Rockaway Bungalow Reno: Before & During

What M.’s bungalow looked like when she bought it in January of this year. The green X’s alert firefighters that the house is unoccupied.

…and how it looked last week, with a ‘rough coat’ of stucco.

THIS WORK-IN-PROGRESS, an early 20th century bungalow in Far Rockaway, N.Y. — one of perhaps 450 remaining of a colony that once numbered thousands — is owned by a woman after my own heart. A longtime reader of my blog, she e-mailed me recently in response to my plea for blog-worthy ideas when my creative well had run temporarily dry. M., who prefers to remain anonymous, told me she had purchased (coincidentally — not because of my blog) one of the bungalows pictured in a post I did last summer about the bungalows of Rockaway — “the most derelict one” — and was in the process of fixing it up. I was immediately dying to find out more about this woman who had the nerve to buy a falling-apart bungalow in the far reaches of the borough of Queens, albeit 1/2 block from the ocean.

The renovation, which will “not be luxe,” is coming along, she wrote in last week’s email. “The exterior is almost complete; the interior will start next week.”

This afternoon, M. and I had a long phone chat. We soon found we were kindred spirits on a number of levels. A college professor with a grown son, now single, she has been “buying properties that are a mess, fixing them up, and selling them” for 15 years, including two apartments on the Upper West Side and a couple in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Like me, M. has fond memories of Far Rockaway in the 1950s, when she spent time there in a bungalow owned by her grandparents.

I’m going to let M. tell you about it in her own words.

casaCARA: What on earth possessed you to buy a derelict cottage in Far Rockaway?

A couple of years ago, summer in a Brooklyn apartment started to get to me. I felt caged and claustrophobic. As a college professor, I’m supposed to be writing in the summertime. I thought of buying a place in Massachusetts and got close to doing so, but backed off because the commute didn’t appeal to me, and I don’t own a car.

Then it came to me. I remembered that my grandparents owned a bungalow in Far Rockaway that my mother never tired of talking about. They bought it in the 1930s. They were a large Italian immigrant family with 11 kids. They lived in East Harlem and did not have the money to buy a house, but they could scrape together the money for one of those little bungalows. This got the kids out of the city for the summer. The older ones watched the younger, and my grandparents came on weekends.

<-M.’s mother standing on the beach in Far Rockaway, summer of ’48

I got this brainstorm to find my grandparents’ bungalow and buy it. Turns out it doesn’t exist anymore. I stumbled on the website of the Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association of Far Rockaway and emailed Richard George, a pioneer in the area. I give him a lot of credit. Without him, all of this might have been lost. I said I was interested in buying a bungalow to work in as a writer’s retreat. I figured I would put heat in and also use it in the winter.

I asked him to tell me which realtors sell the bungalows, and he said, ‘It doesn’t work that way. Come on out and let’s talk.’ I did that in September 2009, and finally closed on a bungalow in January 2011. It’s all word of mouth; nothing is listed. Some were in foreclosure, and I bid but lost out. Finally, through word of mouth, came this particular bungalow. The sellers’ grandparents had owned it and it hadn’t been lived in for over 5 years.

They suddenly decided to sell and Richard George let them know I was looking. They wanted $65,000 cash; they didn’t negotiate. It had to be all-cash because of the condition; it would have been impossible to get a mortgage. There was no electric — the meter had been stolen — and no water. Raccoons were living in the attic, and feral cats inside the house. It was just sitting there rotting. The yard was an eyesore; people had been using it as a dumping ground.

Let’s backtrack a bit. What was your reaction when you first saw the neighborhood?

The first time I went out was in mid-September ’09. It was a beautiful day, and that helped.  I walked three blocks from the A train stop at Beach 25^th Street. The only person I saw was a crossing guard, but I walked through what seemed to be a well-tended middle-class neighborhood and saw signs of active gardening, which encouraged me.

I knew where my grandparents’ bungalow was; it was around Beach 35^th Street. From the train I had seen empty roads going up to the boardwalk, like ghost roads. It was all razed and overgrown, but the street signs were still there. I felt my mother’s presence more strongly than since I lost her in ’98. I felt she was telling me, ‘This is the place for you – go!’

I felt, I’ve got to do this, or a piece of New York history will be gone. I felt my family history going down the drain. A great-great-grandfather of mine was Matthew Perry, Commandant of the Navy. He lived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard [in buildings that have deteriorated beyond salvation]. There was this family attachment and my love for restoration, and the importance of these historical buildings and the feeling that they should be preserved.

CC: When you got to the bungalows, what did you think?

The bungalow colony was a little daunting, but there were enough that had been refurbished that you could see the potential. You could look and say, ‘Oh yes, these places can be made adorable, really sweet.’ But others, you’d think, ‘What blight, how horrible.’

The one I bought was one of the worst, but after 2 years of looking, when this deal seemed like it was going to work, I didn’t feel I had a choice. If I did, I would have chosen one that wasn’t quite so derelict. It’s not a normal real estate transaction. You need an owner ready to sell at a price you can afford or to win in a foreclosure situation, which is very difficult. I felt I had to go for it.

“A little daunting”

Where do things stand now with the renovation?

The outside’s done, the stucco’s on, and I’m coming down the home stretch. The porch had to have new footings. There’s a new roof, new windows, new electric. It’s a wood frame structure, and the walls behind the stucco were actually good.

I found a local contractor. We had to get plans, an engineer’s report, and have an asbestos inspection – 24 samples. Fortunately, the place was asbestos-free. I didn’t move walls or raise ceilings. It remains to be seen if the wood floors can be saved. I wasn’t able to salvage anything from the kitchen or bath.

This is one of the larger bungalows at 700 square feet, all on one level, with three small bedrooms to the left of the front door, and a living room, kitchen, and bathroom to the right. Some of them are smaller, and so close together you can reach out the window and hand someone a cup of sugar in the next house. But this one came with a side lot which has a public easement.

Decorating?

I’m going to do some IKEA, paint the ceiling light blue, and do ’50s wallpaper in the bathroom and one of the bedrooms.

And the final renovation budget?

Right now, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. It’s still not done, and the plumbers are a big question mark. I was going to spend $50,000 and it looks like I’ll be close or slightly over.

Have you seen changes in the neighborhood in the past two years?

A few bungalows have turned over, but it’s not a sea change. There are quite a few left intact on Beach 24th and Beach 25th Streets that make a sort of colony on the ocean. Others are piecemeal, a couple here and there, some next to 1970s houses.

There are some bungalows that have mortgages of $300-400,000. There was a lot of mortgage fraud out there. You can see the mortgage balances on Property Shark. They’ll be coming up as foreclosures, but they’re not available now.

The white section on the right is new stucco, applied over wire mesh.

M. hopes to be in her bungalow by August 1st. After the first stressful months of renovation, she’s feeling very positive, as well she should.

I felt immediately I wanted to do this: ‘A little place that won’t overwhelm me, that I can maintain. It’s adorable, it’s historic, it’s exactly right.’ Then came the difficulty of actually doing it. But given what I started with, the transformation is way better than I ever imagined.

Admiral’s Row Outrage: The Latest

Photo: Gothamist

SNOWSTORMS HAVEN’T BEEN KIND to Admiral’s Row, a group of early 19th century naval officers’ residences adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The once-distinguished strip of brick Greek Revival-style houses has been allowed to deteriorate shockingly. The buildings have crumbled, been repeatedly vandalized, and are now on the verge of demolition by the city, which has plans to partially raze the site and build a 65,000-square-foot ShopRite supermarket, plus 155,000 square feet of new commercial and industrial space.

The 1830s Timber Shed, a warehouse for ships’ mastheads, is one of two Admiral’s Row buildings that stands a chance of being saved

According to a recent report on the terrific website Brooklyn Based (which everyone who wants to keep up with developments in New York City’s hippest borough should subscribe to), “the forward march of development may be halted by the combination of one rickety roof and a winter’s worth of heavy snows.”

Building “B” of Admiral’s Row as it looked in its pre-Civil War heyday

To read more about this seeming paradox and one activist’s efforts to save Admiral’s Row, go here. Click here to take a video tour of the site as it looks today.

Then there’s my own impassioned blog post about Admiral’s Row, written in April 2009.

Seeking Storage, Finding Brooklyn

THE SITUATION IS DIRE: 11 cartons and 8 plastic bins, holding a lifetime’s worth of family photos, children’s artwork, published and unpublished writing, already pared down to what I consider essentials. Sitting out on the floor of my bedroom in piles, they do not attractive decor make.

And on the other side of the room…

Unless I get some kind of giant credenza, armoire, cabinet, or other closed storage piece –– and I have a 6-1/2-foot wide alcove just waiting to receive one — there’s no point even painting the walls (just as well, since I haven’t decided what color to paint them).

Here’s where I’ve looked:

• IKEA, where I tried to get my head around the ultra-sleek cabinet, above, ultimately deciding to honor my vow not to buy anything made of particle board
• Find, a Gowanus warehouse documented in a previous post, where I considered and decided against several rustic pieces imported from India, mainly because nothing was quite the right size for the space
• Hip and Humble on Atlantic Avenue, which had an armoire approximately the right size and shape, but with cutesy floral carving I couldn’t abide
• A just-opened and potentially fabulous resource, Film Biz Recycling on President Street near 4th Avenue, a repository for film-set leftovers that just re-located this week from Queens — but I wasn’t parked legally so I just ran in long enough to ascertain there weren’t any armoires in stock

Today, nearing my wit’s end, I checked out a place I’d read about somewhere: Trailer Park, on Sterling Place near 6th Avenue in Park Slope, above, which sells vintage furniture as well as custom pieces made of reclaimed barn wood. The place is so full of the very stuff I used to collect — ’50s lamps, vintage tablecloths, American art pottery — I couldn’t believe I’d never known about it. I brightly asked the fellow in the shop, “How long have you been here?” thinking surely he’d reply, “We just opened last month.” He said, “Oh, about thirteen years.” And I thought I knew Brooklyn!

I admired the 1970s German science posters ($150) and checked out the other offerings closely, but the pieces made of recycled barn lumber by Amish woodworkers, above, were too plain and stolid for me, and the large armoires more than I wanted to spend (about $1,600) — and they didn’t happen to have any vintage ones on hand.

So on I went to Re-Pop on Washington Avenue near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, first perusing their website and zeroing in on a couple of mid-20th century credenzas — not a style I was tending toward, I’m pretty done with that — although in my present circumstances, the main thing is to get something that fits, dammit, so I can start unpacking these boxes before my lease is up.

It was also my first-ever visit to Re-Pop, above, which has been in business about four years, and my first time in that area — Clinton Hill East? — in ages. So it was a revelation to see that the proximity of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is no longer a deal-breaker when it comes to luxury apartments. 275 Park Avenue, right under the BQE, is a converted 19th century chocolate factory, a distinguished brick building that now houses an organic market, Fresh Fanatic, below, and a Mexican restaurant, Mojito, on the ground floor. I can’t tell you how incongruous I find the gentrification of these blocks in the shadow of the BQE. I once considered them irredeemable — but I was wrong about that, too, apparently.

Re-Pop is stuffed with vintage modern furniture at good prices, chosen with a keen eye for mostly non-pedigreed but stylish designs. They have a load of kitschy ’50s lamps, all with original shades. I seriously considered two pieces, each under $600: a long, low credenza of good shape and size, but I didn’t love it as a piece of furniture, and an unusual blonde wood 9-drawer dresser, but I don’t need a 9-drawer dresser.

So I came away without that vital storage piece, but not empty-handed. See my new lamp, below. It works beautifully in the living room, and actually provides enough illumination for reading.

A Crying Shame

I USED TO DRIVE by the Brooklyn Navy Yard and look through the iron gates at the abandoned Civil War-era row houses with mansard roofs, watching them fall into disrepair and wondering why no one was doing anything about it. I guess I assumed these buildings, onetime quarters for high-ranking naval officers and their families, would eventually be preserved and one day restored.

All along, a battle was raging between preservationists; local community development groups; the city, which has owned the Navy Yard (now an industrial park) since 2001; and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over the houses, last occupied in the 1970s.

Late last week, Crain’s reported that 9 out of the 10 century-old buildings that comprise the historic Admiral’s Row will be torn down — to pave the way for a supermarket.

A SUPERMARKET?!?(?$*&^(%)#_@!!!!!  Surely the area needs a supermarket, but there?!!??

A National Guard study found that it would cost $25 million to restore Admiral’s Row. So what? That sounds like pocket change nowadays. Can’t they get some of the Federal stimulus money that’s being sprinkled around?

Why were the buildings allowed to deteriorate so? Is there any chance of appeal? If they had been developed privately (or publicly) as residential housing, might they have been saved?

More questions than answers. It’s a crying shame, and I guess, by my inaction, I was part of the problem.

The photos in this post are by Jake Dobkin of the Gothamist. For more of his evocative shots of Admiral’s Row in its current state of decrepitude, go here.