Thursday, March 22, 2007

Van Loony

Here's the type of luxury that awaits you mere steps from Queens Boulevard. This building sits directly behind the Italian Charities at 52-14 & 52-16 Van Loon Street in Elmhurst.
As you can see, the owner really does a swell job of keeping the sidewalks free of clutter.
And these 2 new buildings, including neighbors 52-18 & 52-20, fit in well with the small attached rowhomes found down the rest of the block. The worst part about living in one of the small houses, is that you get to look across the street at this: Yikes!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hanging junk yards? check

Concrete front for parking? check

Basement apartments? check

Ugly warehouse with cheap fixtures?
check

Politicians nowhere to be seen? check

Newspapers writing about the wonderful diverse hot Elmhurst real estate market? check

Anonymous said...

These buildings are slowly getting better with time. The newer one has decent brick work, at least. A little more time and they will stop placing Fedders if they are smart.

Astoria and Long Island City new buildings have started to get much more attractive of late. It's spreading.

I have no issues with the size of these buildings. 4 stories isn't much. Take away the Fedders from the newer one and it's a very acceptable building.

Anonymous said...

Go over to the astorians.com blog and listen to what the Astorians themselves say about all those 'attractive' buildings that you suggest is going up in their neighborhood.

Go down to 12th Street and look around. What is happening there makes Astoria the laughing stock of NYC.

Anonymous said...

Fair enough, but Long Island City especially. Same as Williamsburg and Greenpoint getting good buildings, now Prospect Heights and Fort Greene are, unfortunately hasn't spread to my nabe of Bay Ridge yet....and will probably never make it to Gravesend.

But this is about Queens.

I like the balconies on new buildings....balconies encourage street life...it's like an elevated stoop for all the units. Brick is good....I like glass towers but they don't fit in on established blocks full of masonry.

It's the god damn Fedders ruining the buildings.

Anonymous said...

It's not so much about "good" buildings vs. "bad" buildings, but whether or not all these buildings where there were none before can be handled by the antiquated infrastructure. Last year's blackout is proof that it can't. Oh, and they made much more interesting large buildings in the early part of the 20th century. Early part of the 21st century? Absolute crap.

Anonymous said...

What is it with balconies and ballustrades for some fat dullard of a Queens house-frau to step out upon?