110 Livingston News & Blog

The excellent independent bookshop BookCourt at 163 Court St. between Pacific & Dean is undergoing renovations to expand — great news. The store is adding space in the back of the building, creating room for a dedicated readings & performance space, as well as adding a small cafe and accompanying outdoor garden. Childrens’ books will get double the capacity, and every other section expanded. Bravo!

• Expansion in Progress & Photo Gallery (BookCourt.org)

There’s a new burger option in Brooklyn–Five Guys Famous Burgers & Fries, known in DC and Philly, set up shop this summer in Brooklyn Heights at 138 Montague. Eat your heart out, because the burgers come with a wide assortment of free toppings. The double cheeseburger is delicious and satisfying and not too filling, no mean feat. The only thing that could beat this would be a Shake Shack in Cadman Plaza.

• Five Guys Famous Burgers & Fries
• Google map of 138 Montague

Across Boerum Place from 110 Livingston sits the distinctive MTA building, which houses the agency’s IT department and other offices, and which manages to look like both the prow of a ship and a turret at the same time. The building was designed by the architect Helmut Jahn. His other work includes the CitySpire building in Manhattan, whose dome is inspired by One Hanson Place, One Liberty Place, Philadelphia’s most distinctive tower, and the Sony Center in Berlin. “An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn” calls Jahn’s work “jazzy” and “postmodernist.”

According to the guidebook, the MTA building was inspired by old-school Brooklyn architecture, and two traditions in particular: “polychromatic masonry” (the stripes on the building), and rounded towers, which were favored by late 19th-Century architects like Montrose Morris. See more of Jahn’s recent work at the link below.

• Images of Helmut Jahn’s work (Murphyjahn.com)
• The New Modernism of Helmut Jahn (Architecture Week)

Photo by The_WB

The mysterious fluorescent-orange outline above represents a welcome improvement to the street crossings along Boerum Place. These planned curb-widenings at intersections are known as “neck downs,” and are just some of the 100 such traffic calming measures slated for the Downtown Brooklyn area.

By creating extra sidewalk real estate, the extensions will make the street crossings shorter for pedestrians, and serve as a visual cue to drivers to slow down because a crosswalk is present. More grainy shots after jump.

• Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Report (DOT)
• Boerum Hill Association Calls for Traffic Calming Measures
• Map of Boerum Place

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The Daily News is renewing the call to restore Brooklyn’s long-lost trolley lines to Downtown–a worthy cause that has long been championed by Brooklynite Bob Diamond. Not only could a downtown trolley make transport to Red Hook a breeze, but they could restore a link to a lost Brooklyn, and even be a tourist attraction along the lines of San Francisco’s streetcars (more attractive than the night loop buses).

The above photo dates from June, 1933, and shows a trolley car passing in front of 110 Livingston, back when it was the headquarters to the Elks Lodge of Brooklyn (you can almost hear the roll of bowling balls and splashing in the pool inside the building). The below photo shows a trolley stop right on Boerum Place outside 110’s door. Check out another downtown trolley image after the jump–and don’t miss the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association’s historic maps, and proposed Red Hook line (pdf), which would run straight from 110 to Fairway.

• Brooklyn Historic Railway Association
• Lost New York on Brooklyn Trolleys
• A proposal for Coney Island trolleys (Gowanus Lounge)

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• Albany Cracks Down on Builders Filing Mistaken Building Plans (Gowanus Lounge)
• The Greeley Doctors of Bklyn Heights (Lost City)
• Several stores on Atlantic Ave. to combine their backyards (Brownstoner)
• View of the cleared Revere Sugar site (Curbed)
• Inside the Trader Joe’s demo job (BK11201)
• Fuel Line Spill in the Heights (BHB)

Photo of historic fountain reconstruction by Robinson Iron