We laughed so hard we almost started crying when a hawk-eyed tipster sent us a copy of this ad for 80 Metropolitan currently running in New York Magazine. We've featured plenty of progress reports on 80 Met, as it's long been one of our Williamsburg obsessions. So, what's so funny? It the developer has "converted the Old Dutch Mustard warehouse." Converted?!? They demolished the Old Dutch Mustard factory to build 80 Met. In fact, the developer said it "behooved" him to tear down what was one of Wiliamsburg's most charming surviving old industrial buildings. Talk about chutzpah. It's only a conversion in the sense that sending in bulldozers to demolish a block of Park Slope brownstones and putting up a ten-story Hot Karl Fischer building would be a "conversion" of Brooklyn brownstones. Now we know "conversion" is a synonym for "demolition" into a pile of bricks, concrete and twisted metal. It's almost as good as the story that placed Old Dutch Mustard on a list of buildings that needed to be preserved after it had been demolished.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for 80 Met says that the ad was, in fact, "an advertorial page, written by a freelance writer for New York magazine, with an error in its content. We are working with New York Magazine to rectify this situation" and calls it "a true and unfortunate error."
Here is a striking Dutch Mustard "conversion" sequence:
A little shot of the aftermath of the conversion.
· 80 Metropolitan Coverage [Curbed]
· Back from the Dead: Preserving Demolished Old Dutch Mustard [Curbed]
Loading comments...