Carter's Review

The Belltel residential condominium building at 365 Bridge Street at the northeast corner of Willoughby Street in Downtown Brooklyn is one of the city's important Art Deco structures.

It was designed by Ralph Walker of Voorhees, Walker & Gmelin who designed the important Barclay & Vesey Building near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and One Wall Street.

The 27-story building at 365 Bridge Street opened in 1930 and has a very impressive silhouette with seven layers of setbacks culminating in a central tower.

The 219-unit condominium building is also known as 97-105 Willoughby Street and 7 MetroTech Center in the "DoBro" section of Brooklyn. It was the former headquarters of the New York Telephone Company.

The condo conversion by Clipper Equity was designed by Frederic A. Bland of Beyer Blinder Belle.

Bottom Line

This monumental and impressive Art Deco building with many setbacks is one of the major landmarks in Downtown Brooklyn and was converted to residential condominiums in 2006.

Description

According to the building's website, "The 27-story building is comprised of iron-spotted orange brick that rises in a series of sculptural setbacks to a prominent central tower."

"The masterful brick patterns and undulating planes are suggestive of draperies and reinforce the verticality of the building and its Art Deco style. This is further emphasized by the striking ornamental metalwork on the display windows and entrances on the street levels and the grand marble walls, terrazzo floor and metalwork in the lobby....The building had 12 elevators, which is not necessary for residential living, so…[the architect] took one elevator shaft and created the mail room framing it with the elevator's original metalwork doors."

Amenities

The building has a concierge, garage with valet parking, zip car service, a fitness center, a residents' lounge and screening room, a live-in superintendent, and a roof terrace.

The building is pet friendly.

Apartments

The building has 100 different floor plans and 58 apartments have terraces.

Kitchens have GE Profile refrigerators, stoves and microwaves, and limestone and Pietra Cardoza countertops and wine coolers.

Baths have deep soaking tubs.

Apartment  10D is a one-bedroom unit with a 31-foot-long entrance gallery that leads past a 15-foot-long home occupancy room and a 13-foot-long study, both windowless, to a very large open kitchen with an island that opens on a 12-foot-long dining room and a 17-foot-long living/dining room with a 15-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 10I is a one-bedroom unit with a 18-foot-long entrance gallery that leads past a windowless 23-foot-long study and a windowless 12-foot-long home occupancy room to a 17-foot-living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island and a 14-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 13C has a 35-foot-long entrance gallery that leads past a 13-foot-long, windowless study and a 13-foot-long windowless home occupancy room to a 18-foot-long living/dining area with an open kitchen with an island and a triangular 7-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 13G is a one-bedroom unit that has a very long foyer that leads past a 13-foot-long home occupancy room and a 13-foot-long study, both windowless, to a 20-foot-long  living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island and an angled 8-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 12K is a two-bedroom unit with a 16-foot-long gallery that leads to a 17-foot-long foyer that opens onto a 17-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen and a very large corner terrace.

Apartment 16A is a three-bedroom unit with a foyer that leads past a 12-foot-long “home occupancy” room to a 29-foot-long living room that opens onto a 21-foot-long terrace that turns to a 50-foot-long terrace.

Apartment 19C is a two-bedroom unit with a 25-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 21-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen and an angled entrance to a 31-foot-long terrace that also can be entered from the bedrooms.

Apartment 20A is a two bedroom unit with a 20-foot-long entrance gallery that leads past a 10-foot-long windowless home occupancy room to a 21-foot-long living/dining room with an open kitchen with an island.  The apartment, which has angled walls in the living/dining room and second bedroom has a small terrace.

History

It was designated a landmark in 2004, the same year that the city also designated its  predecessor building a block away, a "primly Beaux-Arts from 1898 at Willoughby and Lawrence Streets," according to a "Streetscapes" column by Christopher Gray in the March 30, 2008 edition of The New York Times.

"New York and New Jersey Telephone and Telegraph was founded in 1883, only five years after the commercial introduction of the telephone in New York....Just as major Internet companies now occupy sumptuous headquarters - consider Frank Gehry's sail-like building for IAC in Chelsea or Amazon.com's elaborately restored Art Deco high-rise in Seattle - the telephone companies built lavishly a century or so ago. The crisp, impeccably detailed eight-story building at Willoughby and Lawrence was the headquarters for New York and New Jersey Telephone and Telegraph. Rudolphe L. Daus, born in Mexico and trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, produced a robust structure dominated by six great three-story arches. In contrast, the ornamentation was delicate and inventive. Some of it was wonderfully classical, like the cresting around the single bull's-eye window on the rounded corner on the seventh floor. But around the limestone doorway, amid the usual eagles and shields, are depictions of wall-mounted telephones of the period with the sinuous wires for the earpieces arranged like wreaths....The room housing the operators' switchboards was in the heart of the building, at a remove from city streets, to keep the air as clean as possible....In 1930, what had evolved into the Long Island headquarters of the New York Telephone Company moved one block away, to Willoughby and Bridge Streets. By this time the architectural firm of Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker had been designing telephone buildings for two decades. For the new headquarters, Ralph Walker, a partner in the firm, created a mesmerizing tower with faceted planes of orange brick, mottled in color so it reads like an undulating tapestry," Mr. Gray wrote.

In 2008, the BellTel building was named as the site of the MTV program, "The Real World: Brooklyn," according to a June 1, 2008 article by Jotham Sederstrom in the New York Daily News. The cast of the program was to live in a duplex, five-bedroom penthouse in the building.

"We're excited," said David Bistricer, owner of the 27-story building, that the building "beat out 24 other Brooklyn digs for the starring role on the show." 

However, in July, 2008, its location was switched to Red Hook.

Location

The building is convenient to the LIRR Atlantic Avenue station and many subway lines.

It is also adjacent to the twin spires of the 1872 Catholic Church of St. Boniface.

Part of the ground floor of the BellTel Lofts building is used as a daycare center for the children of federal workers.