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November 14, 2006
Going, Going...Almost Gone on Newkirk
Are you an adrenaline junkie who's been having a hard time finding a house in Victorian Flatbush? Have we got the place for you. On Thursday, this 1931 mansion, which is currently classified as a church, is going on the auction block to satisfy an outstanding lien of $878,821. Given that this house sits on a large lot and there's tons of unused FAR, don't be surprised if one of the unscrupulous developers tries to take you out with his auction paddle. Has there been any chatter locally about this? What's this stretch of Newkirk like? The auction takes place on November 16 at 3 o'clock at the Kings County Courthouse, Room 261, 360 Adams Street. Good luck!
1927 Newkirk Avenue [Property Shark] GMAP
Comments
Just looking at this place makes me feel GOOD! I hope someone who will keep it intact will get it.
Posted by: TonyTone at November 14, 2006 11:44 AM
This is really sad and disturbing... This house, however, is in Ditmas Park proper, and therefore I believe it is landmarked, although I have been told that there is a very small stretch of Ditmas Park which is NOT landmarked... I hope this house is protected. It was considered one of the most spectacular houses of its day... http://home.att.net/~ebasics/dp.html Scroll down to the bottom for a brief history of the house.
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 11:47 AM
Speaking of auctions whatever happened to that house it sty-heights that did not make it off the auction block back in September.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 11:47 AM
Pretty sure that this place is right on Ocean Ave. And being north of Newkirk, it would be considered Ditmas Park and therefore landmarked- in fact Prop Shark confirms designation, so I'm not sure how much a Developer could do. I live nearby. This stretch of Ocean has a bunch of these really really big old places- some are wrecks, and some are being worked on. But they are just huge- as big as the places up in PPS. I think some of them used to serve as High-end social clubs for the residents of Ditmas Park and Midwood Park. Now, some seem to be residential while others seem to be institutional (churches, etc...) Ocean Ave is sorta busy - mostly north of here though. My guess is the place would stay some sort of institutional building.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 11:50 AM
http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/maps/ditmas_park.pdf
It is landmarked... The original DP houses on the opposite side of Ocean Avenue (leading to South Midwood) are not.
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 11:52 AM
These houses were originally built as private homes. There were social clubs in the area, designed to serve each "development." The Cortelyou Club as located near Flatbush Junction, there was also the Manhattan Terrace Social Club, down a ways more on Ocean Avenue... http://home.att.net/~ebasics/flatbush2.html
Imposing homes were constructed throughout Flatbush. Several enormous mansions were built within Melrose Park, now defunct, just off Flatbush Avenue, and a few others along Flatbush Avenue itself. Vanderveer Park which consisted of over 600 homes, occupied the land east of Flatbush Avenue, where Sears is now... Only a small handful of these survive. Tennis Court also had grand homes. The Frontenac apt. building now occupies this area. The Knickerbocker Tennis Club was here too... It was landmarked but was destroyed by a fire in the '70s...
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 11:58 AM
Also this house was built at the turn of the twentieth century not 1931. Property Shark is notoriously wrong on dates. Also, only part of it is being used as a church. I'm not sure if anyone is occupying the rest of it. There have been a few gorgeous restorations on this street in recent years. Let's hope someone salvages this beauty.
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 12:04 PM
word to the wise: bidding on the courthouse steps is not for the novice.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 12:14 PM
Brownstoner, do you homework before you start shouting FAR and developer teardown!
In fact the less you harp about unused FAR, the happier I would be.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 12:17 PM
Could someone explain FAR please?
Posted by: Argyle Road at November 14, 2006 12:24 PM
Brownstoner can't know the details of every property.
He was right to show us the FAR. If this property wasn't landmarked, there would be a huge residential development there already.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 12:27 PM
Argyle Road: floor area ratio is the amount of building area that can be constructed per the Zoning Resolution, expressed as a multiple of lot size. It varies from zoning district to zoning district and there are many other variables, but that is the short answer. Got a 25 X 100 lot and an FAR of 2.43? 25 X 100 X 2.43 = a 6075 square foot building, max' (until those other variables kick in.)
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 1:00 PM
Can someone NOT explain FAR, so we don't have to talk about it.
And Brownstoner should go off half cocked on his post, a least check if it's land marked before yammering about developers.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 1:09 PM
Maybe we can talk about who might really buy this house, given it's landmark designation, and how it might be used. Any hope it might be restored as a single family home? How about condos? Is that possible?
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 1:12 PM
Does anyone know what happens to the lien upon purchase? Does the winner of the auction have to pony up the 900,000 grand to the city on the spot?
Posted by: Argyle Road at November 14, 2006 1:19 PM
We know full well a developer would squash it flat if he could, lets not pretend. And seeing as most of the people on this board are interested in 19th and 20th century architecture, it is a genuine fear. (The name of the blog is a big clue).
If you are a developer, why not pop over to the don't-care-what-it-looks-like-how-much-money-can-we-make-on-it business blog.
Posted by: loser at November 14, 2006 1:27 PM
looks like it would make a great prep school, private club, or a historical society headquarters.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 1:30 PM
Yammering? No, he started a discussion, then people (some of whom actually had some information), chimed in. I prefer that to the incivility which some people seem to find so easy on the net. I must say that when I read about these (to me) distant corners of Brooklyn, I feel a bit relieved from the claustrophobia I feel in Brownstone Brooklyn.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 1:31 PM
What a great house. That tax bill looks like a killer though. $21,000 a year in taxes? Was it used for commercial purposes or something?
Posted by: Shahn Andersen at November 14, 2006 1:54 PM
Gee, can 1:31 PM you come over to my work today. It's job review time, and I want you to write my job review. Apparently tossing out non fact checked junk about developers buying a land marked building, counts as "starting a discussion" in your eyes. I want that kind of optimism on my job review. Then I'm sure to get a bonus big enough to buy this building ;)
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 2:23 PM
Erin Joslyn wrote: " Several enormous mansions were built within Melrose Park, now defunct, just off Flatbush Avenue"
Erin,
Melrose Park was in the southern part of whst is now PLG. I know that it was a late 19th century development incorporating the home of the exiled Revoluntionary War traitor William Axtell and that it was unsuccessful as a real estate development,but I haven't been able to find out much more. I'd appreciate ant leads you might haved, either here or off list.
TGhank you.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at November 14, 2006 2:40 PM
Erin,
Sorry for all the typos above--my keyboard skills are pretty weak.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at November 14, 2006 2:45 PM
Get off of Brownstoner's back. He has a full time job and is a father and a husband. He can't do everything.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 2:46 PM
Brownstoner posted this at 11:26 AM, what the heck does his being a father and husband have to do with something he posted at the middle of the work day. Does he have the wife and kid in the cube/office with him? I doubt it, so his marital and parenting status has zero to do with a poorly fact checked blurb on his blog.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 3:04 PM
If someone doesn't restore it as a single family, it would make a fabulous school building. I think, even if landmarked, you can't tear it down, but you can maintain the existing use and are not forced to turn it into a single family. For instance, there are some two families in PPS, which are allowed to stay that way because they were made into two families prior to landmarking. Not sure if a church would be considered a commercial building, however, or how the rest of the building is currently being used.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 3:11 PM
2:23. I don't think you want me to give you a job evaluation. I'd give you demerits for pissiniss. This is a blog not an authoritative treatise. But now I am doing it - responding to tone and process rather than substance. Sigh.
Posted by: putnam-denizen at November 14, 2006 4:04 PM
Look at the CofO this was a school with a top floor apt for a caretaker in 1958 and the CofO for 1924 looks like it says two family dwelling.
Why does it have to be "restored" to a single family? If it was ever was a single family, it would have been a family with a full staff.
What's wrong with a multi family, community/social group, or some other use for the building?
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 4:04 PM
Well you can thank Brownstoner for taking the registration off the posts. We can be just as pissy as we wanna be!
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 4:06 PM
This has been a synagogue or church for nearly 20 years and probably much, much longer. I knew it as the home of the coop pre-school Popcorn School in about 1988. Think the synagogue sold out to a church about then and kicked the pre-school out. The interior I remember had been thoroughly institutionalized at that time. Never saw the downstairs. It is really big.
Posted by: David in NY at November 14, 2006 4:12 PM
I drive past it every day. CONDOS! CONDOS! :-)
Posted by: OldMillBasin at November 14, 2006 4:48 PM
anon-2.23.
If you really work at a job that requires fact-checking then you might want to get your definition of "facts" sorted out. It seems to include any hypothetical scenario that offends you. I don't think the OED would agree.
Posted by: loser at November 14, 2006 5:17 PM
The address of this property is 1010 Ocean Avenue, which is within the Ditmas Park Historic District. See http://home2.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/maps/ditmas_park.pdf for the boundaries. ... Block-Lot numbers are 5205-31, which also occupies the street addresses 1927-1933 Newkirk Avenue. There's also a second building on the same property, which DOB gives its own address of 1002 Ocean Avenue. ... Past complaints and violations against the previous and current owner reveal some interesting history. The previous owner, the temple/synagogue, attempted to convert the second floor of the building to a medical facility in 1995 or 1996. The most recent was a CofO violation in 2003 against the current owner, whose address of record is in New Jersey.
Posted by: Xris (Flatbush Gardener) at November 14, 2006 5:21 PM
loser at 5:17 PM Wow, way to put one plus one together and get eleven!
Where did it say the job (that needed a review written) involves fact checking?!?
It says "...want that kind of optimism on my job review."
For all you know, the job is for grooming poodles and 2:23 PM is a crap poodle groomer that needs someone really optimistic and uncritical to write a job review.
And notice the ;) that a wink, as in making a joke.
Anyway, it's Brownstoners lack of any basic fact checking that is being questioned. The entire premise that you would be dueling it out with a FAR crazed developer at the auction, is a flawed premise, as this is a land marked building, so all the theoretical FAR is a moot topic.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 5:35 PM
Hey Bob -
I have two Brooklyn Eagle postcards depicting Houses in Melrose Park, the view is just off Flatbush Avenue, I guess up near PLG territory as you say.. Also the old Clarkson Mansion (c.1850)also stood in Melrose Park. It was later moved to a location off Church Avenue where it served as the home of the tony Midwood Club. There's a few lines about Melrose Park in Flatbush Today (1908)... they mention the Brown house, which was situated there, as being one of the most impressive in Flatbush. The text suggests that this house was built at the turn of the twentieth century. There's a fuzzy picture of it on my website.
Also, for anonymous at 4:04: The house was absolutely a single family, and like most large houses in Victorian Flatbush, had quarters for staff. The house next door was built for the owner's son at about the same time... Also a single family and almost as large. It seems as though someone is restoring the neighboring house, but I could be wrong. Both houses have been owned in the past by actors/actresses - the houses are not that far from the old Vitagraph Studios.
I have never been in the house, but am sorry to hear that the detail has vanished. I was told by a fairly reliable source that the church/synogogue/school never occupied the whole building. I don't know what was done with the rest of the house. Does anybody know the story?
See my website for more info on the house: http://home.att.net/~ebasics/dp.html
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 6:09 PM
I think the objection to using this house to accomodate an institution, is that the detail is usually stripped and the floorplan destroyed... As with the Albanian Mosque which has occupied a fabulous house on Albemarle Terrace in PPS. However, it sounds as though there's nothing left there anyway. Condos sound to me like the way to go... I'm not sure institutions have taken much pride in keeping up the exterior in the past. Condo owners may see things differently.
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 6:14 PM
There is a difference between the theory of restoring a house to a single family of today and a single family of yesterday. As Erin Joslyn says there would be staff quarters in the house. So your not only housing Parents and a few kids, you have several staff members that are living there too.
When people today say single family, they maybe have a nanny/au pair but doubt that they have a full staff of cook, maid, butler, nanny, etc. also living with them.
When everyone gets all up in arms about how houses in Victorian Flatbush and other areas have been carved up into multi family, and crusades that they have to be single family again or all is not right with the world...., they are being really selfish. A "single family" house used to house more then just a husband, wife and one of two kids.
Posted by: Anonymous at November 14, 2006 6:24 PM
Thanks Erin--I enjoyed seeing your website, although I couldn't find the photograph of the Brown House.I wonder if this was W.A.A. Brown who built the first spec rowhouse developments in Lefferts Manor in 1898,99, and 1900? I've read that he later built freestanding houses further south in Flatbush.
I've been fascinated with the Melrose Park development since I first saw it represented by dotted lines on old plat maps at the Long Island (now Brooklyn) Historical Society while researching my own house in the mid-70s.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at November 14, 2006 7:28 PM
Bob, I would love to see that map! I, too, have a fascination with Melrose Park... It just seems so surreal, all those huge mansions on lush grounds right off Flatbush Avenue! I always wondered how far up Flatbush it was located...
Do you have a copy of Brooklyn's Flatbush, by Merlis and Rosenzweig? On page 14, bottom left is a picture of Old. St. Pauls on Flatbush, with the Clarkson Mansion in the background. There is a large picture of the Clarkson Mansion (eventually the Midwood Club) on page 52, I think after it was relocated. On page 56 is a great picture of Melrose Hall (the original Lane House) and the entrance to Melrose Park.
On the facing page, incidently, is a great shot of the house in question on this thred, the Thomas Brush House, built in 1899, designed by George Pallister, and the house next to it, designed by the same architect for his grandson. These houses are particularly noteworthy as they are entirely of brick construction. Particularly rare for Ditmas Park, although there are a few houses in PPS that were original brick, even more unusual, stucco (I think just three).
The W.A.A. Brown House in Melrose Park is pictured at the very bottom of this web page: http://home.att.net/~ebasics/flatbush2.html The picture is fuzzy, but the house is a monumental Tudor.
If you ever have any more info on houses in Melrose Place (particuarly photos, drawing or descriptions of other homes) please get in touch!
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 8:25 PM
Here is a link to a picture of the postcard depicting the Lane House in Melrose Park.... It's not quite the one I have (the angle is slightly different - mine shows a bit more of the house).
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 8:28 PM
More great stuff--thank you Erin--i've bookmarked the websites.
I don't have the Merlis and Rosenzweig book, but I have a photo of Melrose Hall in "Flatbush in the American Revolution", put out by the Town of Flatbush Civic and Cultural Association in 1976 for the Bicentennial. That booklet also has a view of Melrose Park between Winthrop Street and Clarkson Avenue in 1883.
The plat map showing the boundaries of Melrose Park must have been the earliest one that shows my 1899 house--probably 1900 or 1901. I'd imagine the Brooklyn Historical Society must still have it in their library (which was closed during their renovation, but must be open by now).
Posted by: Bob Marvin at November 14, 2006 9:24 PM
BTW,. when I Googled "Melrose Hall" this evening, I got the link to a great ghost story from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1884:
http://tinyurl.com/ymldno
Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt has a much more pedestrian version of this story in "the Social History of Flatbush."
Posted by: Bob Marvin at November 14, 2006 9:40 PM
Yes, I've come across that story online, too.. It's a great piece of old Brooklyn folklore!
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 14, 2006 10:24 PM
I have lived in Ditmas Park for the past 30 years. This house is on the corner of Newkirk and Ocean. There are a few small markets, and other basic services walking up the street towards the subway. It is close (5 minute walk) to the Newkirk Ave station, but it not in the best part of Ditmas Park. It is across the street from many apartment buildings and faces Ocean Ave which is very noisy. Car honking, car alarms, police, firetruck sirens could be heard 24/7. There used to be crack houses nearby in the 80's, and now there are a few homeless "hotels" in the area, so safety may be a concern. On the other hand, starting on E19th Street, it feels like the suburbs and the Victorians are better maintained. It seems like every few months film crews arrive to take shots of the area.
Posted by: Marvin Johnson at November 15, 2006 11:06 AM
I am a resident of Ditmas Park, a former Board President and a licensed architect. I would like to make several comments:
This house is in the Ditmas Park Historic District and could not be demolished without Landmarks approval. We have already discussed it with the Landmarks Commission who indicated that they would not approve demolition. Although it is one of the very few properties within Ditmas Park that is not zoned, R1-2, and there is some unused FAR any plans would have to go through Landmarks and any proposal to demolish the building would meet with great neighborhood opposition. The house has been on and off the auction block for years and I have been in it and have floor plans for it. If anyone is interested they can contact me by email.
Posted by: Cindy Harden at November 15, 2006 5:37 PM
Let's hope the buyer does his or her homework fist, as well -- not like the chump who bought the old police building in Brooklyn, thinking to tear it down and build condos -- apparently he didn't know it was landmarked -- ouch!
Posted by: babs at November 15, 2006 6:21 PM
I meant "first" of course, up there, not "fist!"
Posted by: babs at November 15, 2006 6:23 PM
Cindy - how is the interior in terms of original detail? Anything intact at all? Can you fill us in? Any pix?
Thanks!
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 15, 2006 8:01 PM
how much do u think it is going to sell for?
Posted by: dave at November 15, 2006 10:50 PM
Not a clue... I would bet it's a bargain though, since it can't be torn down by a developer... It needs so much work, which will restrict the number of potential buyers. I'm not sure how cost effective condos would be... A religious group may get it for a song, too.
Posted by: Erin Joslyn at November 16, 2006 9:23 AM
THIS JUST IN: there was no sale, because the owner, ruben fleurantin (supposedly the same gentleman referred to in this story: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=7on_your_side&id=4679761) filed for bankruptcy, thereby temporarily staying the liquidation of his assets.
from up close, by the way, house appears to be in pretty rough shape.
Posted by: anonymous at November 16, 2006 5:00 PM
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