ANOTHER one will soon bite the dust. While other venerable police precincts around town have been shored up and restored recently, the 65th (and later the 73rd) Precinct building, East New York Avenue east of Roackaway and west of the Howard Houses, will soon be razed for what has been tabbed as affordable housing (though the word “affordable” is one of the most malleable words in English). It was constructed in 1909, but has sat empty since 1985, a span of some 40 years, since a new 73rd Precinct was built nearby.
The 73rd figured into the so-called Career Girl Murders of 1963 in which local resident George Whitmore was arrested and interrogated here and subsequently convicted of the Upper East Side murder of two young women. He was later exonerated. The case became the basis for the “Kojak”pilot “The Marcus Nelson Murders.” — Matthew X. Kiernan
According to Gothamist, Xenolith Partners and the nonprofit property owner Family Services of New York will build an 11-story complex in the precinct’s place, of which eight apartments of the planned 95 will be set aside for tenants in the Howard Houses who desire to move, but all will apparently be priced for single tenants earning from “$33,000 [to] $65,000 and families of three earning no more than $84,000 a year.” To me, $84,000 still sounds like a king’s ransom, but who’s quibbling.
One would prefer the old precinct to be refurbished as a school or community center, but the city’s emphasis in the mid-2020s is now on building needed housing.
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3/26/25