[photo of Macdonough Street brownstones by Barry L. Mason]
Six days before 329 Macdonough Street became a Bedford Stuyvesant crisis – with city Buildings officials threatening to demolish it and at least one other adjacent brownstone because of a botched renovation job – I was on the sidewalk of a nearby street, close to fisticuffs with a man I had come to, let’s say, very much dislike.
That man was Michael McCaw, the architect I was using on a fairly minor reno job involving installation of a new bathroom in a brownstone owned by me and my mother.
Let’s forget, for a moment, that the room in question already had a sink in it and that a number of contractors told me there was no need to use an architect or to file the job with the Buildings Department.
No, my headaches went beyond that.
McCaw was supposed to be my guide through the whole construction process, including the selection of a contractor.
At his advice, for example, I chose not to use a contractor McCaw maintained was not up to the task.
But I later came to believe (no, I later came to know) that that contractor was at least as competent (and a thousand times more honest) than the one I chose, whose name was Carl Felix (associated with Janen Construction & Development company) and who later walked away from the job, leaving me to pay thousands of additional dollars to make up for his dishonesty.
I came to feel along the way that abandoning jobs was, perhaps, a trick taught to some contractors and architects at their secret Masonic trade academy.
You see, McCaw also walked away from the job with me. The installation of the new bathroom for my mother -- a senior citizen with a number of disabilities -- was to be, in the craft parlance, “self-certified,” meaning that, at the end of the process, all that had to be done was for the architect to sign papers saying it was finished.
But with McCaw having abandoned me, I am now in a position of either suing, paying extra cash to get another architect to complete the job, or just holding my breath while my mother lives a hopefully contented life, without further disruptions from anyone having anything to do with contractors or architects.
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Several days ago, I heard about and went to see the brownstones on Macdonough Street that had been ordered vacated and threatened with demolition by the city. I felt a pain deep in my soul.
How can I put it? This neighborhood, Bedford Stuyvesant, was my refuge as a child, my salvation. I grew up in that home where my mom is now staying, the one a contractor tried to milk. My mother grew up there also. And her (now deceased) parents lived there for most of their lives, from the Great Depression to the beginnings of the gentrification that is now hitting Bed-Stuy, in ways good and bad.
Macdonough Street was one of my stomping grounds. I played stickball there. I went to grammar school, Our Lady of Victory, two blocks away. I borrowed books as a child from the library around the corner.
I was hurt.
Later that night I went home and my reporting instincts took me to the New York City Department of Buildings Web site, where I searched for the home that had caused the damage and the possible demolition of two neighboring brownstones.
And who, did I learn, was the architect on the work being done there? One Michael McCaw!
Right away I started looking over the Brownstoner blog, and I saw an anonymous writer (by the way, everyone on that blog is anonymous, all the better to write snippy, racist comments without a neighbor knowing who you are) saying that the architect on 329 Macdonough could face accusations of not properly overseeing the construction work.
How poetic.
The reason that two weeks ago I almost came to blows with McCaw was over this very issue.
He was in my mother’s new bathroom and doing measurements, jotting down figures as he noted that the window might be a tad higher than he had indicated in his original filings with the city.
Well, I suggested, wasn’t it your job to oversee the construction work (as he had agreed to do) and make sure something like this didn’t happen?
(Not to mention -- okay, I'll mention it -- that another architect I spoke with was shocked that McCaw wanted to file such an amendment that would have led to hundreds of dollars more in charges to me.)
(And not to mention that I never wanted the window raised in the first place, and that it was only at McCaw’s insistence that it would spare the wood and structure of the frame that I gave in.)
In response to my challenging question to him, McCaw’s eyes started flashing nervously. He stopped what he was doing and, over a couple of minutes, went on to declare that he had been at our home on this project six times. “Six times!”
He obviously felt that was way too many times for a mere few thousand dollars in fees.
After I patiently listened to him, I proceed to give my rejoinder, to which he responded by turning away to continue his measuring task.
Can you imagine that kind of arrogance, in the home of someone you're supposed to be working for? “Excuse me,” I said, tapping at his sleeve, hoping to suggest he was being unconscionably rude.
“Don’t you put your hands on me!” he shouted and right away, with his assistance in tow, grabbed his papers and began walking out of the house.
I followed him outside and asked if he was walking away from the job (which, almost unbelievably, he had once indicated to me he sometimes did with clients).
“Don’t you put your hands on me!” he shouted again as we were on the sidewalk, eyes virtually bulging.
I started to think maybe this was just a ploy to get away from the project, that he was tired of it and not earning enough money. I was also thinking that maybe he was just at a loss for other words. But frankly, at this point I had really had it with him.
His arrogance, his refusal to give out his cell phone number, even weeks and months into the job (and his strange insistence on calling me Mr. Howell, even as I clearly thought it overdone) and all the other irritations and suspicions, all came to a head.
He is maybe thirty years younger than I, and inches taller, but I went into his face and shouted, “So what are you going to do about it?”
My neighbors must have been shocked, so unlike me was it all. But I had come to so mistrust and dislike that man that I wanted him to raise his fist and throw it at me. McCaw paused, walked to his car, with me stepping behind waiting for his change of heart, and drove off.
So now the Bed-Stuy drama continues.
All around there are changes – just look at the yearly figures coming out of the Census Bureau’s community survey, showing the demographic transformation, and the implicit money to be made by unscrupulous craftsmen and financial people.
And where is the community’s savior who will drive these modern-day money changers from the temple?
Many of these changes are somewhat overseen by Community Board 3, on which illustrious body, I learned, sits Mr. Michael McCaw, architect.
(Another architect told me that an architect on a Community Board might have certain influence with the city Department of Buildings, and that therefore it might be unwise to be on his bad side.)
I guess at a certain point such things don't matter so much, not against the bigger things like family and friendships.
And the simple decency that should guide us in our relationships with neighbors.
