BY KEVIN DUGGAN
City landmarks gurus approved
revised designs for a
23-story residential tower with
an extension of the Brooklyn
Music School at its base at 130
St. Felix St. in Fort Greene.
At a virtual hearing on Aug.
4, the Landmarks Preservation
Commission voted to award developers
Gotham Development
a certifi cate of appropriateness
to erect the tall glass structure,
after architects with FXCollaborative
returned with a slightly
shorter and more set-back version
of the building.
“I think what the applicants
have come back with is
a much improved proposal. It’s
much more contextual and fi ts
much better in with all the existing
buildings,” said Commissioner
Anne Holford-Smith.
The 11-member panel sent
the developer back to the drawing
board at a June 23 hearing,
citing concerns from some commissioners
that the building’s
glass facade was too imposing
on the mostly nearby lowrise
brownstones, and that its
height made it look like an extension
of the iconic Williamsburg
Savings Bank Tower.
The architects came back
with plans that reduced the
height from 24 stories to 23,
making it visibly lower than
the main shoulder of the
42-story Art Deco clocktower.
The designers also moved the
bulk of the structure back 30
feet from St. Felix Street to Ashland
Place on the far side of the
property and made its proposed
ombre color brighter to better
match the creamy shade of the
1929 tower.
The new building will house
a 20,000 square-foot expansion
of the Brooklyn Music School
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in its cellar and on its fi rst two
fl oors with some 120 residential
units above — roughly 30 percent
of which will be priced at
below market rate under the
city’s Mandatory Inclusionary
Housing program.
The project benefi ts from $6
million in public funding city
offi cials previously allocated
to the enlargement of the music
school, which its leaders maintain
is bursting at the seams
hosting some 2,100 students in
four connected townhouses adjacent
to the site.
The developers, who required
the LPC certifi cate to
build in the Brooklyn Academy
of Music Historic District,
will still need to go through the
city’s lengthy Uniform Land
Use Review Process, which
they expect to start in 2021.
Most commissioners praised
the applicants for heeding their
The revised proposal for 130 St. Felix St. Courtesy of FXCollaborative
requests, but some still voiced
concerns with the two groundlevel
sections of the building,
asking to make them more in
line with nearby structures.
Some locals have been opposed
to the building due to its
size, and LPC received more
than 70 letters in opposition,
compared to 11 in favor, of the
project, according to offi cials.
Those objections were
echoed by one commissioner,
who cast the lone vote against
the proposal.
“This building is alien to the
district, because of that height
and massing. It ruins the memory
of the architectural drama
of the Williamsburg Savings
Bank and it’s shoe-horned into
what is not a skyscraper district,”
said John Gustafsson.
“It is rare, I think, that a single
building means so much to a
neighborhood and a borough.”
HIGH NOTE!
City landmarks gurus approve revised
Brooklyn Music School tower in Fort Greene
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