Lonely Gowanus Building is Landmarked

We've been following the tale of the building at the corner of Third Avenue and Third Street in Gowanus for some time and knew that it had been up before the Landmarks Preservation Commission a few weeks ago. The building is on the corner of the site of the planned Whole Foods and, yesterday, it was landmarked. This has generated much happy coverage today, including the following:

3rd and 3rd Gets Landmarked [Brooklyn Record]
Pippin Gets its Place in History [Callalillie]
It's Official: Pippin Won't Be Eaten by Whole Foods [Gothamist]

We also wrote about it at Curbed in the item called Facadomy Averted in Gowanus.

In any case, the building which is now completely by itself on the large empty parcel, used to be the home of the New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company. (The Gowanus company manufactured artificial stone that was used in parts of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Metropolitan and the American Museum of Natural History.) Then, it became the home of the Brooklyn Improvements Company, which among other things, helped build the Gowanus Canal and much of Park Slope. More recently, it housed an auto parts and auto repair shop. The LPC chair calls the 2 ½-story, Italianate-style structure "mysterious" and "elegant."

We're thrilled to see that this pretty little building will survive, and hope it is not swallowed up by the Whole Foods, no matter how much we want a big grocery store nearby.