Construction is moving along on 291 Livingston Street, a 22-story hotel in Downtown Brooklyn. The 189-foot-tall structure is designed by Gene Kaufman Architect and is being developed by Aview Equities and Hello Living, which purchased the narrow plot for $11.1 million. The hotel is planned to contain 100 guest rooms and a ground-floor beer garden.
The most notable change since YIMBY’s last visit in early April is the concluding formation of the rectangular extension above the final habitable levels. Black netting and scaffolding continue to shroud the entire topped-out edifice while work on the curtain wall progresses.
291 Livingston Street. Photo by Michael Young
291 Livingston Street. Photo by Michael Young
291 Livingston Street is located between Hanover Place, Livingston Street, and the almost-hidden Grove Place alleyway. The most conspicuous design aspect of 291 Livingston Street according to renderings is the black and white geometric “dazzle” pattern covering the majority of the western elevation. It remains to be seen whether the development will actually receive this treatment, which creates an optical illusion that obscures the corners depth of the superstructure. The main envelope consists of dark brick masonry, a tight vertical arrangement of windows, and several multi-story portions of an exposed rounded corner column on the eastern face.
The closest subways to the site are 2, 3, 4, and 5 trains at the Nevins Street station. The B, Q, and R trains are also nearby to the north at the DeKalb Avenue stop underneath the City Point complex.
A revised completion date for 291 Livingston Street has not been announced, though sometime in 2021 seems plausible.
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I hereby declare 291 Livingston Avenue the Zebra Building, or maybe the worst thing to ever be built in NYC. ?
Life has been too much of a bad acid trip lately to have to tolerate a building that looks like one..
Wow – that is not just ugly – it is aggressively ugly. It wants to get in your face about it.
World War One Dazzle paint scheme to prevent the building being torpedoed by irate neighbors.
You people are complaining about the zebra mural which probably won’t even make it to reality???? Try complaining about the bizarre ugly setback.. that’s the bad design part, not a kinetic artwork.
Ouch!
this one really stinks.
what kind of witless client buys into this crap?
Gene Kaufman should lose his license for sheer incompetence. Gwathmey must be spinning in his grave over what this hack has done to his old firm. And a pox on the developers who keep hiring kaufman . They are complicit in the defacing of the city.
Yes, it’s ugly, but NYC should be raucous, and weird, and even a little bit ugly.I hope that the dazzle ship paint makes it to reality. Without it, it would just be an awkwardly proportioned cheap building.
Obviously as an “architect?”
Mr. Kaufman, seems to be on drugs while “designing” all his projects! His projects are out to destroy the architectural history of NYC, one block at a time. These would make a great tour for future architects, to show “crapitecture” at it’s worst!
To paraphrase the
late Mrs. Reagan,
“JUST SAY NO MORE, PLEASE!”
I’m a retired NY trial lawyer now living in Phoenix. Until now, I flew back to the City quite frequently. Aside from being grotesque, did no one think of the effects of the “camouflage” on pedestrians and drivers. It’s not worth the life or limb of one NY pedestrian or driver, which will be inevitable if this monstrosity comes to fruition.
Karens, relax and take some Phucamol!!
You do a great disservice to the term “Karen,” and a greater disservice to the quality of our built environment, by your snarky irreverence.
May your tomb be designed by Gene Kaufman.
Okay, Becky.
P-R-I-T-T-Y U-G-L-Y.
WTH is Hello Living doing this-they went bankrupt last year and there are 100’s of companies that have Liens on all of their buildings