Carter's Review

CastleBraid is a colorful five-story residential building at 114 Troutman Street in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn that was erected in 2010 by Mayer Schwartz and designed by Nataliya Donsoy of ND Architecture and Design PC.

It has 144 rental apartments.

An April 23, 2010 article by Jason Sheftell in the New York Daily News about the development noted that Mr. Schwartz “bucks convention, barters free rent for artistic services and cares about enriching the lives of his tenants,” adding that “he also hires them” and trades “free rent to tenants who do artistic work that betters the building.”

Mr. Sheftell quoted Mr. Schwartz as proclaiming that “A residence should not just be a place where people came to sleep, it must be a place where people come to create.”

On its website, castlebraid.com, the building maintains that it “isn’t just an apartment building – it’s a vision of a seamless interplay between the individual and the vibrant collective they’ve helped to create,” adding that “In a world custom-built to enable the artist, you may finally be free to inhabit the role you’ve always known was yours to lay.”

“CastleBraid,” it continued, “grows as you grow, reaching far beyond locality by allowing its well of creative energy to constantly regenerate and expand – living proof of the unimaginable power of our collective aspirations.”

Bottom Line

A large and wacky low-rise rental apartment complex for artists with a-kilter signage and random ladders on its façade and a recording studio: a fun house that should have been around for the non-gentrified Brooklyn Dodgers.

Description

The building’s long façade is divided into bright red, orange, white and gray sections topped by a crazy-guilt sign with its name in unaligned titling letters presumably mounted by drunk construction workers.

It has a large U-shaped courtyard that is very handsomely landscaped with an interesting diagonal plan designed by Future Green Studio with deconstructivist pavers, two wooden swings and a corrugated fence.

A July 2, 2010 article by Jed Lipinski in The New York Times noted that “in the parking lot behind Castle Braid, a new rental complex in Bushwick, Brooklyn, BMWs and Volvos site beside murals by local graffiti legends like Jesus Saves and Robots Will Kill.”

“The graffiti murals were commissioned by Mr. Schwartz as part of Brooklyn Artillery, a six-week art fair/open house last fall that converted the 125 then-vacant apartments into temporary galleries,” the article continued, adding that “the tactic appears to be working on both fronts: only two units remain to be filled, and tenants say they are trying to realize Mr. Schwartz’s vision of an artists’ utopia.”

The building, which is named after a trimmings factory that was once on the site, has discrete air-conditioners.

Amenities

The building has a bocce court, a wood shop, a library, a recording studio, a computer lab, a game room, a yoga rom, a screening room, video and camera equipment for use by the tenants and a rooftop see-saw.