Reminds me of the setting for the movie Batteries Not Included.

Hey I'm from Florida where if it was built more than 20 years ago, you knock it down and build something new! I know its an extreme way of thinking down south, but up here its extreme on the other end of the spectrum. Every other weekend someone is picketing outside a old burned-out store front saying that you're destroying their neighborhood if you knock it down and build something new. All this fear of tearing down old buildings and starting new is simply annoying.

To me, you've got to be able to find a BALANCE between preserving truly notable, historical buildings and not being afraid to move forward and invite in new architecture. We all can't live on a block of brownstones where every household is burning 2 or more window-mounted AC units all day every day. Someone has got to build and live in newer greener, more efficient buildings with modern amenities. Someone has got to embrace the new!

Absolutely - but not in the case of what happened to New York in the 50's and 60's where entire neighborhoods and communities were flattened down to some lunatic's personal ideals of a new way of living (that ultimately proved to be unsustainable anyway) - just look at where those communities moved to.
Long Island might as well be a city of the dead if you actually WALK around there - full of fat, mouthbreathing losers in SUV's who think it's too tough to walk to the end of the street, let alone a couple of miles.

It is quite possible, and in some cases desirable and a HELLUVA lot more energy efficient any way you cut it to work with existing buildings. Yes, newer designs are often 'better' - but there's nothing stopping human ingenuity from working with what is already there, and I feel that gets to the heart of the real tragedy in all this.

Constantly scrapping neighborhoods and redeveloping areas only encourages the political corruption, continual lack of a sense of community and featureless low cost housing that the USA has become utterly infamous for. It's an extremely unnatural environment whose social, environmental and economic impacts weren't thought through properly.

Nobody is saying we can't have new/nice things, but it was precisely the blinkered focus on novelty of the future that caused this mess in the first place.

I've family in Central Florida. I have no patience or respect for what passes for 'new' there. Or 'old', for that matter. Some parts of Orlando are nice, but only because enough of a cohesive segment remains to appreciate something in its context. Such places were considered the 'old' slums. As opposed to the new slums everywhere else in the region...

It is indeed 215E 68th street. I should know...the company i work for owns the property.

looks like a bad MS Paint job.

Hmm, is that not 60th and Lex? Here's the Google street view..

http://bit.ly/3g4DeA

This looks like the brownstone that was in the Judy Holiday musical 'The Bells Are Ringing". She and Jean Stapleton ran an answering service out of that building.

Wow!

Crazy pic.

Very tragic. It's important to keep things like this in the public consciousness so history doesn't repeat itself.

Aww, Batteries Not Included made me want to move to New York.

harry and tonto lived there.

I believe this is looking north at the buildings on 69th St between 2nd and 3rd. The 20 story building would be the one facing south on 68th St with a circular drive and pond.

I agree, it looks like the current site of 215 E 68th St. According to the architect it was built in 1962, so date-wise it makes sense.

PS That smaller brick building on the right facing the avenue is slated to be demolished for part of the 2nd Ave subway project.

Note, this was BEFORE emminent domain, makes you wonder if they really even needed it. I guess its purpose is merely cosmetic then?

Before eminent domain? I thought eminent domain is in the Constitution.

correct!

Someone with less work than I have get on google maps street view, quick!

Batteries Not Included