Construction is finishing up on 559 Park Avenue, a three-story commercial building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Designed by Dattner Architects, the sprawling 45-foot-tall structure yields 220,000 square feet for Brooklyn’s District 3 Department of Sanitation. The facility includes space for offices, file archives, training rooms, repair facilities, and departmental and personnel vehicle storage with 75 below-grade parking spaces. The LEED-certified project takes up nearly two-thirds of the city block bound by Park Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, and Warsoff Place.
The superstructure stands fully enclosed in its façade of floor-to-ceiling glass, precast concrete, and metal paneling. The tallest volume at the southern end of the lot features a glass curtain wall on its south-facing elevation for ample natural lighting, and incorporates an array of horizontal metal sun shades to moderate solar exposure. The concrete panels on the eastern and western faces protrude subtly with an angular geometry and frame a staggered fenestration of narrow windows. The lower volume of the building spans the majority of the plot and is enclosed in a continuation of the ground floor’s window scheme with an assembly of gray vertical fins on its eastern face. A photovoltaic canopy covers the mechanical equipment across the 46,000-square-foot green roof.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
The main entrance along Park Avenue is situated beneath a precast concrete frame topped with signage for the department. Brown paper still covers the windows as interior work wraps up.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Photo by Michael Young.
Work is finishing up on the western elevation of the low-rise volume along Warsoff Place where the loading docks are located. This face is clad primarily in precast concrete and narrow windows, and features a long assembly of steel supports that will eventually be fitted with a glass canopy, according to the following rendering.
559 Park Avenue. Designed by Dattner Architects.
The property was formerly occupied by an open-air lot, as seen in the below Google Street View image from before construction broke ground.
559 Park Avenue in 2018. Image: Google
Sustainability elements at the 559 Park Avenue facility include a rainwater harvesting system that will supply fixtures and the truck wash station, as well as electric vehicle charging stations for the DSNY fleet. There will also be a bicycle storage room.
The nearest subway from the development is the G train at the Flushing Avenue and Myrtle-Willoughby Avenues stations to the east.
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The medical school where I worked in the Bronx had a brise soleil system on one of its mid-1950s buildings. I have not encountered too many of these until recent times. This building has a nice monumentality to it.
Why does DSNY need a three-story, 45-foot-tall structure for a single garage district? Similar to what it did in Hudson Square more than a decade ago, DSNY overbuilds – including “space for offices, file archives, training rooms, repair facilities, and departmental and personnel vehicle storage with 75 below-grade parking spaces.” (1) File archives? Files should be digitized. (2) Repair and training rooms? One facility should serve multiple districts. (3) Personnel vehicle storage? Employees should not be provided with parking spaces, given that NYC should be encouraging people to take public transportation.
The one on Hudson Square is home to 3 different districts. With each district having 60-80 workers, not including management, imagine the public outcry if they parked out on the street. Encourage mass transit? Those workers have to report to work at odd hours throughout the night and sometimes other locations where transit isn’t available.
You should go to a DSNY facility to see all the questions you have the garage you mentioned in Hudson square is actually 3 garages in one.Space is needed for snow equipment and other equipment that Dsny uses besides garbage trucks and yes files meaning all snow and routes that were finished needs to be stored for a few years cause of accidents and law suits
That’s a good lookin pile of trash.
The metal sunshades may seem bulky given the size of the building, but they are all in their proper place: Thanks to Michael Young.
Environmental racism at its finest.
I agree with you, why not build in Borough Park?
There is a garage in Borough Park
Racist how?
I love “why do DSNY employees need parking?”
We don’t know what we are doing or where we are going tomorrow until the day before at around 1pm.
A good amount of the garages are nowhere near public transportation. Areas near public transit are prime real estate, and the city obviously and rightly isn’t inclined to build your local sanitation garage in said prime real estate.
We start at 5 or 6am, when train service is far less reliable. This job places a very large premium on being on time, and being able to drive yourself goes a long way towards ensuring your punctuality.
NYCDS is still predominantly Caucasian, if the staff were predominantly Black and Brown their Caucasian Supervisors wouldn’t care how they got to work on time. Let them park on the street like I had too.
Looks like a fortress or a prison. Massive, sharp edges, oppressive monotony.
And absolutely no interaction with the street or surroundings.
Doesn’t anyone read Jane Jacobs anymore?