It is painful to watch the Old Dutch Mustard Company building on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg being demolished by Steiner Equities to make way for a new development. To us, Old Dutch was one of the nicer industrial buildings in Williamsburg. A chimp could have looked at it and understood how it could have been renovated. Instead, the developer is perpetrating an act that is nothing short of cultural vandalism and a sad obliteration of history.

Are we ranting? Perhaps. Are we overreacting? Not at all. Destroying the Old Dutch Mustard building is the cultural equivalent of an act of violence, and symbolic of what is happening to Williamsburg as a whole. (We rarely toss around shrill statements like these, but Old Dutch is a demolition that has crossed the line in our eyes.)

If you are interested in what’s left of Old Dutch, you can click on this link or check out the embed below. We shot the vid yesterday in the howling wind, so there’s no sound.