Red Hook: Where Time Really Stands Still

Of course, there are quite a few characters in Red Hook, but The Real Estate never figured that the neighborhood would have a Nazi Party headquarters.
Lo, this weekend we were scouring the streets, looking for new developments, when we came across the freshly poured foundation of 71 Coffey Street, which is at the corner of Richards Street. Coffey Gardens LLC is developing two carriage houses, each with three stories and 3,442 square feet. A rendering, if you can call it that, was nailed up on the construction site.
Pretty ugly! Coffey Gardens is using Bricolage Designs, a company that seems to turn out horrible brick rowhouses that are remarkable for nothing more than their tedious uniformity and dullness. By the looks of it, 71 Coffey Street won't improve that track record too much.
But check out the building next door! High up top, you can make out a swastika—which is, in this case, actually a rather oddly Celtic-looking piece of ornamentation. The building was erected in 1926, while Adolf Hitler was in prison writing Mein Kampf. And sure, the swastika wasn't even removed from the British Boy Scout's Medal of Merit until 1934—but still, you'd think someone might have come along and altered this building circa, oh, 1944?
—Matthew Grace