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...do you have any where you live? 
We live in a neighborhood where, even in these tough times, a lot is going on. Existing buildings have added a floor or two on top to provide new housing. Vacant lots are growing three and four story apartment buildings. Still, there's one building that's been derelict for the almost 30 years we've lived here.
It's a brownstone just around the corner from 7th Avenue and 3rd Street. That intersection is at the heart of the neighborhood. Everything around it is alive and well but this poor building has plywood over the windows and a high fence around the front of the property. Even on a bright and pretty day it looks dark.
There are no stories about the place. No one has ever suggested that it's haunted. The most likely situation is that the place is tied up in a Dickensian battle over title. It's more a romantic ruin than an eyesore and I like to think of it as an urban Hogwarts.
The roof seems to be intact but the building is very attractive to pigeons. Is it possible that these birds are owls cunningly disguised to deceive the eyes of Brooklyn Muggles?
The building abuts a food service place at the corner. It's now a Mexican restaurant but, for several years it was an ice cream and candy emporium. It's very tempting for a Potter fan to see that place as a Brooklyn outpost of Florian Fortescue's Ice Cream parlor and Honeyduke's. In that incarnation, the ice cream and candy place was also a hangout for polite but unusual-looking children of an age to attend a Hogwart's type school. We had 13 year-old Goths and a kid who played a hot sitar on Saturday afternoons on a bench just outside the ice-cream parlor's garden.
What say you, good citizens of CS? Do you have anything similar where you live? Inquiring minds want to know.
We live in a neighborhood where, even in these tough times, a lot is going on. Existing buildings have added a floor or two on top to provide new housing. Vacant lots are growing three and four story apartment buildings. Still, there's one building that's been derelict for the almost 30 years we've lived here.
It's a brownstone just around the corner from 7th Avenue and 3rd Street. That intersection is at the heart of the neighborhood. Everything around it is alive and well but this poor building has plywood over the windows and a high fence around the front of the property. Even on a bright and pretty day it looks dark.
There are no stories about the place. No one has ever suggested that it's haunted. The most likely situation is that the place is tied up in a Dickensian battle over title. It's more a romantic ruin than an eyesore and I like to think of it as an urban Hogwarts.
The roof seems to be intact but the building is very attractive to pigeons. Is it possible that these birds are owls cunningly disguised to deceive the eyes of Brooklyn Muggles?
The building abuts a food service place at the corner. It's now a Mexican restaurant but, for several years it was an ice cream and candy emporium. It's very tempting for a Potter fan to see that place as a Brooklyn outpost of Florian Fortescue's Ice Cream parlor and Honeyduke's. In that incarnation, the ice cream and candy place was also a hangout for polite but unusual-looking children of an age to attend a Hogwart's type school. We had 13 year-old Goths and a kid who played a hot sitar on Saturday afternoons on a bench just outside the ice-cream parlor's garden.
What say you, good citizens of CS? Do you have anything similar where you live? Inquiring minds want to know.
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