Little House on St. Marks Place About to Get Huge

When the ragged little row house at 355 St. Marks Place (between Washington and Grand) changed hands last fall, it looked as though it was about to get a welcome gut renovation. Turns out the owner has bigger plans for 355 – MUCH bigger.
 
The three-story building – the smallest on the block – had been occupied by a bottle and can collector and appeared to be just this side of condemnation.

This week, a number of orange surveyor marks appeared on the west wall of its much larger neighbor at 357 St. Marks Place. Checking with the NYC Department of Buildings for recent filings shows a huge expansion to a five-story, four apartment building that’s 20 feet taller and more than triples the building’s floor space from 2,576 to over 8,000 square feet.

The architect of record - Mozer Architect Design of Gravesend, Brooklyn -specializes in the sort of frosting-covered, out-of-context cartoon buildings that make you stop in your tracks and wonder “what the heck happened here?"