The balconies on Wallabout Street are for religion, not pleasure.

Strolling down Bedford Avenue, you’re greeted by a solid wall of new six-story brick buildings.

The apartments are spacious and cheap by New York standards. For half a million dollars, you can buy a three-bedroom condo in a new elevator building. The tan brick buildings won’t win any design awards, with their looming, protruding window cages and diagonally cascading balconies built solely for constructing booths during Sukkot. But the apartments are big enough to raise a kid or seven.

Cross Broadway north into the trendier section of Williamsburg, though, and half a million will barely buy you a studio. The new construction appears formidable, but it pales in comparison with the torrent of demand streaming into the neighborhood.

Sexy new towers have cropped up on the waterfront, but the trendy inland neighborhoods of northern Brooklyn—Bed-Stuy, Bushwick and inland Williamsburg and Greenpoint—are for the most part capped at three or four stories, and all but the smallest buildings must include parking. As a result of the disconnect between supply and demand, prices have risen dramatically, almost tripling in Williamsburg since 2004.

How the ultra-Orthodox have succeeded in building thousands of units and keeping the neighborhood affordable for families—on private land, and without public money—is a testament to their strongly pro-development attitudes and a bloc voting strategy reminiscent of the ethnic politics patterns of the Tammany Hall era. In a city slow to accommodate new development, they have managed to keep on building in a way that the city’s storied real estate interests can only dream of.

Satmar, as the Hasidic dynasty founded by Joel Teitelbaum is known, have been pushing up against the bounds of their South Williamsburg heartland since the 1970s. Borough Park and suburban enclaves upstate helped relieve some the pressure on the Teitelbaums’ notoriously fecund followers, but the community was spilling out of its tenements, with children sleeping in bathtubs in extreme cases.

In a city slow to accomodate new development, the Satmars have managed to keep building.

So during the 1990s, private Hasidic developers, seeking to house their multiplying masses, began asking for—and receiving—variances to build apartment buildings, without subsidies, on land around the edges of South Williamsburg that was otherwise zoned exclusively for industrial and commercial use.

At the time, the city was freely granting these one-off exemptions, but was not willing to rezone entirely, said Sheldon Lobel, a land use attorney whose name shows up on many of the applications. “But about 10 years ago,” Mr. Lobel told The Observer, “getting variances became more difficult.”

So it was in the late 1990s that the current building boom kicked into high gear. Hasidic leaders lobbied for—and won—the right to build housing on industrial land around South Williamsburg, including a large swath in northern Bed-Stuy, around Bedford and Flushing Avenues, in 2001. No longer did the Hasids need to beg the Board of Standards and Appeals for permission on each individual project—new six- and seven-story residential buildings were now allowed as a matter of right.

A solid wall of buildings rose in northern Bed-Stuy, in an area some in the community now call “New Williamsburg.” The development was not the piecemeal building that takes place in the rest of the borough, but an entirely new neighborhood, anchored by beige apartment blocks, embellished with faux classical touches and served by new synagogues, schools, grocery stores and shops.

And it didn’t stop there. In the early 2000s, outgrowing their new territory in northern Bed-Stuy, the Hasidic community began to apply pressure to the Bloomberg administration to rezone the Broadway Triangle, an industrial enclave wedged between Bed-Stuy and South and East Williamsburg. It took the better part of the decade, but the Satmar eventually got their wish: the right to strike out to the east.

Rabbi David Niederman looks out of the window of the Schaefer Building.

The rezoning had both a public and private component, and it’s the public portion of the project—an affordable housing complex that was to be built in part by the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, the secular wing of the largest Satmar faction—that attracted the most controversy. Black and Latino leaders claimed that the affordable housing complex—to be built on city-owned land, some of which would be seized by eminent domain—would give a disproportionate number of units to the ultra-Orthodox, as traditional public housing projects nearby had in the past.

A judge halted the mixed-income housing development in 2009, but resentments linger. While nothing has happened on the city-owned land, the stay on private development has been lifted, and Hasidic developers are closing in fast.

“This is why it’s such a cruel irony what’s happened now,” said Councilman Stephen Levin, who represents a district snaking from Park Slope to Greenpoint. “The market-rate housing is getting built, but the affordable housing is not. It’s the inverse of the public policy goal.”

Rabbi David Niederman, leader of the United Jewish Organizations, begged to differ, saying that both the public and private aspect of the rezoning are needed. “We believe in supply and demand,” he said. “Imagine if 200 people are fighting for one unit”—something that New Yorkers outside of Hasidic Williamsburg won’t have to try very hard to do. “Prices are going to go up like crazy.”

While Mr. Levin said that the rezoning of private land was an “afterthought,” it’s hard to miss his strong electoral incentive to allow the ultra-Orthodox to multiply within the bounds of his district.

Two-thirds of Steve Levin's votes in 2009 came from South Williamsburg, home of the Satmar Hasidic dynasty.

Nobody, after all, delivers votes in low-turnout local elections like the Satmar rebbes. In 2009, for example, two-thirds of Steve Levin’s votes came from South Williamsburg, far out of proportion to its population.

And in 2013, he won’t have to take any chances: the recent Council redistricting will give Mr. Levin a few dozen newly Hasidic blocks in northern Bed-Stuy and 5,000 new Hasidic voters—voters who wouldn’t have existed without the variances and the Bedford-Flushing rezoning of 2001. Private development around the Broadway Triangle is sure to have a similar effect on Mr. Levin’s electoral bottom line.

But political considerations aside, there are also reasons to believe that growth is, as the Hasidim claim, necessary to keep prices in check. In spite of the popular impression of New York as a builder-friendly city that’s constantly exceeding the bounds of rational development, the city’s growth over the past half-century has been anemic, and has not kept pace with the natural growth in population.

The number of housing units in New York City, for example, grew by only 170,000 from 2000 to 2010, or around 5.3 percent—nowhere near enough to keep pace with America’s population growth of 9.7 percent over the same period. Never mind New York City’s rising profile, which would lure a lot more people—if only they could afford it.

Mr. Levin said the Hasidic community’s large families mean “they have a greater housing need than the hipster community,” but tell that to buyers of newly built condos in goyish Williamsburg, where the median price per square foot is almost double the $400 upper limit of new Hasidic developments.

Some—but not all—of that is accounted for by the cheaper finishes the Hasidim use. And, as Rabbi Niederman emphasized, Hasidic developers are bound by community standards, and are not looking to just “make a buck.” (Of course, community standards don’t always apply to those outside of the community—accusations of landlords using aggressive tactics to drive out their black and Latino tenants in areas of Hasidic growth are common.)

It’s hard not to look at those impossibly affordable three bedrooms and wonder what might happen elsewhere in Brooklyn if the valve were open a bit more. But despite the need, there’s no stomach in the secular world for allowing upzoning past the first two L stops in Brooklyn. “You’re ruining the neighborhood”—to quote the creator of the anti-Williamsburg gentrification film Gut Renovation—is still the prevailing sentiment among the nonbelievers. And as long as the trendier Williamsburg elements feel this way, the Satmar section of Williamsburg will likely remain a lonely redoubt of affordability in a seething sea of gentrification.

Can this house be saved?

The saga of Broken Angel House, the hand-crafted Clinton Hill mansion of bizarre angles and strange art, has taken a somewhat odd, though not altogether unexpected twist.

Christopher Wood, the son of artists, house-crafters and erstwhile owners Arthur and Cynthia Wood, has launched a kickstarter campaign to transform the house into a museum, thus staving off the last stages of foreclosure proceedings, Curbed reports.

All things considered, it's really no surprise that Mr. Wood, a sprightly octogenarian, has taken to crowdsourcing, today's go-to source for creative campaigns and lost causes.

Mr. Wood  and his late wife Cynthia bought the 10,400 square-foot property at city auction in 1979, a "wrecked and ruined" "empty shell of a building," according to the campaign, that the artists set out to transform "into something magical and majestic" with stained glass windows made from broken bottles and concrete angels with brick wings in the rafters.

The result—a weirdly beautiful mansion—was not, unfortunately, built up to code, as the city discovered after a fire destroyed part of the building in 2006. So the couple decided to fund the costly renovations that they needed to make with an ambitious condo-conversion plan—a not altogether terrible idea given that the house was located at the rapidly gentrifying intersection of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy and had recently starred as the backdrop of Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

But the recession hit, plans fell through, Ms. Wood was diagnosed died of cancer, and the house found no buyers when Mr. Wood  put it on the market. Madison Realty Capital, which gave Mr. Wood a $4 million mortgage to carry out the plan, now owns the house, although Mr. Wood has yet to be evicted.

The kickstarter campaign is trying to raise $50,000 with a huge collaborative art project—selling one-inch art spaces on the outside of the house for $20. It would, of course, be only a small step towards preserving the house. But for an artistic borough whose creative side is so often expressed via tote-bag stenciling artists, hipster taxidermists and artisanal picklers,  Broken Angel House seems like a uniquely worthy cause.

kvelsey@observer.com

Rejoice! Bed-Stuy gets a new affordable housing development.

Late last week, a new 48-unit affordable housing development opened at 926 Madison Street in Bed-Stuy, Brownstoner reports—which is good news for residents in a once-rough neighborhood where the locals' biggest fear is now likely rising rents.

Rents in the Brooklyn neighborhood went up 6.5 percent between April and May of this year; the neighborhood has seen steadily rising rents since the beginning of the year.

Not that Bed-Stuy's gentrifying status is any secret (this reporter's street has not one, but two coffee shops that do not serve drip coffee, but will be happy to make you an Americano if you are uncomfortable with the espresso revolution). Still, with Manhattan rents at record highs, presumably never to fall again, Brooklyn neighborhoods are likely to becoming increasingly more expensive.

The Madison Putnam, as the project is known, cost $15.3 million, which is roughly equivalent to the price of four townhouses in Brooklyn Heights. Made up of seven buildings built on city-owned property, the development includes 13 one-bedrooms, 27 two-bedrooms and 7 three-bedrooms. Brownstoner reports that 38 of the units are priced below 60 percent of the area median income ($49,800 for a family of four) and the other ten are priced for those earning below 40 percent ($32,040 for a family of four).

Each building is a four-story walk-up and they all come with access to a rear garden. It's probably not enough to offset the rise of luxury condos in the neighborhood bringing prices up, but at least it's something.

kvelsey@observer.com

The birthday boy, a writer for the Huffington Post, had gathered his friends on the eve of President’s Day—a rare weekday off for most, and thus not a bad night to tie one on—at the Tip Top Bar & Grill, on Franklin Avenue and Madison Street in Brooklyn. The bar is on the hazy edge of the neighborhood’s border with Clinton Hill (a real estate broker might call this Fort Greene, figuring 10 blocks of mendacity). Though the bar has been around for decades, it’s been on the books for only about a dozen years. It’s the sort of neighborhood bar that’s an endangered species, serving a clientele of regulars and taking on the barest hipster patina. The night before, The Observer had dropped by the relocated and reopened Freddie’s II. The new barroom was not the old barroom, except for the bartenders, and the bar itself; it had been rescued from the demolished original on Dean Street.

On Sunday, The Observer recalled a line from a novel about a Brooklyn bar where everybody was somebody’s assistant. Here everybody seemed to be somebody’s underpaid Web writer. They were graduates of Brown, Wesleyan, Harvard. They drank Budweiser, whiskey, mini-bottles of zinfandel through straws. They worked for Slate, The Village Voice, Inside Higher Ed. One attendee was completing her Ph.D. in the Princeton English department.

The writer for Slate asked the birthday boy about how things will change with the recent sale of his employer to AOL. The birthday boy, who was turning 25, started to mimic the famous Greek accent of his boss.

“There will no longer be nap rooms,” he said, launching into an impression of the digital diva. “There will be a nap room.”

The birthday boy had also marked his 24th at Tip Top, and those entering knew the nook where they would find him. The jukebox here was run on an honor system. Players dropped a dollar into a cardboard box before making three selections—say, Wilson Pickett, Salt-n-Pepa and Michael Jackson. On the wall was the cover of the Daily News from the day after Michael Jackson passed away: THE KING IS DEAD. Tip Top is small. Clusters of rainbow and cream Christmas lights strangled the ceiling.

A sign outside promised free snacks on Thursday, but this was an understatement. There are free snacks every night: pretzels, deli ham, ham fat, mozzarella cheese slices, cheddar cheese slices, Ritz crackers, hot sauce, barbecue potato chips, wedged potato chips, Cheetos, puffy Cheetos, celery, ranch dressing, tortilla chips, salsa. Tip Top also advertises drink specials.

“What are your drink specials?” The Observer asked Ruby, the bartender.

“Anything you order is special, honey!” Ruby said.

The Observer ordered a whiskey on the rocks.

“That’s special!” Ruby said.

We asked Ruby how long she’d been working at Tip Top.

“Honey,” Ruby said to one of the women sitting at the bar. “How long have I been working here?”

“About a year, I’d say,” the woman responded.

“A year,” Ruby told The Observer.

The Observer downed the whiskey and ordered a beer, punched a few songs into the jukebox, bummed a cigarette from a friend and rejoined the group that had gathered for the birthday party.

“What’s Duke Day?” someone asked a Wesleyan graduate.

“Well,” the Wesleyan graduate said. “It was when we’d roll around on the grass all day and eat mushrooms.” She took a sip of her drink. “Not acid, mushrooms. That’s the distinction.”

Then a few of the attendees talked about how they’ll never have as much fun as they had in college, where there are many nap rooms and they are called “dorms.”

Around 2 in the morning, The Observer said goodbye to the birthday boy and the other celebrants, who were dancing to R. Kelly’s “Fiesta.” We walked to the door, which was being worked by a man in sunglasses and a half-turban hair band. Multiple silver plates were mixed in among his teeth. He had stayed there to let in patrons (the door locks automatically) and to make sure a dollar went in the cardboard box before anyone made jukebox selections.

We also noticed the repeated iconography of Barack Obama. A print of Shepard Fairey’s rendering of Barack Obama affixed with the slogan “HOPE.” A photograph of Barack Obama waving. A photograph of Barack Obama with his wife and daughters. A photograph of Barack Obama clutching his wife on the campaign trail. Fake currency with Barack Obama in the center alongside fake currency with Michelle Obama in the center. A newspaper with Barack Obama on the cover. A Barack Obama calendar. A Barack Obama clock. Ms. Huffington might have liked it.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

The occasion was the groundbreaking of the Bradford, named for a tree native to the borough. Located on a lot that had been recently cleared of condemned rowhouses to make way for a low- to middle-income apartment building, the project will provide some refuge before the next wave of development hits and the surrounding brownstones are once again commanding seven-figure price tags.

It should be noted that middle income in this case, which comprises about 80 percent of the building's 105 units, translates to a family of four making between $99,000 and $127,000 a year. The other 21 units are set aside for those making less than $24,000 a year, which seems much closer to the realities of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights. At the same time, those sorts of families do not make for the best return on Goldman Sachs' $6.5 million investment in the $45 million project.

SLIDESHOW: Blankfein's Bed-Stuy Bash

All the expertly tailored pinstripe suits--probably more than the neighborhood has seen in one place for decades, excepting at church on a Sunday--seemed rather out of place, though not as much as the very presence of the vampire squid on this busy stretch of Fulton Street, down the block from Pasha Discount 99¢ and Mother's Kitchen $3.99 and Up Jamaican Restaurant, Mr. Liquor and a jam-packed McDonald's.

On the walk to the event, The Observer saw only African-American and Caribbean faces. Inside the event, there were about as many Caucasians as not. In the gleaming rendering for the project, the whites outnumber the blacks and browns. There, for the grace of Goldman Sachs, goes the neighborhood

It is a place Blankfein knows well, even if he has left it far behind. The banking chief grew up four miles away, in the Linden Houses of East New York--then a Jewish ghetto, now a black one. His father was a postal worker, but that did not stop young Lloyd from going to Harvard at 16. Will the residents of the Bradford have it so good? Maybe this is what Blankfein is hoping. Maybe it is even a possibility. Maybe for those growing up in the fancier apartments.

"I knew things would be better when I got back to native soil from far across the sea in Manhattan," Blankfein said at the outset of his short ceremonial remarks. Nothing like a homecoming, even if his real home today is at the illustrious Central Park West.

Yet it is easy to wonder if that $27 million apartment, reportedly paid for with cash, was not financed at least in part by the subprime mortgages that have ravaged this corner of Brooklyn. The neighborhood has more problems then just gentrification.

But here is Goldman to help, bringing the power of its $1.2 billion Urban Investment Group to bear on this rundown neighborhood. So what if the project will could earn the company 8 to 10 percent on what its website calls a "featured transaction." This is about the people.

"The returns from this investment will be some of the greatest for Goldman Sachs," Blankfein said, smiling the Cheshire grin he wore all afternoon. At first he seemed to be saying that what he and his company valued most was the investment in his old neighbors. But maybe, as always, it was just the profits.

SLIDESHOW: Blankfein's Bed-Stuy Bash

RELATED: Wall Street's Do-Gooder Summer

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo