Dec 19, 2014 2 min read 69 Vanderbilt Avenue

Landmarked Home To Be Torn Down On Vanderbilt Avenue

Photo courtesy of Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership.

Health concerns have doomed a 160+year-old home in the Wallabout Historic District, despite years of efforts by neighbors to save the Civil War-era building.

An emergency demolition order has been issued by the city for the house at 69 Vanderbilt Avenue — built in the late 1840s as one of the first houses on the block, according to the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership (MARP).

“We’re very sad to see the loss of 69 Vanderbilt, one of the neighborhood’s oldest homes,” wrote MARP on their Facebook page.

“The building represents over 160 years of the neighborhood history, providing a touchstone to the past that residents and visitors today can see and help understand how the neighborhood has developed over the past two centuries,” explained Rebeca Ramirez, MARP’s director of development and communication. “With its loss, the district loses part of its history as an area that developed for modest working-class families just before the Civil War.”

69 Vanderbilt as it was in the 1950s. (Photo courtesy of Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership.)

Located at the corner of Park and Vanderbilt Avenues, the house is the “gateway” to the Wallabout Historic District.

But for years, the house has been in disrepair. With a partially collapsed and rotting porch, roof and exterior, the house has been vacant since 2009, when the city Department of Buildings issued a vacate order.

Still, many residents hoped the landmark was savable, holding community forums, ensuring that the New York Landmarks Conservancy had the building on its Endangered Buildings list, hiring a structural engineer to offer guidance to the then-owner as to what kind of repair work was possible, reporting illegal squatting and drug use to the 88th Precinct, and boarding up the house to keep trespassers out.