East New York Library Razed, New Building Not Yet Permitted

Brooklyn Public Library tore down the 1950s New Lots Library building at 655 New Lots Avenue in East New York, ground that sits across from an 1823 Dutch Reformed church and an 1840s cemetery holding the graves of free and enslaved African Americans. The library held a ground acknowledgement ceremony on October 29 to mark the start of work on a replacement, but the city’s own permit record for that replacement shows construction has not been authorized.

Why it matters

A public agency moved to demolition and a groundbreaking ceremony while the Department of Buildings still lists its primary new-building filing in Objections status, not Permit Issued. The way around that gap on this job was a separate, smaller sidewalk shed filing that did clear to a full permit and let crews mobilize on site. For builders and construction companies watching sensitive sites, the lesson is specific: a project can show visible activity on a historically flagged parcel while its main construction permit is still unresolved, and the public DOB record will not tell you who made that call or what the open objections are.

The numbers

Brooklyn Public Library filed the new-building job, B01187618-I1, with an initial construction cost of $16,121,331 and a total construction floor area of 17,075 sq ft, converting the existing two-story, 26-foot building into a proposed three-story, 48-foot structure. That filing, submitted April 11, 2025, had not advanced past Objections as of its last recorded status update, January 21, 2026. The job that did move: a $10,000 sidewalk shed permit, B01391804-I1, filed April 24, 2026 by Lawrence K. Shapiro & Associates and explicitly tied to the stalled new-building job, which reached Permit Entire status as of October 27, 2026, two days before the ceremony.

What’s next

Brooklyn Public Library has said the replacement library, designed by Marble Fairbanks and MASS Design Group with Gilbane Building Company as contractor, will run about 25,000 sq ft and open in 2028. NYC Parks found human remains and burial artifacts under the adjacent Sankofa Park in a 2018 study, and the remains were reinterred there in 2019 inside the footprint of the historic cemetery. Who at the city or the library signed off on proceeding with demolition and a public ceremony while the core construction permit sits in Objections, and who is responsible for monitoring any further excavation near the reinterred remains, is not named in the public record reviewed for this story. For more on how the borough’s public projects are moving, see the New York hub.