Civic News

The Little School That Anchored a Village: PS133 and 'The Battle of Baltic Street'

[Park Slope's historic PS 133 is slated for demoltion this fall. Here's the story about the school from our June issue:]

In 1972, PS 133 was the last building standing amid six acres of rubble stretching from 5th to 4th Avenues, from Baltic Street across Butler and halfway to Douglass. The site was so barren, PS 133 so isolated, that 78th Precinct police called it “The Little School on the Prairie.” The only reason the 1898 building had not shared the fate of dozens of its neighbors — row houses, storefronts, warehouses, small factories — was that the city was going broke, and it had run out of money to build the massive new elementary and middle schools that were supposed to fill the vast, empty space.

In 2009, PS 133 is again slated for demolition and replacement by a massive new school, a plan that was approved by City Council June 30. Just as happened four decades ago, it was the focus of fierce arguments over good and bad development, class divisions and neighborhood character. The arguments were enlarged by the involvement of a lush and spacious 30-year-old community garden that will be buried under the new school and replaced by a smaller garden halfway up Butler Street.

The major difference today is that what happens to PS 133 will have enormous impact on its immediate neighbors, community gardeners, several hundred school children and those who care deeply about historic preservation, but most people will likely see its demolition and replacement as simply one more example of what Park Slope has become in the last 30 years. In the 1970s, by contrast, antagonists on all sides saw the fight over PS 133 and its environs as a struggle for the soul and future of the neighborhood. Those older conflicts offer context for what is happening today.

In 1972, when Jim Goetz and his wife, Diane, moved close by on Sterling Place, two brownstones still stood, like broken teeth, as the sole survivors of a once-vibrant block. Those last holdouts were soon gone, Goetz recalls, and then the site entered a prolonged, wasteland limbo as New York’s economy went sour. The city was losing population as well as money, meaning it didn’t need new schools even if it could afford to build them.

“We used to joke that first they tore down all those homes and displaced all the families who lived there, then they wondered where all the kids had gone,” said Goetz, who soon became active in neighborhood affairs, helped found the Fifth Avenue Committee and served as president of the Park Slope Civic Council in 1979-80.

The giant lot became a garbage dump and a home for stray dogs. Rival Puerto Rican gangs used it for rumbles. PS 133 stayed open but sank further and further into disrepair. The city had promised urban renewal but instead accelerated urban decay.

 “Widespread deterioration was… precipitated by the razing of over 400 units between Fourth and Fifth Avenues to make way for a new school that was never built,” wrote neighborhood activist Fran Justa in her 1984 doctoral dissertation, a long chapter of which was entitled “The Battle of Baltic Street.” “The sudden loss of the families, and the increase in surrounding abandonment, was disastrous for Fifth Avenue.”

Through the 1970s, Justa reported, the number of abandoned or demolished buildings rose from 32 to 105 in the blocks surrounding the six-acre dump.

Finally, in 1977, a group from the Baltic Street Block Association approached the Park Slope Civic Council and asked for help cleaning up a portion of what had come to be known as the Baltic Street Lot to create a community garden. Civic Council Trustee Joan Ryan jumped on the idea and helped the group apply to the Astor Foundation for a grant.

“Brooke Astor liked the idea,” recalls Ryan, who succeeded Goetz as Civic Council president in 1980. “I’ll never forget it: She sent her grant officer, a real East Side matron, who walked all around the lot with me, beautiful clothes and all. She gave us whatever we asked for. It was a real triumph.”

Maria Grimaldi is now an organic farmer in Sullivan County but, in 1977, she was an employee of the Horticultural Society assigned to work on the Baltic Street Community Garden. She tells how the garden used Astor’s money to buy tools and hire several local teenagers, including a former gang leader named Armando. Armando wasn’t just some mischievous kid, she says, but someone who had committed serious crimes and spent time in Attica.

“At first Armando thought it was a joke, but then he and the other kids began to interact with the Puerto Rican families on Baltic Street, and with some of the black people in the neighborhood who were from the South and knew lots about farming. They showed the kids how to garden. When they got a crop in, they developed a whole different attitude.

“The police couldn’t believe some of these kids were so into gardening,” says Grimaldi. “They’d sit in their patrol cars and laugh.”

With the help of the local congressman, Fred Richmond, the gardeners got another major boost: a $12,000 Community Development Grant. They also got the help of Cornell University Argicultural Extension Agent John Ameroso.

Ameroso tells how Richmond had been placed on the Agriculture Committee almost as a joke: what less desirable assignment could the House leadership give a freshman congressman from Brooklyn? But Richmond used his position to support the community gardening movement, which was just beginning to take off. Thanks to money won by Richmond, Ameroso became one of the first extension agents hired to work with community gardeners in the inner city — a job he still holds today.

“The first time I saw the lot, I went, ‘Huh? We’re supposed to turn this into a garden?’” recalls Ameroso. “It was like a war zone. But it turned out to be great. It brought the neighborhood together.”

That first garden was on the site now occupied by Key Food on 5th Avenue, slightly softening the moonscape surrounding PS 133.

Around the same time, neighborhood activists had begun to think about others ways the vacant land might be used to help a struggling neighborhood: housing, shops, a new school. Many of those activists coalesced in 1978 as the Fifth Avenue Committee. FAC had a lengthy and complicated agenda — crime reduction, commercial revitalization, the maintenance of racial and economic diversity — but the Baltic Street Lot occupied much of the organization’s time and energy for the next several years. The lot also came close to tearing the organization apart almost before it got started.

There was general agreement within FAC that a supermarket should occupy some portion of the lot, but there were widely divergent opinions about how the rest of the land should be used. One faction argued for subsidized housing to counter the creeping gentrification that was displacing large numbers of the Slope’s lower income residents. Another faction wanted the site used for commercial development and market-rate housing.

The arguments grew so bitter that a faction broke away to form a new group, the Park Slope Improvement Committee, which launched a full-bore offensive against FAC. Justa quotes from a letter PSIC President David Brennan sent to 10,000 area residents: “Those of us trying to revitalize the portion of the slope in greatest need (the Fifth Avenue corridor) are appalled that anyone can encourage these [subsidized housing] projects which will only serve to downgrade the vicinity.”

A 1980 article in City Limits magazine describes how PSIC brought in the Rentar Development Corporation, a company with “close ties to the Brooklyn Democratic Party” and Borough President Howard Golden. Rentar, builders of the Albee Square Mall on Fulton Street (demolished in 2008), drew up plans for a shopping center that would surround PS 133 with a large, regional supermarket, stores, and parking for 357 cars. (In a bit of uncanny historical parallelism, “Rentar” is “Ratner” spelled backwards, though there is no obvious connection between the Arthur Ratner who headed Rentar and the Bruce Ratner who has his own grandiose designs for Brooklyn today.)

Rebecca Reich, FAC’s first director, remembers those days vividly: “PSIC members were mostly middle-aged men who had been able to buy houses cheaply and wanted real estate prices to rise. They saw any work that we did as a threat to the worth of their homes.

“They launched ad hominem attacks on me in letters to the newspapers that would have made Karl Rove proud. Two of their leaders were on the Community Board and used that forum to spout these things, too. It was hard not to attack them back, but I was young and I shrugged it off. I figured it came with the job.”

In her dissertation, Justa quoted from a letter by PSIC vice president Fred Baer published in the now-defunct Brooklyn Phoenix: “The Rebecca Reichs, the Doris Clarks [another FAC founder and a long-time Civic Council trustee] and the Fran Justas are trying to develop an empire of buildings and public funds to ensure the financial base that will enable them to pursue the socialist propaganda that will continue to encourage hatred and economic depression.”

FAC had put together a plan that was radically different from PSIC’s and Rentar’s. Commercial development would be limited to a small supermarket with a 50-car parking lot. A new PS 133, financed with bonds rather than city money, would sit among rows of affordable, owner-occupied townhouses, each with two rental units filled by low-income, Section 8 tenants.

“We spent a year-and-a-half dealing with Mayor Koch and with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development,” recalls Reich. “Their party line was that the market was going to take care of Park Slope and they were not about to put any investment into the Baltic Street Lot.”

Then something remarkable happened, as Reich describes it: “We got involved in the National People’s Alliance, a group based in Chicago that was fighting redlining by banks and insurance companies. Insurance companies refused to give policies in certain neighborhoods, including parts of Park Slope.

“They met with us and asked if we were seeking funding for any development projects. The Baltic Street Lot looked like the perfect opportunity. I wrote up a proposal that was like a wish list for everything we were looking for, then got flown to Chicago, where FAC was one of six groups from all over the country making presentations to AETNA, which was then the largest home insurer in the country, and which had been a major target of the anti-redlining effort.

“The next thing I knew, AETNA had agreed to provide below-market-rate financing for buyers of homes on Baltic Street,” says Reich, pointing out that mortgage rates were then in the mid teens. “We went almost overnight from wish list to ‘Here’s the money.’”

The saga did not end, however, with AETNA’s largesse. FAC continued to fight for affordable housing; the city, adopting the PSIC line, continued to resist. FAC and PSIC argued their cases in heated meetings of the Community Board and the Civic Council, whose trustees included members of both groups. (Justa writes that PSIC tried but failed to get several more members elected as Civic Council trustees.)

Finally, on March 1, 1981, the city issued an RFP — a request for proposals — for a mixed-use development of a supermarket and 56 townhouses. Rentar did not respond to the RFP; FAC’s one small victory had been the city’s rejection of the Rentar plan for a shopping center. But the townhouses were to be sold at market value and the rental units would not qualify as Section 8 housing — both huge victories for FAC’s opponents.

Also, the city suddenly found money to refurbish PS 133; funding a new school had been the gaping hole in PSIC’s plans.

FAC felt betrayed and considered walking away from the project. Justa quoted one angry FAC member arguing at a community meeting: “Ten years ago, people didn’t ask the city to tear down housing, and we have a right to ask the city to put back the same housing for the same kind of people who still live in the neighborhood.”

In the end, FAC decided to salvage what it could from a bad situation: It would develop the townhouses while another developer would build a large supermarket and 107-car parking lot. AETNA’s money would bring down the interest rates, making the townhouses slightly more affordable. Each townhouse would include two rental units, which would help the new owners pay the mortgage. The houses had to be owner-occupied to qualify for AETNA’s assistance, which would contribute to neighborhood stability.

Ground was broken for the supermarket in 1982, and work began on the houses in 1983. The community garden moved from the Key Food site to a large plot at the corner of Baltic and 4th Avenue. (“We were told the new site would be the garden’s permanent home,” recalls Ameroso, “but it was an Italian handshake agreement — nothing in writing — which is too bad.”) The houses, while still under construction, went on the market for $137,000, and most of them were soon under contract.

There were lots of problems with the contractor and the quality and timing of his work, recalls Pat Conway, who was a community organizer with FAC back then and is now secretary to the FAC board (and a mainstay in the fight to save PS 133). “We’ve learned a lot since then about being a partner with a private developer, but this was our first project.” FAC has gone on to develop many highly praised affordable housing projects.

Despite everything, says Conway, the project was a net gain for the neighborhood. “It gave moderate- to middle-income folks the opportunity for home ownership, and it continued the neighborhood tradition of live-in owner-landlords. It gave stability to an enclave that, for years, had been a eyesore and a point of contention.”

S.J. Avery, who bought one of the new houses and has lived there ever since, says bonds developed among the homeowners even before they moved in, thanks to numerous meetings provoked by the contractor’s missteps. That neighborly feeling has grown over the years, with many homes still occupied by the original owners.

All along, at the center of it all, has been PS 133, a classic building designed by legendary architect Charles B. J. Snyder, many of whose New York City schools have won landmark status.

“The beautiful old building is an anchor to the neighborhood,” says Avery. “When we looked at the empty lot, when we were all trying to decide whether to take the gamble, the school was the only building on the block, a big beacon. It added solidity and permanence. We glommed onto it, architecturally, emotionally. Almost all of us can see it from one of our windows. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t love it.”

The Department of Education’s School Construction Authority plans to tear down the 264-student PS 133 this fall and construct a building three times as large accommodating 950 students in two schools, one in District 13 to replace PS 133 and a second in District 15 to accommodate the anticipated student growth from the high rises that have sprouted along 4th Avenue. During construction, expected to last three years, PS 133 students will be housed in the former St. Thomas Aquinas School at 4th Avenue and 8th Street.

The SCA, which is largely exempt from city laws regarding zoning and public review, had few hurdles to jump before proceeding. The City Council was the last, best hope for people like Avery and Conway, who wanted the SCA to consider an alternative plan involving restoration of PS 133, construction of an annex and preservation of the cherished community garden, which, Ameroso points out, is the only bit of open, green space for dozens of blocks along 4th Avenue. Despite the opposition of such groups as the Park Slope Civic Council, Park Slope Neighbors, the Fifth Avenue Committee, the Historic Districts Council, Baltic Street Community Garden, Green Guerrillas; the Flatbush Gardener, New York City Community Garden Coalition and the Brooklyn Community Garden Coalition, the City Council voted 46-4 to approve the SCA’s plans.

“They called it Park Slope Village,” says Avery. “You had your school, your garden, your low-rise houses, your supermarket. They say that your sense of place is determined by your sense of the horizon. The thought of them replacing PS 133 with that much mass, a boxy wall — they want to take out something lovely and treasured and put a box in its place. It breaks my heart.”

–Ezra Goldstein

You can read arguments for the new school and see renderings in the Environmental Impact Statement. For arguments on the other side, see what Park Slope Neighbors has written. 

On June 4, Civic Council trustees passed a resolution “recognizing the need for additional seats in District 15 and improved facilities for PS 133” but asking City Council to reject the current plan “so that the SCA can involve the community in a more meaningful fashion, explore alternatives to the demolition of the existing historically significant school building and provide an adequate accounting to the community of the analysis it conducted for the site in terms of expansion of the school population.”