Streetscapes

How Eight Feet Jolted A $180 MillionReal Estate Deal

Or,

How this man’s ideas about the idyllic city life …

made life difficult for developers of this building 200 years later.

By Jeremy Lechtzin and Aliza Aufrichtig

Apr. 19, 2024

When St. Francis College moved to its modern Brooklyn Heights campus in 1963, giving up an older South Brooklyn location, its yearbook heralded the new site with pomp and self-satisfaction: “Finally, an end to waiting: Completion of the job.”

These campus buildings centered around 180 Remsen Street, once a “bold step for the present” and a “bolder step toward the future,” now sit empty, left behind in 2022, when the college moved again and shuffled over one neighborhood east to Downtown Brooklyn.

The letters on the sign are gone, but their shadow lingers.

Amir Hamja/The New York Times