Meet Park Slope's Two "Mystery" Buildings

As Brooklyn neighborhoods go, Park Slope probably has less weird buildings--ones that are beacons of abandonment in blocks of well kept buildings--than many neighborhoods. This is probably because property values are so high that they can overwhelm even eccentricity, family squabbles and struggles over property ownership. The two most well-known examples, ironically, are within a block of each other on Second and Third Streets at Seventh Avenue. 495 Second Street was recently featured in the New York Times as being "the house that whimsy built," which provoked OTBKB to write: "Ya gotta be kidding. Dorothy Nash, the woman who owns that building is a menace to Seventh Avenue, as well as pedestrians who have been hit by materials falling off that falling down building."

What we do know is that the House of Whimsy has logged 35 DOB complaints, most recently in late February. The building has 25 DOB violations dating back to 1990, with the most recent being on Feb 21 for work without a permit. Most of the violations, including the old ones, are still shown as "open." There are an additional 14 violations from the ECB including the always popular "failure to maintain."

The building at 497 Third Street, which is next to the Tempo Presto location (where work has been going on but no building permits have been issued in many years) has gotten less press. Records show that it's owned by Carlos Hernandez and has attracted 27 complaints and gotten 7 DOB violations, including several for being an "unsafe building," plus 10 ECB violations. The most recent complaint in January was for "VACANT BUILDING NOT BOARDED/ FENCE AROUND BROWNSTONE HOUSE IS FALLING AT ABOVE LOCATION." Last week, OTBKB noted that a reliable neighborhood source said "something is going on" in the building, yet the building doesn't show any recent permits either.