Friday, November 2nd, 2007

Remembering The Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire Just Gets You In The Gutt, Man

The Landmarks Commission stokes, er, fans the, er, throws oil, er, should we say provocatively draws a link between the Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire and current preservation efforts around the neighborhood:

A city panel has landmarked Greenpoint’s Eberhard Faber pencil factory and several surrounding buildings — just in time, one commissioner remarked, to protect the building from “development fever [and] fires.”

In addition to the most famous of the Eberhard buildings — the factory at 61 Greenpoint Ave. with its distinctive pencil-shaped adornments . . . — the Landmarks Preservation Commission also protected eight other 19th- and 20th-century factory buildings, placing them all in the “Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District.”

The district abuts the Greenpoint Terminal Market, a warehouse complex that burned in a suspicious fire last year — an incident in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood that was evoked by Brooklyn Commissioner Elizabeth Ryan during Tuesday’s hearing.

“Development fever is raging through the neighborhood — as well as fires — so the sooner this is protected, the better,” she said.