Carter's Review

Take a boxy grey brick mid-rise apartment building and apply black band-aids randomly and you have this energetic and slightly unnerving development at 85 Flatbush Avenue Extension in Downtown Brooklyn.

The 12-story building, which is also known as 60 Duffield Street, has 238 rental apartments.

Its large, black accent “stripes,” both horizontal and vertical, accent its abstract “air” of mobility.  It may not be “poetry in motion,” but suggests tortured, if not volcanic, aesthetic shifts.  They are also illuminated at night.

The architect is Kutnicki Bernstein.

Meyer Chetrit is the developer.

Bottom Line

A few blocks west of Cadman Plaza Park, this “boogie-woogie” mid-rise building seems to shimmy shimmy shake with its bold, black, “crazy mixed-up kid” façade appliques. 

Description

The building has a setback at the sixth floor.

Parts of the façade are woven with overlapping mullions.

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a roof deck, a fitness center and a lobby lounge.

Apartments

Apartments have Caesarstone kitchen countertops, wide-plank maple flooring and Bosch washers and dryers.

Apartment 12K is a two-bedroom unit with a long entry foyer that leads to an angled living room with an open kitchen with an island.

Apartment 10E is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer opposite an open, pass-through kitchen and the 15-foot-wide living room that opens onto a large terrace.

Apartment 12A is a two-bedroom unit with an entry into the open, pass-through kitchen and the angled corner living room with six windows.

Apartment 12H is a one-bedroom unit with a long entry foyer that leads to the living room with an angled open kitchen.

History

An article by Jake Mooney in the September 10, 2006 edition of The New York Times said that Isaac Hager was planned to build a glass “Flatiron” building on the site designed Ismael Leyva.

An August 7, 2007 by Joey Arak at ny.curbed.com noted that a 21-story luxury residential condominium tower had been approved for the site between Tillary and Duffield streets.  “When a building can be described as ‘the lovechild of the Flatiron Building and a spaceship,’ you know the dream is too big to die.  The article was illustrated with a silvery clad tower with a curved corner designed by Ismael Levy with 108 apartments included some duplex units with fireplaces.

An October 30, 2013 article by Jessica Dailey at ny.curbed.com reported, however that the “DoBro Spaceship Building Replaced With Very Normal Building.”  The article said that the new design was “pretty boring” and that the developer was the Read Property Group (the same people behind the massive Rheingold Brewery redevelopment in Bushwick) and that the building would now have 69 units, a hotel and street-level retail.

The article included a rending that indicated that the rounded end of a Flatiron-style tower had been replaced with a more boxy mid-rise building with silvery panels, and thin protruding mullions, and several setbacks.  The top two floors have large bands of multi-paned windows without the thin mullions and the building would have a large mechanical enclosure centrally placed in its roof.  The building would be distinguished by several large protruding sculpture elements, each rectilinear and more than 1 story tall.  One above the 5^th floor would enclose a lot of open space.  The other two would have less open space.

A January 30, 2015 article at ny.curbed.com by Zoe Rosenberg noted that “after years of details, the combined hotel and apartment building at 85 Flatbush Avenue Extension has finally topped out and it looks just like any ol’ building.”

“Brownstoner stopped by the scene and found that not only is the 171-hotel room, 69-apartment building well on its way, but also that the building’s architect of record has changed yet again; when plans first started forming for the tower in 2005, Ismael Leyva was named project architect, only to be replaced by Gene Kaufman who has now been superseded by Kutnicki Bernstein Architects.  It’s a good thing, too, because somewhere along the way the original spaceship-reminiscent design got blasted out of the picture.”

On June 24, 2015, Ms. Rosenberg reported at ny.curbed.com that “if you’ve ever wanted to live at the mouth of the Manhattan Bridge, here’s some good news: that’s never been easier than know that, about ten years into their development, the apartments at 60 Duffield street (nee 85 Flatbush Avenue Extension) have finally started leasing.”  “Filings for the building,” the article continued, “say the 64 studio to two-bedroom apartments sit on top of a 174-room hotel, which makes the apartments’ lauded ‘design and style of a boutique hotel’ sound pretty left, because they are in fact atop a boutique hotel….The original building for the site, designed by the one and only Gene Kaufman, was thankfully ditched in favor of a much more bland glass box courtesy of Kutnicki Bernstein Architects.”

The building’s design history is not so terrible.

Leyva’s glass tower was ribbed with mortal coils and rather elegant.

Kaufman’s lower building was most intriguing with its silvery palette and sculpture accretions evocative of

“The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?

Kutnicki Bernstein’s final design reminds, again, of Hamlet’s meanderings:

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry…".

Sic gloria transit mundi, as they say….