City Gardens: Trenton's Lost Punk Rock Mecca

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The building seemed to sag against the Trenton sky, its walls leaning in a way that looked both tired and dangerous. I was driving, searching for a lunch spot after a morning spent exploring the city's industrial skeletons, when I saw it. A questionable choice, maybe, but curiosity is a powerful guide. I pulled over. Getting inside was one of the sketchiest entrances I’ve ever attempted. But once my feet were on the dusty floor, the danger faded. An enormous space stretched before me. It was sparse, cleaned out. My footsteps echoed where a stage once stood, a fact I’d later confirm in a NNKH YouTube video about the building’s past life as an underground punk club. The video showed a vibrant scene, an electric place. But the ghosts of that life were mostly gone. The long, rounded bar, where thousands of hands must have slapped down crumpled bills, had vanished. The dust-coated wine and shot glasses that once lined its shelves were gone, too. The club’s glittering crown jewel, a l...
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Crown Palace Hotel Razed For New Housing

 

About six years ago, I wrote a small piece on this mystery hotel building. At the time I could not find any history or a name associated with the three-story building that was built in 1931. The property was mostly fenced off and used mostly as storage for school buses and other private vehicles. The building entranceways were always bricked off but occasionally I would see someone had busted through the lower cinder-blocked doorway probably looking for scrap metal inside. However, recently I came upon an entry in "The Jewish Chronicle Guide" listing the Crown Palace Hotel under the address 570-600 Crown St, Brooklyn. I always knew the structure eerily resembled a hotel based on its architectural facade and the wide swath of open land that goes back decades in the 1940s and 1980s satellite imagery. It also matches the demographic makeup of the Crown Heights neighborhood to have a hotel for traveling Jews in the area.





Sadly, the building was demolished sometime earlier last year since the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) application for it was submitted in May 2021 and signed off on December 22, 2021. The adjoining lot was also cleared of the wild-growing trees as seen above in Google Street View in July 2021. Making a way in its place will be a 75-foot-tall condo development with a combined square footage of 185,149. A community space is also allocated to the building as well as two loading berths. Currently, the lot is used as an off-street private parking lot.


Status: Demolished

Location: 600 Crown St & 630 Crown St, Brooklyn NY



Source:


1. "Two Buildings To Be Built On Empty Lot On Crown and Troy", October 24, 2021, CrownHeightsInfo

2. The Jewish Chronicle Travel Guide. (1997). United Kingdom: Jewish Chronicle Publications. [Page]

3. Londono, Vanessa, "Permits Filed For 600 Crown Street In Crown Heights, Brooklyn", NY Nimby, December 21, 2022


Location: 630 Crown St, Brooklyn, NY 11213, USA

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