255 McKibbin

255 McKibbin St. is a five-story residential loft building and in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Each of its five floors is subdivided into 16 apartment units, ranging in size from approximately 400 to 2500 square feet (five units between the first and second floors are duplexes). Approximately 200 tenants in 75 units inhabit 255 McKibbin Street.The building has a reputation for hosting raucous all-night "loft parties." Given this, and the preponderance of twentysomething recent college graduates living in 255 McKibbin Street, the building has been given the nickname "the McKibbin Street dorm."

[New York City Board of Standards and Appeals, agenda item 234-04-BZ234-04-BZ [http://www.nyc.gov/html/bsa/downloads/pdf/2005/august_23_2005_2.pdf] ] The building was constructed in 1936 [City of New York, Office of the President of the Borough of Brooklyn, Department of Buildings, Certificate of Occupancy, October 6, 1936 [http://a810-cofo.nyc.gov/cofo/B/000/079000/B000079582.PDF] ] and served as a factory space manufacturing various textiles and garments [City of New York, Borough of Brooklyn, Department of Buildings, Certificate of Occupation, December 15, 1970 [http://a810-cofo.nyc.gov/cofo/B/000/204000/B000204896.PDF] ] until 1998, when it was converted into residential lofts [New York City, Department of Buildings, Work Permit 300818694-01-EW-OT [http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/WorkPermitDataServlet?allisn=0000856798&allisn2=0000770282&allbin=3071385&requestid=2] ] .

As Charles Graeber wrote in New York magazine Oct. 23, 2005:

"On either side of the narrow street are textile mills that have been converted to unfinished lofts and surrounded by overlocked clumps of bicycles. The people I see walking in and out of these buildings are all in their twenties and heavily styled. (If Williamsburg is emerging as a place to have babies, then the area around the Morgan Avenue stop is emerging as a better place to practice conceiving them.)...This hipster island has a Land of the Lost feeling, as if some piece of 1995 Williamsburg had drifted like Madagascar off the main continent."

The building was also mentioned as an icon of hipster style in Jardine Libaire's Here Kitty Kitty: A Novel: "Their loft, in the converted McKibbin Street factory, was a diorama of bohemian life: orange Vespa, candles melting on the floor, paintbrushes in kitchen sink."

The building is the former home of Brooklyn comedy troupe Poykpac, who are best known for their videos "Hipster Olympics" and "Mario: Game Over".

Several scenes from the Spirit Award nominated film Quiet City (film) were shot at 255 McKibbin, during the fall of 2006.

An article on the front page of the New York Times on May 7, 2008 described the 248 and 255 McKibbin buildings and their free-wheeling atmosphere extensively, noting that "To spend a few days at the McKibbin lofts is to experience what it is to be young, hungry for acceptance, and willing to put up with just about anything in order to gain a foothold in the city’s competitive, and thriving, underground art and music scenes. This could have been Greenwich Village 60 years ago, or SoHo 30 years ago, or the East Village in the 1990s." [cite news|title=Young Artists Find a Private Space, Only Without the Privacy|date=May 8, 2008|url= http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/nyregion/07lofts.html?scp=1&sq=mckibbin&st=nyt|publisher=The New York Times Retrieved on May 9, 2008]

Major Events

*On July 4, 2005, at approximately 11 AM, apartment number 222 (304 in the new numbering—see below) exploded, causing major structural, smoke, and water damage to surrounding units. The cause for the explosion is thought to be the combustion of wood sealant: apartment 222 had recently been vacated, and was being refurbished by the building's management. As an aspect of this, the wood floor was coated with the sealant, and left unattended to saturate. When vapors from the sealant reached the pilot light of the unit's stove (which had not been turned off), the entire unit exploded. The windows and metal window frames in 222 were ripped out of the building's brick walls. [New York City, Department of Buildings, Complaint 3162192 [http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/OverviewForComplaintServlet?requestid=2&vlcompdetlkey=0000679795] ]

*In April, 2007 the building's apartment numbering and street address were revised. Prior to this, the building had two street address: 255 for the left side of the building (facing from the street), and 265 for the right. All apartments which had previously received mail at 265 McKibbin St. were relocated to the 255 side. The landlords also renumbered all of the apartments so that the basement units could be referred to as first floor apartments. This caused each subsequent floor to have their units renumbered upwards.

References