| 58 Kent Street | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Building façade, October 2014 | |
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| General information | |
| Address | 58 Kent Street |
| Town or city | Brooklyn, New York |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40°43′49″N 73°57′32″W / 40.73028°N 73.95889°W |
| Technical details | |
| Floor area | 29,000 sq ft (2,700 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Ole Sondresen |
58 Kent Street is a three-story, open plan building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in New York City. It is part of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory historic district, a complex that operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The crowdfunding platform Kickstarter purchased the building in 2011 and completed an extensive renovation. Kickstarter staff worked there from 2014 through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the company transitioned to a fully remote workforce; the building was sold in 2023.
The early 2010s renovation preserved the shell of the building, which was all that remained from its prior owner. The work to restore the façade and retain its arrested decay received two New York-based awards. In the signature sustainable and arboreal style of the renovation's architect, Ole Sondresen, the project adaptively reused the building's frame and recycled other materials sourced locally. Sondresen designed the headquarters around a central, glass courtyard. Designer Camille Finefrock, who also was responsible for the interior design, outfitted the courtyard with native ferns and shrubs. The space includes a rooftop garden, library, 74-seat theater, and was designed to afford staff a variety of workspace options.
The building's street faces are composed of three different façades in graffitied red brick, constructed from right to left, starting with the Italianate style of a factory built in 1860 and purchased by Faber a decade later. Faber hired the Brooklyn architect Theobald Engelhardt to make the center façade in Renaissance Revival style. The easternmost portion was built in the German Romanesque Revival style. The renovators repaired and shored this mismatched façade to preserve rather than overwrite the anachronistic updates it had received since its creation. The façade restorers studied each deteriorated joint to create replacement mortar equivalent in composition.