A building collapsed in Brooklyn early Monday morning. (G.N. MIller)
The Department of Buildings ordered the demolition of a 19th-century brownstone that partially collapsed in Brooklyn this morning.
Remarkably, no one was injured at 1:30 a.m. when the left rear wall at 241 Carroll St. came down, authorities said.
Only six of the building’s 13 residents — all on the top floor — were home when the walls came crumbling down, fire officials said. The building will likely be brought down tomorrow or Wednesday.
“We heard this huge noise and I went down and I had my son and my daughter behind me and at first I thought that the fan fell down,” said Marion Floc’h Barral, was home on third floor with her husband, three kids and a 16-year-old family friend visiting from France.
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“And then I looked … and I was seeing the skies through the walls.”
The three-story structure, built in the mid-1800s, was a victim of age and deterioration, officials said.
“[The Department of] Buildings feels that it was just an old building, built roughly mid-1800s,” said assistant fire chief James Leonard. “It collapsed due to failure of the bearing wall on the exposed side.”
He added: “Wood rots. The mortar between the brick just gets old and starts to fall apart and gravity will bring the building down eventually.”
Building owner Sisi Schneider and her hubby were out of town when the near-disaster struck.
“We just consider it a miracle that everyone’s OK and we’re looking for places for the tenants,” said Schneider.
The city also ordered everyone out of nearby buildings at 243 and 240 Carroll St., and at 115 and 117 First Place.
Those four buildings are not expected to be demolished but city engineers want to inspect those neighboring structures as a precaution, officials said.
Thirty -seven residents have been displaced by the evacuation and demolition orders, according to Lenoard.
The owners of 241 Carroll had applied, in November 2010, to renovate it from a four-family structure to a three-family building, officials said. But the owners never followed through to pick up the permit.
Schneider said they had plans to fix up the building later this summer.
“We had seen some hairline things on the side of the building, we were waiting for school to finish session before we started the work,” she said. “We never did anything, we never started the work.”
Neighbor Kyle Wright, 35, said the collapse sounded like a sea of window air conditioner units crashing to earth.
“I was on the couch in the back side of the apartment and what it sounded like was an air conditioning falling out of a window but it sounded like it was happening repeatedly,” said Wright, who lives on First Place.
“I threw on my shoes and came outside when I was approached by a firefighter who needed access to our building. We went out to my back deck and that’s when I realized that half of the building was basically on the ground.”
Another neighbor, 43-year-old Scott Lehr, described a chaotic scene of dust and crumbled walls.
“I heard a siren, I went outside and I saw a big chunk of the roof fall down. It was pretty crazy,” said Lehr.
“So we evacuated. We didn’t really have anywhere to go so we went to the Marriott in Brooklyn and that’s where my family is now. It was a little scary. But we rallied. The kids were a little scared but I think everybody’s fine now.”