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Brooklyn residents displaced after facade falls off neighboring building amid nor'easter
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 29, 2026
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Catalina Gonella / Gothamist
By
Catalina Gonella
Published Sep 29, 2026
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Although most of New York City has moved on from the weekend's nor’easter, one family in Brooklyn is still displaced from their home after the facade of an adjacent six-story apartment building fell onto their property Saturday.
Homeowners Thema Hepburn and Chester Dean said they were in bed when they heard a loud boom that shook their home.
“ I saw white debris in the air. And I don't know why my mind immediately went to there was a snowstorm overnight,” Hepburn said. “ I was a little groggy, but that's how I perceived it initially. Then I looked out the window and saw a huge chunk of the adjacent building's siding all over the car, all over the front of the property, on the sidewalk, and then additional pieces started to fall. So immediately I grabbed my toddler, called 911.”
Security footage from their home captured the moment the siding fell, loudly smashing into pieces all over the couple’s front yard and car.
According to the Department of Buildings, inspectors were called to 61 Clarkson Ave. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens on Saturday, where they found a section of exterior stucco had dislodged and fallen onto the sidewalk and onto the driveway, roof, and front yard of the adjacent home that Dean and Hepburn own.
Wind conditions during the nor’easter contributed to the facade’s collapse, according to a DOB spokesperson. No one was hurt, but due to the damage to the egress at 63 Clarkson Ave., the agency issued a full vacate order, the DOB said.
The DOB also said the owner of the apartment building, listed in public records as Clarkson Parnasa LLC, was ordered to install a sidewalk shed outside of the damaged section of the 11-unit property, and to enlist an engineer to submit a report to the department on the condition of the facade.
Dean and Hepburn, along with their toddler and tenants who live in the rowhouse’s second apartment, had to leave the property. They said the DOB told them they will have to wait for that scaffolding to go up before they’re allowed back into their homes.
Hepburn said the ordeal has been psychologically taxing and disruptive to their lives, forcing her to take time off of work to deal with the logistics.
“ It's been a nightmare,” Hepburn said. “My anxiety's through the roof. This would've been a lot easier to manage if it was just the two of us, but it's us, our child and our tenants. It's a lot to figure out. I have trouble sleeping.”
The couple still doesn’t know the total cost of the damage incurred, but said their car was totaled after its front and back windshields were shattered by falling pieces of stucco.
“ I keep thinking, what if we were putting our child in the car when this happened? What if we were exiting or entering our home?” Hepburn said.
The siding that fell off from 61 Clarkson Ave. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn.
Catalina Gonella / Gothamist
Some chunks of the stucco, which appeared to be made of several materials including thick styrofoam dotted with a cement-like substance, still lay on the sidewalk and the rooftop of the couple’s home on Monday.
According to a city government advisory from 2024, “styrofoam and other polystyrene foams are a common material used in building construction, including for insulation and exterior insulation and finish systems.”
After reviewing photos of the fallen siding sent by Gothamist, construction expert Ross Spivak, CEO of the firm RES Consulting NY, said it appeared that the exterior had not been installed properly.
“ It's usually troweled on, so you usually don't have dots like that,” said Spivak. “ I don't know what that material is, but it looks like globs of something was put to the back of the styrofoam, stuck to the [wall of the building], and that did not hold. And there doesn't seem to be any mechanical fasteners, which is something like a pin or a screw or a nail or something.”
BJ Omodele was watching TV in an apartment at 61 Clarkson Ave., built in 2021, when he saw a “giant white piece of something” fall outside his window.
“I was like, "What the f—?" said Omodele, who recently moved to New York from Georgia. “You know, as someone who's never lived in New York before, I think that's something I'm not familiar with, but it just felt like everybody was acting like it was normal.”
In an email to tenants on Monday, a representative of Cobella Realty, the management company of 61 Clarkson Ave., which is listed for sale, said the stucco on the side of the building “loosened and fell,” and that they were “treating this structural issue with the highest level of seriousness and urgency.” The email informed tenants that an inspector would be stopping by the building and would require emergency access to units.
Emails to Cobella Realty and Clarkson Parnasa LLC were not immediately returned.
The siding from 61 Clarkson Ave. in Brooklyn fell onto the adjacent property on Saturday, another example of now the nor'easter damaged properties in New York City.
Catalina Gonella / Gothamist
Anne Ginsberg, who has been living in the apartment building for more than a year, said she only noticed what had happened because she heard the sirens of emergency vehicles outside.
“ It does make me worry about the structural safety, but I guess the thing is, it was, the facade, so I’m like, ‘Well, I hope that's the worst of it,’” she said. “I hope it's not more serious than that. Although it is serious 'cause it could've fallen on someone.”
The incident has also sparked concerns about construction safety on the block. Maura Johnson, who lives a few buildings away, said she worries about the quality of the new buildings in the neighborhood.
“While, with rents so high, we definitely are happy to see new development, a lot of my neighbors have been concerned about the quality of some of these developments,” she said. “It seems like a lot of them are kind of like a slapdash job and so this just felt like another case in point of whether or not these buildings that are coming up all over Flatbush are really being done properly and like with people's safety in mind.”
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