REVIEWS

Block 345, Lot 26
— Neena Verma

A building exhales. Caveat: No one was hurt.

After much anticipation (109 years, to be exact), the last brick fell and the project was finally complete: A pristine corner, 25’ along Court Street, 100’ along Union Street, 35’ up, and some feet down. Block 345 Lot 26 exhaled, at last.

We constantly strived to assign something to it, to give it meaning, to make it work, to make it purposeful. It was first hollowed and stamped and formed and burdened in 1911.[1] The resulting building at Block 345 Lot 26 occupied every crevice of the 2,500 square foot site, layered four times over, cellar to third floor. By 1931, it saw a Store, Light Manufacturing, Lodge Room and Dance Hall. By 1947, three single-family residences stacked one per floor. By 1998, a Store (again) plus two “Physical Culture Establishments.”[2] And just before the project’s completion, it housed an endless array of treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, steppers, barbells, benches, mirrors (so many mirrors). The weight of it all.

We perhaps forgot Block 345 Lot 26 was once just space and air. We were reminded on July 1, 2020. Or, as the New York City Department of Buildings put it in its analysis, the building upon it suffered a “full structural collapse." It was a clean implosion; the neighboring buildings remained standing, and just a few cars parked nearby suffered damage.

Three days after the collapse, I was walking north on Court Street, crossing over Union. Toward me walked someone in a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the gym that had stood at Block 345 Lot 26 just 72 hours prior. It was not sweatshirt weather. Both our heads craned toward the collapse site. Distracted, we almost collided head-on. He yelped, “Sorry.” I chortled, responding, “Not at all. You’re totally fine.”

The site was cleared quickly, as if a building had never been there. A new construction fence was put in place for safety, but inevitably signals that we will rebuild. Why is the urge to rebuild so automatic? Because buildings matter? Because empty lots represent blight? Because of property values? Because of insurance? Because we rebuild, that’s just what we do? But perhaps we need not rebuild on Block 345 Lot 26. Perhaps we need not rebuild every single building that leaves us. The choice to not rebuild is the choice to have a less automatic and unemotional relationship with our environs. The preservation of nothing can be quite something.

While a proper embrace of Block 345 Lot 26’s truth is unlikely–even preceding the Lenape sowing it or Dutch settlers later calling it “Broken Land”— this new absence is a step closer. It is okay that the building is gone. Block 345 Lot 26 will be okay. Architecture, even with absence, will be okay. We, too, will be okay. Actually, we are already totally fine.

References

[1] New York City Department of Buildings – New Building Permit for 348 Court Street (1911).

[2] New York City Department of Buildings – Certificates of Occupancy for 348 Court Street (1931, 1947 and 1988).

Neena Verma is an architect, teacher and writer, currently curious about buildings as an extension of the human ego. She lives in New York City and participated in the WriteON 2020 workshop series.  

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