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Gowanus Batcave

Adaptive reuse of industrial structures in New York CityBrooklyn–Manhattan Transit CorporationBuildings and structures completed in 1903Coal-fired power stations in New York (state)Former coal-fired power stations in the United States
Former power stations in New York CityGowanus, BrooklynHousing in New York CityNew York City Designated Landmarks in BrooklynSource attributionSquats in the United StatesUse American English from April 2020Use mdy dates from April 2020
Central Power Station photo (Murray, fig. 45)
Central Power Station photo (Murray, fig. 45)

The Central Power Station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company building, commonly known as the Batcave or Gowanus Batcave, is a former transit power station at 153 Second Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn, New York City by the Gowanus Canal. It was built between 1901 and 1904, while the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company was expanding its rapid transit and streetcar service. It stopped operating in 1972 and sat abandoned for more than two decades, becoming home to a community of squatters in the early 2000s. The owners, who were planning to redevelop the site, building condominiums called "Gowanus Village", had the squatters removed and increased security in 2006. The Gowanus Village plans did not materialize and after a short time it became a popular space for graffiti and underground events. In 2012, philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz purchased the property for $7 million with plans to turn it into The Powerhouse Workshop, an arts space focused on the fabrication of artistic goods. It is managed through the nonprofit Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation. In 2019, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Gowanus Batcave as an official city landmark.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gowanus Batcave (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Gowanus Batcave
2nd Street, New York Brooklyn

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N 40.676629 ° E -73.988899 °
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2nd Street 153
11215 New York, Brooklyn
New York, United States
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Central Power Station photo (Murray, fig. 45)
Central Power Station photo (Murray, fig. 45)
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New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company Building
New York and Long Island Coignet Stone Company Building

The Coignet Stone Company Building (also the Pippen Building) is a historical structure in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, at the intersection of Third Street and Third Avenue. Designed by architects William Field and Son and constructed between 1872 and 1873, it is the city's oldest remaining concrete building. The Coignet Building is the last remaining structure of a five-acre concrete factory complex built for the Coignet Agglomerate Company along the Gowanus Canal. The building has a two-story cast-stone facade above a raised basement. The Coignet Building was created using a type of concrete patented by Frenchman François Coignet in the 1850s and manufactured at the Gowanus factory. The Coignet Agglomerate Company, for which the building was erected, was the first United States firm to manufacture Coignet stone. Despite the popularity of Coignet stone at the time of the building's construction, the Coignet Agglomerate Company completely shuttered in 1882. The building was subsequently used by the Brooklyn Improvement Company for seventy-five years until that company, too, closed in 1957. The facade was renovated in the 1960s, but the rest of the building was left to deteriorate for the rest of the 20th century. After Whole Foods Market bought the surrounding factory complex in 2005, the Coignet Building became a New York City designated landmark on June 27, 2006. In conjunction with the construction of the adjacent Whole Foods store, the building was restored between 2014 and 2016.

Morbid Anatomy Museum
Morbid Anatomy Museum

The Morbid Anatomy Museum was a non-profit exhibition space founded in 2014 by Joanna Ebenstein, Tracy Hurley Martin, Colin Dickey, Tonya Hurley, and Aaron Beebe in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. The museum was an expansion of Ebenstein's long-running project, the Morbid Anatomy Blog and Library and drew heavily on her experiences with the also defunct art groups Observatory and Proteus Gowanus, as well as Beebe's work in the Coney Island Museum and Dickey's interest in the arcane and the esoteric. The museum building had a lecture and event space, a cafe and a store. The museum's closing was announced on December 18, 2016.The Museum was conceived, organized and planned by Joanna Ebenstein, Tracy Hurley Martin, Colin Dickey, and Aaron Beebe and located at 424a Third Avenue in Brooklyn, a former nightclub building the interior of which was re-modeled by architects Robert Kirkbride and Tony Cohn in 2014. In Ebenstein's words, the new space was designed to give a home for a "regular lecture series and DIY intellectual salon that brings together artists, writers, curators and passionate amateurs dedicated to what [Joanna Ebenstein] sums up as 'the things that fall through the cracks'".The space focused on forgotten or neglected histories through exhibitions, education and public programming. Themes included nature, death and society, anatomy, medicine, arcane media, and curiosity and curiosities broadly considered. The artifacts featured in its rotating exhibitions were drawn from private collections and museums' storage spaces.At its closing, the museum board consisted of Tracy Hurley Martin, Joanna Ebenstein, Jacob Nadal, Amy Slonaker, Renee Soto, Tonya Hurley, and Evan Michelson, and is staffed by Joanna Ebenstein, Laetitia Barbier and Cristina Preda.