The scariest doctor's office in Crown Heights has sold, and will be gut renovated

whynot_31 · July 2015

481 St. Marks Avenue
The-Block

The windowless brick building above has long been the offices of Dr Hasan and Dr Russo.

Today, I am please to announce that the building has not only been sold, but will soon be renovated and residential. According to plans approved by the DOB yesterday, it will even get a penthouse.

http://bkmultifamily.com/481-saint-marks-avenue-brooklyn-ny-11238/

http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/JobsQueryByNumberServlet?requestid=1&passjobnumber=320908247&passdocnumber=01

http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-muhammad-hasan-yyd72

http://www.healthgrades.com/provider/charles-russo-3hxqj

dac545 · July 2015

This place was so random. Open sporadically, but closed almost all the time. I used to sit on the stairs if I was waiting for someone. It always made sense for it to be residential.

And seriously, why are there no windows? I never even thought about that..

ap · July 2015

I've often wondered about this building. You can see that windows once existed that were covered over with bricks. Why? Why would someone seal off all the windows? Why not remove the fire escapes at that point? Such a strange edifice. I've never seen anyone go in or out of that door, either.

whynot_31 · July 2015

Only the first floor was used by the MDs. The floors above were closed off.

I hope it is a time capsule in there. ...complete apartments with lime green appliances from 1983.

dac545 · July 2015

I did see nurses come out of the door every great once in awhile. Never a patient or doctor though.. and I walked past it several times a day for a year and half and still pass by relatively often.

whynot_31 · July 2015

I suspect the office was a "functioning artifact" from the period in which the Jewish Hospital Complex was a functioning entity.

MDs tend to open offices near hospitals.

As JH floundered and finally closed, the neighborhood went through its roughest period and the apartments above (like many in the area) were bricked up because they could not be rented. This building is one of the last to come out of that period...

rogers_sterling · July 2015

Do you know when the JH closed?

whynot_31 · July 2015

Starting in the mid 80s, I think it closed building by building, with the last building closing in 2000. The entire complex was closed by 2000.

http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2012/08/past-and-present-nurses-school-jewish-hospital/

In 2003, I did an unauthorized tour of the site (ie trespassed) in which I was able to access most of the buildings. Several of them appeared to have been out of use for at least a decade, and perhaps as long as 20 years.

The first building came back on line as rentals in 2004.

atomische · July 2015

I used to see nurses out back smoking, from time to time.
Now the backyard is home to a small colony of feral cats.
feralcats

dac545 · July 2015

Oh wow. Even though I used to live in 475 St Marks, I never went out back since I didn't have a car. Classy metal sheeting back yard....

whynot_31 · July 2015

I like to imagine that I am the MD who occupied that office in -say- 1987.

-The hospital near me is tettering.
-The landlord has bricked up the apartments above me
-Heroin and crack are all the rage.

It must have taken a large amount of fortitude for an MD to decide, "Fuck you, Crown Heights. I am not moving. I'm staying here and demanding the landlord encase the backyard in wrought iron."

rogers_sterling · July 2015

@whynot_31 interesting take. I wonder what other decrepit doctor offices lie near other defunct hospitals.

ehgee · July 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/20/nyregion/in-brooklyn-a-hospital-faces-its-own-mortality.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/03/nyregion/four-brooklyn-hospitals-plan-to-merge-into-two-new-ones.html

'''The intensity of our difficulties is
unimaginable,'' said Dr. Ayub Khodadadi, director of radiology who works
in the most rundown of the hospital's two sites, the former Jewish
Hospital of Brooklyn at 555 Prospect Place in the Prospect Heights
section. [...]

''We pay to repair one thing and another thing
goes,'' Dr. Khodadadi, an Iranian immigrant said, beginning a common
refrain. ''We are constantly being forced to improvise to provide
adequate patient care.

''When I was an intern here, this was a glorious
place,'' Dr. Khodadadi said, wistfully. ''The potential is there for
this hospital to regain its glamour; if only the money was there. This
community could certainly use it.'' '

whynot_31 · July 2015

Indeed. Here are some more quotes from the 1989 article:

"Here, amid the skeletal, gutted brownstones and desolate tenements of sections of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and East New York, live legions of the city's uninsured."

''These neighborhoods have some of the highest rates of infant mortality, drug abuse, violence and AIDS in the country,'' said Robert D. Gumbs, executive director of the New York City Health Systems Agency, a state-financed planning group.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/20/nyregion/in-brooklyn-a-hospital-faces-its-own-mortality.html?pagewanted=1

morralkan · August 2015

Whatever the condition of the building, Dr. Hasan is a very good gastroenterologist as well as a very caring human being. He relocated a while back to an office right near Kingsbrook Hospital.

whynot_31 · September 2016

No progress is evident on the building yet.

The scariest doctor's office in Crown Heights has sold, and will be gut renovated

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