Porta Potty Rental on Bushwick's Avenues and Blocks
Tell us if the site sits under the el or on a quiet rowhouse block, and get a delivery planned around that stretch of curb.
Which side of Myrtle Avenue is the job on?
Brooklyn Porta Johns takes calls for porta potty rental in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and puts you through to rental companies that bring standard units, handwashing stations, ADA units and restroom trailers to the neighborhood. Most Bushwick requests fall into two groups: construction and renovation crews who need a unit for weeks or months, and street events that need several for a day. The block you're on shapes both.
City planners describe two different Bushwicks. The Department of City Planning's 2019 draft Bushwick Neighborhood Plan Update puts active commercial corridors and a large stock of multi-family buildings in the western part of the neighborhood, and says the eastern part is more residential, dominated by owner-occupied two- and three-family rowhouses. When the same plan turns to Knickerbocker, Wilson and Central avenues, it treats their stretches west and east of Myrtle Avenue differently, with taller buildings and more density further west.
Shopping streets and apartment buildings
Knickerbocker Avenue's stores, Maria Hernandez Park and buildings with apartments over retail. A job here is often a store fit-out or work on a multi-family building, and the curb out front is shared with delivery vans and shoppers.
Rowhouse blocks toward Irving Square Park
Longer rows of attached houses, many lived in by their owners. With two- and three-family homes on most blocks, the usual job is a single house: a bathroom or kitchen out of service, a roof, a facade repair, a back extension.
Sites under the elevated tracks need a curb plan first
The J and Z trains run above Broadway and the M runs above Myrtle Avenue. The city's own planning documents call these two el corridors out: DOT flagged both for pedestrian safety because of complex intersections with sharp angles, and planners describe the space under the tracks as dark.
For a porta potty, that translates into a short list of spots to avoid. Corners where the avenue cuts across the side streets at a sharp angle are a poor place for a unit, because it blocks the view of anyone stepping off the curb. Station stairs come down to the sidewalk and take up room that a unit and its door swing would need. A mid-block space away from both is the one to ask for.
Any curb placement on a city street needs approval, and the sidewalk and roadway permit works the same under the el as anywhere else. What's different is the truck. Each service visit means a vehicle pulling over on a busy avenue, so ask the rental company which hours its drivers can stop there without blocking traffic, and schedule visits for those windows.
The same corridors are where planners pointed new building. The 2019 draft proposed requiring permanently affordable housing in new residential buildings along Broadway and Myrtle, Wyckoff and Knickerbocker avenues, and named a vacant city site at Broadway and Hancock Street, next to the elevated line, for a building of up to 16 stories. A mid-rise frame going up on one of these lots soon outgrows a single unit at street level; high-rise jobsite units covers the options once the crew is several floors up.
On a rowhouse block, the front of the house is the site
The draft plan set out to protect the rowhouse character of Bushwick's side streets, and those are the blocks where most home renovation happens. A two- or three-family house with the owner living in one unit usually can't give up a bathroom to the crew, so the crew needs its own.
Work out the spot before you book. The construction porta potty page covers crew counts and what the rental quote should list. The notes here cover the placement choices a Bushwick row gives you.
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A front yard or areaway
Some houses have a paved strip between the building and the sidewalk. If it's deep enough for the unit and a person to step in, it keeps the toilet off the street. Measure it with the gate open.
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The parking lane at the curb
The usual answer when the front of the house is too tight. It needs city approval, and the unit should sit clear of the neighbors' steps and any fire hydrant.
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The backyard
Only practical when there's a route to it that doesn't run through the house. Most attached rows don't have one, so ask before counting on it.
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A long job
Gut renovations run for months. Monthly porta potty rental explains how service visits and billing usually work over that stretch.
Landmarked houses and old brewery blocks
Bushwick was a brewing center long before it was known for art. By 1890 it had 14 breweries in a 14-block stretch known as Brewer's Row, and the last of them closed in 1976. The Landmarks Preservation Commission has since designated the William Ulmer Brewery complex, one of 12 individual Bushwick landmarks the city's 2019 plan listed. Others include the Doering-Bohack House and the Peter P. and Rosa M. Huberty House at 1019 Bushwick Avenue.
If your building is a designated landmark, exterior work needs an LPC permit before it starts, so the crew's first day and the unit's delivery date follow that paperwork. The same plan said LPC would survey three possible historic districts, including a stretch of Bushwick Avenue between Greene Avenue and Madison Street. Check your block's status on the LPC website rather than assuming either way.
Bigger building sites often sit on old manufacturing land. A fenced lot usually has room to keep the unit inside the gate, off the street, so ask the rental company to set it where the truck can back in without moving materials.
Planning an event near the Bushwick Collective murals?
The Bushwick Collective's open-air street art draws visitors to the neighborhood, and its annual block party turns the blocks around Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue into a festival. Brooklyn Magazine reported thousands of people at the 11th edition in June 2022, with a stage at the St. Nicholas, Scott and Troutman triangle, food vendors and about 40 new murals.
An event that size comes with its own sanitation plan, run by whoever holds the permit. Where you come in is the smaller event nearby: a gallery opening that spills onto the sidewalk, a mural unveiling, a business's own party on the same weekend. Street closures go through the city's Street Activity Permit Office, and the units have to fit inside whatever area the permit covers. Event porta potty rental covers sizing a crowd and placing units on a closed street.
Food changes the order. Once vendors are cooking or serving, plan handwashing stations next to the toilets, not across the street where nobody will walk.
The neighborhood's two main parks are the other event spaces. The planning document calls Maria Hernandez Park in the west and Irving Square Park in the east the neighborhood's anchors. Maria Hernandez covers 6.87 acres between Knickerbocker and Irving avenues and Starr and Suydam streets. Irving Square fills a whole block bounded by Knickerbocker and Wilson avenues and Halsey and Weirfield streets. An organized event in either one goes through an NYC Parks permit, and units can only go where that permit allows.
Bushwick ZIP codes, and where Queens begins
Two Bushwick ZIP codes are on the covered list. 11221 is shared with Bed-Stuy, so it appears on both pages; tell the rental company the street address and it will know which side of Broadway you're on.
- 11221 Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant
- 11237 Bushwick
Bushwick runs right up to the Queens line. Ridgewood sits to the northeast, and the Myrtle-Wyckoff transit hub, where the city has set up a public plaza, is where the two neighborhoods meet. An address across the line uses 11385; see porta potty rental in Ridgewood for that side, including its historic-district rowhouses.
Williamsburg lies to the northwest, and its industrial waterfront and newer towers raise different placement questions, covered on the Williamsburg page. To the south and southwest, Broadway is the border with Bed-Stuy's brownstone blocks.
Bushwick placement questions
Can a porta potty stand at the curb under the el on Broadway?
It can, with the same city approval any curb placement needs. The practical limits are the station stairs and the corners, where Broadway meets side streets at sharp angles. Ask for a mid-block spot, and check that a service truck can pull over there without stopping in a travel lane. The permits and placement guide covers the sidewalk and roadway permit.
We are renovating the apartment above a store on Knickerbocker Avenue. Where does the crew's unit go?
Start with the building. A rear yard reached through the store, or a spot inside the ground floor during a gut job, avoids the curb question entirely. If neither works, the curb is the fallback. Keep the unit clear of the shop entrance and its window, and agree the exact spot with the store owner before delivery.
Our bar is on Troutman Street. Should we rent our own unit for block party weekend?
Talk to the event organizer first. Units on the closed street belong to the event plan, and a second unit dropped on the sidewalk in front of your door needs its own permission. If your bathroom is the problem, a unit on your own premises, such as a back patio the truck can reach, is simpler to arrange.
Is 11221 covered on this page or the Bed-Stuy page?
Both. 11221 takes in blocks on the Bushwick side and the Bed-Stuy side, so it appears on each page. Give the full street address when you call and the ZIP sorts itself out.
Under the el or on a side street?
Give the nearest cross street and say whether the house has a front areaway. A first quote can start from those two answers.
Sources
- NYC Department of City Planning, Bushwick Neighborhood Plan Update (draft, April 2019)
- NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, permit applications
- NYC Parks, Maria Hernandez Park history
- NYC Parks, Irving Square Park history
- Brooklyn Magazine, Bushwick Collective Block Party (June 2022)
- Bushwick, Brooklyn (boundaries, subway lines, Brewer's Row), Wikipedia
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