The New Construction That Tried

Everybody knows that the Kodachrome building represents the pinnacle of new construction in this neighborhood. It’s sickeningly gorgeous, but the units are expensive and it’s not representative of the majority of new construction in Bed-Stuy. Even those adorable, moderately priced homes on Vernon, Marcy, (and a couple of other streets that I can’t remember) are not the norm for new stuff that gets thrown up around here. Most new construction in Bed-Stuy looks like this or this, but I’m growing tired of complaining about it. So instead of talking about the exceptionally beautiful new buildings and the exceptionally ugly new buildings, today let’s discuss those buildings whose intentions are in the right place, because even though much of the new construction misses the mark aesthetically, some of it is trying its best to endear itself to us.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to select the best of the bad new construction in the neighborhood. As summer draws to a close, I like to think of them as the valedictorians of summer school–they’re failures, to be sure, but among the failures, they’re winners! Because, you know, they tried.

Both of these are located in the northern section of Bed-Stuy, natch.

Salutatorian

The salutatorian of new construction is a set of buildings located on an desolate block of Clifton Place, among a mix of industrial buildings and residential ones. It’s bad new construction because it has tiny windows and a look that screams “MEDIOCRE!!!” But in THIS neighborhood, being mediocre puts you at the top of the class! Or at least at the top of the lowest class. The building gets a thumbs up for adding housing to the area near the Bedford G stop and for not being out of scale with the surrounding buildings. It also scores high for being aligned with the other buildings, which almost never happens with new construction around here. What more can you ask from this building?

The Valedictorian

Top prize goes to this standout located on the corner of Willoughby and Nostrand at the end of a line of brownstones. It’s across the street from one of my favorite homes in the neighborhood. It’s the contrast between that house and this one, the plentiful Friedrich air conditioning units and the downspouts running along the building that put this thing in the flunky class, but the reason that it is the best of the flunkies is that you can see lots of effort here. The windows are large and the window design is not too bad. You can see that they added those white things on the corner of the building that look like teeth (help me out here, Alexa). That illustrates good intention, right? And don’t forget, there’s an attempt at symmetry and the Friedrich units are aligned. Symmetry is a concept lost on most of the people slapping together new buildings in this neighborhood. Did you know a good 80% of the new buildings in Bed-Stuy is built by construction teams without the use of a level? They just eyeball everything and say “Yep, that looks about even.” But not this construction team. They actually cared. Like the tag says You Go Girl!

So congratulations to the Clifton and Willoughby buildings! Thanks for trying! Any other buildings qualify as solid yet unsuccessful attempts to make nice looking, moderate priced housing?