The Department of Buildings has found major problems with scaffolds at many Brooklyn construction sites. This morning’s Daily News sums it up as “Scaffolds improperly attached to buildings. Sidewalk sheds missing braces. Untrained workers installing crucial safety equipment.” DOB shut down 43 sites (most temporarily) last month during a citywide safety crackdown. Per the News: […]

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The condo with the working name of The Gowanus, which is on First Street in Park Slope, has shown its face this week. It is the building we have sometimes called the Big Mac Building, because it adjoins a McDonald’s on the corner. The building in the photo below, meanwhile, is a neighbor that doesn’t […]

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This is rubble from the site where a Gene Kaufman-designed hotel & apartment complex will be going up between N. 11 & N. 12 Streets and Bedford and Berry in Williamsburg (131 N. 11 Street). We post it for two reasons: (A). We find demolition porn compelling and it’s always interesting to see things come […]

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Part of a wall of a vacant four-story building in Bed-Stuy collapsed yesterday. There were no injuries and the structure looked like it could come down if someone looked at it the wrong way.–Brownstoner

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Well, the new owners of the former Manhattan Chocolate site on Union Avenue in Williamsburg are finally trying. After months of a collapsing fence and having the honor of being one of the most wretchedly maintained sites in the neighborhood (albeit simply an empty lot as opposed to one with construction equipment or a pit […]

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We don’t know how we missed this horrifying tidbit of information on Friday that bears on construction safety, but we did: “Twenty-eight percent of the city’s scaffold and sidewalk sheds failed to meet building code in a month-long inspection sweep of 1,654 sites, officials said today. Of the 459 sites where scaffolds or sidewalk sheds […]

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The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins wades into the morass this week that is one of our favorite topics: the mess that is the construction and regulation (or lack thereof). The story focuses at length on Assem. Jim Brennan and a proposal that would have toughened enforcement by the Department of Buildings that was passed by […]

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The formerly backless and currently topless brownstone at 126 First Place in Carroll Gardens in growing again. The brownstone lost its head thanks to an ongoing project that will add three stories. The interesting thing is that Department of Buildings records show that there is a partial Stop Work Order on the building limiting it […]

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It is with a very heavy heart we conclude that there will be no more Construction Site Du Jour awards for one of our Lifetime Achievement Award winners, 250 N. 10 Street in Williamsburg. The site as can be seen in the photo above, went seriously metal last week. The crappy fence that had graced […]

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We love tales of construction work going on after or before hours. So we immediately gravitated to this post on the Prospect Heights forum on Brooklynian because it’s titled “Jackhammering on Vanderbilt at 5:30AM“: who did this? why would you do this? 5:30 am and then at 7 am (when I had just gotten back […]

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After months of having a crappy fence, the former Manhattan Chocolate property on Union Avenue in Williamsburg now has no fence at all. Perhaps the new owners, who purchased the property for $20 million, are prepping for some new wood and stronger nails. Or, maybe they have decided to contribute the property to Williamsburg’s supply […]

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As we noted on Friday, expected work has started on the Public Place site between Smith Street and Gowanus Canal. Workers are clearing shrubbery and brush and Bovis Lend Lease (the same firm involved in the fatal accident at the Trump Soho condo hotel recently) is removing concrete from the site. The prep work is […]

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We’re used to seeing repeat Construction Site Du Jour winners in what we might call the Williamsburg Triangle of Death–an area with frequently wide open construction and demolition sites between Driggs Avenue on the west, Manhattan Avenue on the north, the BQE on the east and N. 8 Street on the south. (Some of the […]

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So, what does someone do if one is walking down the street with one’s spouse and dogs and is attacked by insane dogs that have escaped from a construction site? Apparently, one should reach deep inside and appeal to the God of one’s understanding. We were in touch yesterday with one of the victims of […]

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This morning, some pieces came off a building at 170 Smith Street causing some issues with subway service and attracting a large contingent of firefighters. We took these photos of the building around 5:45PM on Tuesday and, fortunately, an emergency scaffold was put up around the building yesterday so that whatever did fall came down […]

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We haven’t heard much about 153 Lincoln Place in Park Slope in quite a while. The gorgeous building was what some people called a “brothel” for a long time and others simply called a hotel with hourly rates. In any case, the place was sold in 2002, construction started a couple of years later, then […]

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This is 126 First Place in Carroll Gardens, which became known as the “Backless Building” among some residents because it’s back was removed and it stayed that way for a while. Well, the back is still on (as can be seen in the photo below). Now, the top is gone, and the some of the […]

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We have posted many times about the Robert Scarano-designed building at Bond and Carroll Streets that we call the Bunker, but this scary story isn’t about the building or its design or the slow progress on the structure. It is about a GL reader who wrote to say that she and her husband and their […]

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“They haven’t started construction on the building right next door, but as I live within what one Curbed commenter brilliantly dubbed ‘The Williamsburg Quadrangle of Death,’ there is no shortage of construction projects going on within spitting distance. One of them is shaking the hell out of my building at the moment and the most […]

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In light of the awful crane accident over the weekend, and the periodic, but less dramatic mishaps at Brooklyn construction sites, it’s worth asking if construction safety and construction-related violations of quality of life are about to get dramatically worse over the next few months. We say this because developers all over Brooklyn are going […]

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[Photo courtesy of EKavet/flickr] The Department of Buildings is one of the most vital city agencies after the NYPD and FDNY, yet it is one of the most troubled and its failures are nothing short of a major governmental breakdown. Yes, the department has improved in recent years, but it remains in dire need of […]

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On Friday, we posted about the foul nuisance at Skillman and Manhattan Avenue, which is a construction site with a building designed by Robert Scarano that has had a Stop Work Order for a year. What we found when we happened upon 123 Skillman yesterday was an open fence, meaning that any child or drunk […]

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On a sunny Saturday in Williamsburg, as cranes were crashing down in Manhattan, workers were busy at all the big developments. “At 80 Metropolitan…North 1st Street was blocked as workers loaded material. No flagman was present. Urban Green was pumping concrete on North 5th Street…Again, no flagman (but at least traffic could pass). Workers were […]

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Given that we constantly write about issues related to construction, we’d be remiss in not mentioning the horrific crane collapse on E. 51st Street yesterday that killed at least four people and injured 17. An investigation will take place and we’re fairly certain it will reveal shortcomings in the way the building site was regulated. […]

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Who needs McCarren Pool? Our Carroll Gardens correspondent was wandering around Williamsburg & Greenpoint and filed this photo of the festering construction site at Manhattan and Skillman Avenues which seems to hold water nicely. Officially known as 123 Skillman, it’s been an open pit (or a hole with a foundation) for a loooong time, with […]

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