A friend and one of my best tipsters emailed me about the piece in New York Magazine. Seems to me, New York Magazine can’t get enough of brownstone Brooklyn. He also emailed to say that I mispelled Requiem. It’s R E Q U I E M. Got it.  Thanks friend.

You’d think NEW YORK MAGAZINE would take a break after spreading that PHONEY rumor that Shopsins, a beloved Greenwich Village restaurant, is moving to Brooklyn. I was interviewed yesterday by a freelance writer for the City Section of the New York Times. She told me it was all a big urban myth and said she called Kenny Shopsin and he told her. Are we to believe Kenny Shopsin?  Now this about the DC-8 crash on Seventh Avenue that discussed in OTBKB weeks ago.

Broker Peggy Aguayo, of Aguayo &
Huebener, remembers the day in December 1960 when a DC-8 collided with
a propeller plane and fell onto Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. “It was
amazing and horrible,” she says about the crash, one of the worst in
the nation’s history. One hundred thirty-five people were killed,
including five on the ground. (The only surviving passenger was an
11-year-old, Stephen Baltz, who died days later at a local hospital and
became a symbol for the community’s grief.) Aguayo was a little girl
living on Sterling Street in Crown Heights; that day, confused, she
wondered why her neighborhood seemed peaceful when the news said a
calamity was unfolding there. Turned out it was taking place a mile or
so away, at the corner of Sterling Place and Seventh Avenue. The
wreckage slammed into and destroyed a church (incredibly, called Pillar
of Fire), and about ten brownstones were set ablaze.

Two
of those houses were eventually demolished, and—whether because the
site troubled people or simply by circumstance—the sites remained
undeveloped until now. On the northwest corner, until recently occupied
by a one-story funeral home, is the Vermeil (pictured above right and
inset), a long-in-the-making, 22-unit condominium composed mostly of
large apartments—three- and four-bedrooms, some duplexes, with their
own parking—that are likely to be snapped up by the area’s large family
base. Across Sterling Place, a four-story building awaits final
touches; the developers won’t discuss it, but rumor has it that the
apartments will be rentals.

Construction
in the Slope is constant these days, as families, many from Manhattan,
settle in. “As more and more people come, there’s always going to be a
need,” says broker Ellen Blau of local firm Warren Lewis. Jacob Pinson
of Yachad, who’s developing the Vermeil, saw nothing complicated about
the site, and took no special steps to note its past: “It’s a mature
and vibrant community, and we just wanted to be a part of it,” he
explains. But given their location, these projects are a little more
closely watched than is usual. Aguayo notes that a corner associated
with horror is coming back to life. Blau agrees, “It’s nice to see
something new there.”