The rear will have large bay windows.

The feature that provoked the most questions from the audience was the zinc siding, something not found in abundance, if at all, in Cobble Hill.

This Thursday, May 22, the CB6 Land Use/Landmarks committee will hold a public meeting and vote on the plans. Details:

PAL Miccio Center
110 West 9th Street
(between Clinton and Henry Streets)
Brooklyn, NY 11231
6:00 p.m.

All members of the public are entitled to attend and comment on the plans.

Meanwhile, feel free to post your comments here so that we can share thoughts about the plans and continue the conversation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe before we get to the proposed renderings, one question -and a biggie- is why is LICH divesting itself of prime prime property so close to the hospital?

Health of CH literally begins with its' ability to take care of emergencies of Ch'ers. why oh why did they sell?

Anonymous said...

9:34 three words why: bags of cash.
And before you get upset with doctors on amity, the sellers (and the bags of cash) are right now sipping frappochinos in Manhattan not caring about the long term shortsightedness of selling extremely valuable real estate next to our hospital.

that being said, the reality is that they've been sold, no one is going to jail for fraud (or worse some envelopes that got kicked back, unless of course you do the leg work) and we have to deal with the reality of these renderings and building plans....