Saturday, November 17, 2007

Coming soon - crap!

"House soon to be history at corner of Oak Ave and 158th Street in Flushing. Used to be the Flushing Christian School.

How to tell when your neighborhood will soon be getting a future piece of crap:

1. Have a beautiful old house on the corner of your street? = kiss of death. Old corner houses have the most land and are the first to go.
2. House number is spray painted on house so work crews won't have trouble finding it.
3. Rat poison warning signs are placed in most of the doors and windows.
4. You see a crew in front of the old house disconnecting the sewer lines.
5. ALL trees on property cut down.
6. Electricity is disconnected by another lovely work crew.
7. Beautiful plywood goes up surrounding the property.
8. The permits are placed on the lovely plywood (if said permits exist). Sometimes a cute mailbox accompanies the permits on the plywood.
9. Windows are taken out.
10. Another beautiful piece of history is destroyed and replaced by a piece of crap.
11. RIP

I pass this property everyday, today they were starting the demolition, it is beyond sadness." - Denise

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Say goodbye to a really beautiful building. This is very sad.

Anonymous said...

The sad thing is the inexcusible ineptness of the preservation community.

I get a continous stream of tiny printed multi-page letters or manifestos from this group and that group talking about their wonderful forward progress.

Yet nothing changes.

All they do is politely sip some wine and politely whine about the state of the city.

They are all full of crap. We need to organize a city wide grass roots movement to stop this.

Anonymous said...

May the owners and demo crew be in place of the tree!

Anonymous said...

didn't know that about the sewer and electric lines. Do they have to mark up the siedwalk and street with those orange marks, first, to specify where the lines are before shutting 'em off? That would be an easy thing to spot.

Anonymous said...

I love that old school. It's a shame it's coming down tho I'm hardly surprised at all. I lived 3 blocks away till recently.

I was on Grand Ave in University Heights in the Bronx yesterday. A 'grand' couple of blocks with private houses with porches, right smack in the middle of the Bronx. I first shown it about 7 years ago.

Now it's full of empty lots and fedders things. A few older houses remain.

Bronx is off the radar of NYC's bloggers, so this has passed unnoticed till the FNY camera was trained on it.

www.forgotten-ny.com

fiscus1 said...

This is sad, indeed. This was once a truly glorious neighborhood.
I'm all for a grass roots preservationist movement as those who are in power seem to only be of the mindset that developers and business know best.

Unknown said...

"The sad thing is the inexcusible ineptness of the preservation community.

I get a continous stream of tiny printed multi-page letters or manifestos from this group and that group talking about their wonderful forward progress.

Yet nothing changes.

All they do is politely sip some wine and politely whine about the state of the city.

They are all full of crap. We need to organize a city wide grass roots movement to stop this."


A bunch of cynical crap.
You think because you can raise a significant number of people demanding that old bldgs. should remain standing is gonna do anything? What precedent? What law?
The only way to save old bldgs. is to landmark. And to landmark is to create a case for significance of an indiv. bldg. or hopefully, a larger contiguous district. These are the real facts.
You're the one who is whining and your whining is a pipe-dream.
Mind you, I wish it were otherwise.
Maybe folks should think of ways to raise money/consciousness for such bldgs. to be saved, but mind you, no one with that kind of cash wants to spend it in that location.

Anonymous said...

How about the Astoria shuffle:

1. I love my house

2. My kids don't want to live in Astoria (surprise surprise surprise - and all they talk about on Astorians.com is the yuppie invasion - sure hell freezes over before yuppies take over that neighborhood)

3. I sold my house

4. The developer knocked it down - it was too expensive to repair.

5. What a shame.

6. I love my house

repeat

etc

etc

Anonymous said...

The only way to save old bldgs. is to landmark. And to landmark is to create a case for significance of an indiv. bldg. or hopefully, a larger contiguous district.

-----

What a novel idea. You hear this Crappie, that is all we need to do to save St Saviours?

Sooooo simple.

verdi said...

Pull that chain on the flush tank.

Ba-woosh.....another piece of Flushing
goes down the toilet.....
soon to be replaced by some Queens crap !

Anonymous said...

I just happened to drive by this home yesterday and gasped out loud when I saw the boards surrounding it and the demolition underway. Where is the outrage of the locals? Do we really need more pink brick mausoleums in Queens?