Building of the Day: 184-188 Clinton Avenue
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy. Address:184-188 Clinton Avenue, between Myrtle and Willoughby Name: Private houses Neighborhood: Clinton Hill Year Built: 1892 Architectural Style: Queen…
Photo by Suzanne Spellen
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.
Address:184-188 Clinton Avenue, between Myrtle and Willoughby
Name: Private houses
Neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Year Built: 1892
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Montrose Morris
Landmarked: No
This house is very reminiscent of Montrose Morris’s double house in Crown Heights North, 855-857 St. Marks Avenue, with the design of the turret, its upper windows, as well as his signature way of making multiple houses appear to be one large house. Both houses also share being on the premier streets of their districts.
I especially like the porches and the carved limestone detail here, the materials and design also reference his Hulbert Mansion on Prospect Park West. He designed all three projects in 1892.
These houses used to face two other significant mansions, torn down in the 1940s for the Clinton Hill Apartments, across the street. One was Montrose Morris’s mansion for Standard Oil executive Edward T. Bedford, the other, architect James Price’s palatial home for Herbert Pratt.
The fact that these mansions, along with one other on the corner of Willoughby, are now gone, is the reason that the original boundary of the Clinton Hill Historic District was not extended to Myrtle Ave, and the reason this house and its neighbors are not landmarked.
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Not only is it a cool building, there are some cool people who live there, too, one a close friend. For those who don’t know the area’s history, check it out. The nearby Pratt family mansions just up the block will knock you out.
CommodoreSteve,
I wonder if, originally, both towers were the same in the Hulbert house?
Thanks for the info, MM.
One aspect of the Hulbert house I find particularly gutsy is MM’s decision to make one tower round and the other faceted, especially since this means the cone shaped roofs have to be different from each other. So in this instance, he’s making one large house seem like a cluster of two.
Or maybe he just had a short attention span.
Can’t speak definitively for the LPC, of course, but it could be as simple as squaring off the district. These houses are not contiguous with the rest of the district. The house that used to be on the corner of Willoughby and Clinton on the same side of the street is gone, replaced by the apartment buildings, so these are isolated. Of course, if they ever expand the HD down to Flushing, then these may be included.
An individual designation could be sought, one never knows.
“The fact that these mansions, along with one other on the corner of Willoughby, are now gone, is the reason that… this house and its neighbors are not landmarked.”
Montrose,
Why is this so?
Is the LPC less likely to landmark individual buildings when they’re not part of a group of buildings deserving landmarking?
Nice comparison photos!
I like the St Marks place the most, as the brown bricks lend it more color. (I think don’t like it when limestone isn’t offset by a darker material. Not sure why).
So this Montrose hack just kept repeating that corner tower shtick over and over??
Sheesh.
(just kidding) Loooooove these houses.
They are superb.
“and the reason this house and its neighbors are not landmarked.”
They should landmark these two and the row.
Beauties in a sea of brick.