"The building was created by two couples who met in the early 1980s, after the mayor announced a program to help artists take over abandoned apartment buildings. There were lots of meetings, and lots of interested artists, but the program never took off. Garrick Dolberg liked the idea enough to try doing the work on his own. In 1981, he was a sculptor with a day job in construction."
"His partner, Elisa Amoroso, was showing moody, Turner-esque landscapes but had studied architecture at Cooper Union. If buildings really were that cheap, maybe they could join up with another couple and try to hack it on their own. Charles Powell and Diana Meckley-Powell were interested. He had a day job in construction, too, and showed abstract paintings, while she made avant-garde musical compositions."
"There is no central door but rather two on either side of a pair of windows. The door on the left leads up to two massive duplexes, stacked on top of each other, which each stretch the width and length of the building - 25-by-52 feet - giving the units about as much square footage as a small townhouse. The door to the right leads to what is maybe the building's most intriguing feature:"
676 Union Street is a five-story prewar building reconfigured by two artist couples into unusually large living spaces and a communal art studio. The building contains two full-width, 25-by-52-foot duplex apartments and a matching 25-by-52-foot great room intended as a shared studio. The conversions grew out of an early-1980s effort by artists to repurpose vacant buildings after a mayoral program to assist artist takeovers failed to launch. The four artists pooled resources, bought an affordable Brooklyn building, and adapted it despite surrounding vacancy and urban decay on Fifth Avenue and nearby streets.
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