On Friday, Brooklyn blog Brownstoner was alarmed about a Clinton Hill resident on Grand Avenue who was painting a brownstone's archway white. Though the second comment wondered "are you sure it's not primer?", the comments thread turned into a heated debate about the rights of owners of buildings in landmarked neighborhoods, calling the painting a "disgrace" and a "mortal sin," and whether publicly outing the owner was appropriate.
Well, the Daily News' Michael Daly headed to the brownstone yesterday morning to do a little reporting, finding the owner, a "82-year-old man who has lived there through the changes of three decades" who answered the door "in gray pajamas and slippers." The man exclaimed the white paint was in fact primer, "They just put the primer on yesterday. I thought you were the contractor ringing the bell." And then the contractors came to add a coat of brown paint.
The owner didn't realize that his home had been a source of heated discussion as he doesn't deal with computers, but weighed in about the real estate market ("Everybody got to be making a million dollars to live here. Everything is going up. There's the question: Where the hell does it go before it bursts?" ) and also seemed weary of today's insanity: "I'm glad my days will soon be over. I'm getting out of it, and they can do what they want with the city. It's the attitude of a grumpy old man. That's all it is."
And speaking of another buzzy brownstone bit, last week, the Brooklyn Paper reported about a woman dressed in a wedding gown - carrying a wedding ring in a Tiffany box - sleeping on a ledge above a Park Slope brownstone's doorway on 4th Street. While some people wondered if it was an art school prank, this week the Brooklyn Paper revealed the woman had been dumped by a fiance because she "was bi-polar and wouldn’t take her medicine." Her father, who also lives on 4th Street, picked her up from the hospital.
Some residents of Sunnyside Gardens, Queens had opposed landmarks designation because making improvements to homes would need to be regulated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. And a Staten Island homeowner worried that landmarking would attract preservation perverts.
