Bushwick Nostalgia: Planned development at the Rheingold site makes us long for a look at surviving buildings from the brewers’ glory days

Eye On Real Estate

April 1, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

In Heaven There Is No Beer (if you don't know this song lyric, you need to get out more): This apartment building will be constructed at 10 Montieth St., on a portion of the site where the Rheingold Brewery stood. Rendering by ODA New York

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Beer Here!

The other day, renderings were released for a new apartment building that’s planned for a portion of the massive site where the Rheingold Brewery once stood.

Seeing the design drawings for 10 Montieth St. made us long for a lengthy trek around Bushwick.

Though the Rheingold facilities are gone, many eye-catching buildings survive from bygone days when beer-making was big business in the area. There are factories where beer barons made brewski and mansions where they and their rich neighbors lived.

Before we take you on our nostalgia tour, we want to offer a tip of the hat to three important sources of information about Bushwick’s historic buildings. They are architectural history expert Suzanne Spellen, who writes for Brownstoner.com under the pen name Montrose Morris; the website Forgotten New York; and a study published in 2011 by a group of Columbia University grad students titled “Bushwick Avenue: A Preservation Plan.”

The rental-apartment building that Simon Dushinsky of Rabsky Development plans to construct at 10 Montieth St. will be quite something.

The Real Deal was the first to publish renderings from ODA New York, the architectural firm that designed the seven-story structure which will have 392 apartments, 20% of them affordable-housing units. At our request, the firm sent us the drawings, plus a fact sheet that calls the planned development “a platform for connection and community within this decidedly urban environment, which will be a very welcome addition to an area already undergoing tremendous change.”

The building will have a sloped, landscaped roof with a running and hiking course, spaces for “urban farming,” an outdoor cross-training facility and places to barbecue and do yoga.

Down on ground level, a 19,000-square-foot courtyard will have a dog run and an amphitheater and will be surrounded by amenities including a screening room, a gym and a climbing wall.

Half the apartments will have private outdoor space.

By the way, an LLC of Dushinsky’s bought the Montieth Street site last September from the Read Property Group, which is developing other parts of the Rheingold site.

The sale price was $53 million for 12 lots with Bushwick Avenue, Montieth Street and Forrest Street addresses, city Finance Department records indicate.

The sellers were three LLCs, two of them with Joseph Tabak as a managing member and the third with Robert Wolf as a manager, Finance Department records show.