Crown Heights' 73-99 Empire Boulevard Erased for Luxury Housing

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Photo courtesy of NYC Municipal Services/1940s.nyc From Mack Trucks to Apartments: A Century on Empire Boulevard For most of the twentieth century, the block at 73-99 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights handled the heavy work of the city. Trucks came in for service. Tires were swapped out. Parts were stocked and sold. The buildings on this stretch of Brooklyn were built for vehicles, and for about sixty years, that's exactly what they served. The site directly neighbors the much taller Ebbets Field Apartment complex, which is the housing that replaced the ballpark. By 2025, both were rubble. By September 2026, the foundation of a 13-story apartment building was going in. A hundred years of industrial and automotive history on a single block, cleared in a matter of months. The main building at 73-99 Empire Boulevard went up in 1925 and opened as a Mack Truck auto service facility. At 29,000 square feet, it was built for the scale of commercial vehicle work: bay doors, floor drains, th...
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St. Mary's Hospital Ongoing Renovation

Ongoing construction March 29, 2017.



The former Crown Heights hospital continues its transition from a derelict eyesore to a much anticipated 170,000-square-foot nursing home complex once completed. The eight-story hospital was constructed in 1975 and found itself in bankruptcy in 2005 due to heavy financial losses operating. Since 2005, it was left abandoned before being snapped up by its current owner, a NY healthcare group, in 2014,  who will be reopening it as a 280-bed nursing home facility. It seems nursing facilities are on the rise in New York City. Another abandoned church in another borough is also up for demolition to make way for a nursing facility.


During its demolition work, workers were bilked out of $100,000 in wages when the contractor, Andrew Miller, promised workers $14-20 hourly wages and benefits. None of it was found to be true before being prosecuted for fraud by the Brooklyn DA. St. Mary's primarily served the poor and uninsured but could not sustain its yearly $10 million capital needs and losses any further in 2005. Unfortunately, St. Mary's Hospital is no longer abandoned and another one bites the dust from inactive to active. 

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