This Venetian Renaissance-style house at 356 Clinton Avenue is one of the most interesting in Clinton Hill in our opinion, despite the fact that if it were a new-build we’d probably be criticizing the size of the windows. Let’s see what the Landmark Preservation Commission has to say about it:

The small palazzo was designed in 1905 by Manhattan architect Theodore C. Visscher shortly after treasurer John W. Shepard and his wife Alice purchased the property. Many buildings erected during the early twentieth century borrowed forms from Italian Renaissance palazzi, but most were Roman or Florentine in inspiration…

The main portion of the Clinton Hill palazzo is massed in the horizontal manner typical of such buildings and it s symmetrically balanced. The residence is faced with a white stone (probably limestone) and is trimmed with brick. A short flight of stone steps leads to an open piazza with a railing that is ornamented by six-pointed stars. The doorway is set within a projecting wooden vestibule falnked by windows with handsome iron guards and flour brick pilasters with stone capitals.

The pilasters support imposts and brackets upon which rests a stone balcony with a railing that matches that of the piazza. Behind this railing is a large opening composed of two round arched windows set within a larger arched enframement of brick. The spandrel panel of the window grouping, as well as roundels within the enframement and flanking it, were probably once filled with inlaid marble. A low brick dormer with a hipped roof clad with Spanish tile rises above this Venetian window. The main, truncated hipped roof is also covered with original Spanish tile. A tall brick tower rises above the roofline.

Excerpted from Clinton Hill Historic District Designation Report, Landmark Preservation Commission, 1981.