The Jacob Dangler House Has Become Rubble. Residents Ask: How, and Why?

Abstract

To neighbors of the Jacob Dangler House in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the French Gothic palatial building was a meeting space, a community center, and a place for baby showers, weddings and funeral repasts. According to Mayor Eric Adams's office, the developer received a permit to tear down the house through the Department of Buildings. The people in the community wanted to make it a community center for repasts and weddings. We lost the love of our people in this community, and that's sad. We still have great people on this block, and we are going to fight. They're missing a space to congregate, a space that holds history of the neighborhood - a space that offered a space for many different community events. From my perspective, the largest thing that was missed here and taken away from the community was respect, co-governance and community input. We're all trying to work on solutions that our communities need.