House of the Day: 1290 Pacific Street

This is a very fine old house. not mass-produced or built on spec like most of the brownstones on this site fetching much higher prices.
The oval room is particularly beautiful.
A gem.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:09 PM

Can anyone comment on living along Pacific in this area as to ease of access to subway and conveniences? It seems like it would be a huge pain in the rear to cross Atlantic Avenue every morning to reach the A or C train.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:19 PM

Inside is stunning. Let's home they do an open house.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:22 PM

this is why the mortage market is a mess. Any bank that even thinks of financing this house for 1 mil is crazy. Talk about subprime.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:23 PM

Crossing Atlantic is not too bad in the AM. If you really wanted to, you could walk 9 blocks to Eastern Parkway and catch the 3 train.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:49 PM

Someday this war's gonna end. That'd be just fine with the boys on the boat. They weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Trouble is, I'd been back there, and I knew that it just didn't exist anymore.
Captain Benjamin L. Willard - Apocalypse Now

Hey Crackheads gold is spiking today. Fuck putting money in housing.

Plus the Fed meets next week. If they cut rates goodbye bubble.
People will dump bonds. The interest rate will skyrocket and we can put to bed this mutant real estate shit.

1.4 Mil house in the hood right. Give me a fucking break.

The What
P.S. Flame on baby

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 2:56 PM

Does the sale come with a bullet-proof vest? For 1M, there are many neighborhoods that are far safer than this one.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 3:12 PM

Gibberish aside, this is an interesting listing. Almost anywhere else in brownstone Brooklyn, this is a 2 mil + house. This may sit on the market for a while, not because mortgage rates are up, but because it's only going to appeal to a rather thin cross-section of buyers, cheap money or not. As for crossing Atlantic, there are a few places with traffic lights around there.

The columns around the door and lintel don't go with the rest of the house, which has an early Frank Lloyd Wright vibe to me. maybe a later addon?

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 3:13 PM

I predict it will be valued at $610K by 2009.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 3:27 PM

I believe the house is classic Romanesque Revival. But this was closely followed by a revival of the Colonial style -- which the porch looks more in line with. There was so much going on architecturally at the turn of the century that it seems quite possible that two seemingly disparate elements would be combined. But I'm just speculating -- it would be great to have an actual expert weigh in!

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 3:37 PM

2:23-- do you understand what the word 'subprime' means? A house cannot be subprime.

2:56-- your model says that if the Fed _cuts_ rates housing prices fall? Wtf? Seriously I'm not trying to be a dick, I just want you to walk me through how cheaper money and reduced risk premia leads to _lower_ residential RE prices.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 3:39 PM

to 3:39

This house is subprime and the only jerk that pays even a mil is sick. If a bank finances this with 20% down their even sicker. I'd short their stock if the bank were public.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 4:26 PM

to 3:39

This house is subprime and the only jerk that pays even a mil is sick. If a bank finances this with 20% down their even sicker. I'd short their stock if the bank were public.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 4:27 PM

The porch is pure Federal-revivial. It looks like it came off a house in Salem, Mass. The rest of the house is "modern" in the circa 1900 sense. I agree with the poster who sees a Wright influence here. Romaneque usually conotes a style with arched openings and brick corbbling, neither of which are present here.
I think it is a severe eclectic design. I think the porch is later but not much.
It is a peach of a house.
Who could not love it?

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 4:39 PM

The kitchen is crap. Nice view of the underbelly of sink.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 4:58 PM

The kitchen is huge, you could have thirty of your closest friends helping you prepare dinner in there.
I would kill for it.
Who gives a shit about the underside of the sink?

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 5:03 PM

Thanks, Brownstoner, for featuring this house. 50 years ago, as I youngster, my brother, friends, and I would play in the driveway behind the gate. A little old lady lived there at the time, watching from the window. (When I saw the photo, I expected that she'd still be there!) She must have been a kind-hearted person, because she never chased us away or closed the gate. Maybe we were keeping her company in some way. (We never saw anybody go in or out, nor do I remember her ever coming outside.) Several years ago, I drove by the block and was sorry to see how broken down it had become. Maybe it's on its way back. Let's hope so. The building and its interior speak of a life and time that I thought were gone for good. I've never been touched by a piece in Bronstoner in quite the same way.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 5:17 PM

Fabulous staircase, the rest of the interior is alright, but nothing that makes me jump and clap. The exterior is positively homely.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 5:24 PM

I've walked by this home many times. The brickwork needs cleaning, but should make this charming place even more handsome once done. It's a honey, and another example of the great mini-mansions that are all around Crown Heights.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 5:25 PM

An architecturally beautiful house in a very unfortunate location. Very unfortunate.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 5:35 PM

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with the other posters on this one...this house is "absolutely dripping in details"...like, for example, a front porch that doesn't belong on the building at all, a staircase that looks like it could collapse at any second, and the most unbelonging "modern" kitchen ever.

I will be fair though, and admit the (master?) bedroom and the bathrooms look absolutely excellent, and if you're crazy enough to spend 1.4m in this terrible location, a few hundred thousand more to make it look good probably won't be too much of a problem.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 6:44 PM

Keep on bashing crown heights baby cause I'm buying... Just visited my friend's parents house on Park Place in Prospect Heights (now called park slope). It's worth 3 million and all they talk about is how bad the neighborhood was when they bought...Wish I could afford this one.. I think at 1m even it's a deal.... The rents in the neighborhood are high...

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 6:58 PM

2:56-- your model says that if the Fed _cuts_ rates housing prices fall? Wtf? Seriously I'm not trying to be a dick, I just want you to walk me through how cheaper money and reduced risk premia leads to _lower_ residential RE prices.

3:39 If the fed cuts rates, that money will nit get into the hands of people who need it.

Plus if the fed cuts rates, the Bondholder is loosing money. Taking risk on a falling dollar is stupid.

That rate cut money will shore up the banks reserves and they will NOT loan it out to dumbasses to buy a overprice house.

GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 6:58 PM

Interesting so much bashing on this one. I wonder if folks just don't want good things to happen in this neighborhood because they won't be the ones who realized how nice it can be and how much the value of the real estate is increasing....

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 7:03 PM

I'm glad this is in an historic district. That means it is protected. The posters who think this is an ugly house are architecturally illiterate. This is an important house, designed by a notable architect who was quoting and reitirating stylistic elements from a variety of design trends. The oval room is very unusual in Brooklyn where the Protestant elite were usually averse to curvy geometry.
The porch is from the 1920's and is very sweet.
One of the nicest historic houses I have seen here recently.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 7:40 PM

I had that house offered for me 5 years ago, turned it down....but never regretted it as it is a really gross block..house is great but location is beyond disgusting. dean st is great, but that block is a hell hole.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 9:18 PM

it's got a lot of nice things going on ... but, that kitchen, the one with the black/white check window coverings? looks like a kitchen dispensary in the outback. do you think that's what these "artists" were going for - operating table cum water buffalo butcher block? of course, the floor is good for the nightly spray down with the hose.

Posted by: guest at September 6, 2007 10:13 PM

Montrose Morris:

I like your name, i.e. that of one of Brooklyn's greatest architects and designer of the fantastic Imperial Apartments down Pacific Street at Bedford Square. Fifty years ago the building that interests you was a very proper and middle-class apartment house with, as I recall, one unit per floor. Like the other buildings on the block, it retained a certain elegance against tides of change, which brought a lot of red-lining and racial steering to Crown Heights. (One of my strongest childhood memories is of black and white neighbors joining each other to march against the growing numbers of absentee landlords and shell companies that were taking over properties, to little avail, I'm afraid, although stretches of Dean Street and other blocks were able to stay in family hands.) Your corner at Pacific and New York Avenue was very kid-friendly. We'd ride our bicycles there away from the traffic on Nostrand Avenue and pass every day on our way to P.S. 41, a Victorian brick pile at Dean and New York. It's a high-rise apartment house now, I believe, which is too bad, because the old building was quite wonderful, a classic little red school house where all the classroom walls would slide back to make an auditorium for assemblies. The school was a great complement to the original Children's Museum nearby in Brower Park. This occupied two mansions from the same period. Old parlors and diningrooms with menageries of small animals. A neighborhood built for kids! The late fifties and early sixties were, of course, transformative times in Brooklyn and the city, reflective of the rest of the country. I remember watching the Birmingham demonstrations in the Art Deco apartment of a friend on Prospect Place. Her building had casement windows and curvilinear balconies, and the serenity of her home made the violence down South even more vivid. (I'm sure this building still stands!) Other friends had duplex apartments off St. Marks Avenue, or Romanesque Revival row houses, or lived in that grandaddy of them all, the Imperial. What a castle! Apartments sprawling in every direction. Fire places (although I don't recall any lit). And broad, wooden stairs that rose from the lobbies and creeked with every step -- a great fun house! The people who lived in the neighborhood back then included professionals, artists, and working people and their families. Many were progressives involved in the labor and Civil Rights movements. Looking back, they lived pretty well. One friend's parents kept a 30-foot sailboat in Sheepshead Bay. Another had a house in the Hamptons. Again, these were black and white families who, momentarily, at least, captured the hopes and promise of the period. Dead or scattered to the winds now. But I do dream of the old neighborhood sometimes, and find myself as a boy flying over Brower Park and its trees, down the brown- and limestone blocks, and above the mansard roofs of the Imperial.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at September 7, 2007 2:01 AM

Montrose Morris:

Here's the note my brother just e-mailed me when I sent him the link to the house on Pacific Street. You might enjoy it.

"Yes, I always have a picture of that house in my mind that comes up when thinking of the old neighborhood, and memories of the aura of mystery it had. I remember the old lady at the window, but never saw anyone coming out of or going into the house. Only one time a man who was doing gardening came after a bunch of us kids with big shears ( I think he was just having some fun ) and we all scrambled back over the fence. What a beautiful place."

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at September 7, 2007 2:18 AM

Montrose Morris:

Well, you take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can't take Brooklyn out of the boy.

Best wishes to you and the old neighborhood.

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at September 7, 2007 1:15 PM

Montrose Morris:

Our notes prompted me to look up the designation report for the Crown Heights historic district. The photographs make the neighborhood look as good as -- in some cases better than -- I remembered. But many blocks from Bedford Avenue to New York Avenue, as far as Eastern Parkway, are excluded. These have many buildings that are the equivalent of those inside the district. Is there a local movement to extend the designation? I hope so.

In many ways, Crown Heights is superior architecturally to Park Slope, where my mother was born. She recalled having as a girl to get especially dressed up to visit people in the Heights, which speaks of the relative status of the neighborhoods in the 1920's. As the cycle of New York neighborhoods goes (rising and falling within 50-60 year periods), my guess is Crown Heights will surpass the Slope once again. (Sorry Wont UB My Nabor, but the writing's on the wall!)

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at September 10, 2007 11:57 PM

Still sitting on the market, but reduced to $1.290M

Posted by: guest at November 20, 2007 2:24 PM

Its people like the owner of this house, who have no commitment to the neighborhood, its history and absolutely no principles, not even an ounce of decency. He bought the house for $610 in 2003, as a one family, he put NO money in repairs or renovations, he went to ikea or walmart and bought the cheapest kitchen he could find, converted the house "legally" to two family, but actually put in three kitchens--an illegal three family conversion, then the sucker rented out each room as a single room occupancy--claiming its a share between "roommates" BULLSHIT. Now in only three years he wants more than double the amount he actually paid. HAS THE RENT doubled since he bought this house? This house is not set up where you can realistically rent out any floor as a separate apartment, unless one separates the floors, which would be a crime to close up the master staircase, or convert the original plans, which is the highlight of the house, into separate private units. No one can really rent out any part of the house because there is no separation or privacy to enter one's own space, the rooms are even railroad style--roommates or single room occupancy, what is the difference? Its people like Mr. Lee Boroson, "a single man", who are part of the nastiest gentrification of all, cheap conversions, cutting up spaces ghetto style, and ILLEGALLY, in a predominantly black neighborhood, and then they expect to get rewarded for their greed. The house needs a lot of work to modernize it, he has not even added one new water faucet, the bathrooms and kitchens are crap. The house is so huge, the fuel required to heat it is immense and it has absolutely no energy efficiency because he is a cheapo.
If you want to buy an SRO at the cost of a mansion, then this it!!! There is no bank that is going to approve this. And if you are buying SRO's then you should get one at an SRO price. As soon as any appraiser comes to see this house, it will be coded as an SRO or an illegal conversion. The owner is a typical jackass that exemplifies the worse of gentrification.
Please people, stop being so goddam greedy, or atleast do it in park slope or somewhere else. There is no decency. No sense of karma. 1.3 million, is ridiculous, and he's been offered pretty close to that amount, he is not trying to sell it because he is a typical greedy landlord. The worse kind of all--absentee--in the ghetto--with illegal conversions. Did i mention he is white? Look white people shouldn't buy in black neighborhoods if they don't intend on living there with love, and fixing up properties with love. and making a home a home in the hood. We love the hood. Let's fix up the hood, but how can we with people like Mr. Lee Boroson?

Posted by: guest at November 29, 2007 3:32 AM

FUNNY I USE TO LIVE ON THAT BLOCK RIGHT ACROSS THE STREE 1331 PACIFIC BACK IN THE 80'S I REMEMBER THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING SPOOKY ABOUT THAT HOUSE. WE USE TO PLAY BASKETBALL ON THE GARRAGE FENCE ALMOST EVERY DAY. THERE WAS A STRANGE LOOKING WHITE MAN THAT USE TO BE THERE,ALWAYS WEARING DARK SHADES. YOU ALWAYS SEE HIM FROM TIME TO TIME LOOKING AFTER THE GARDEN. WHEN THE BALL WOULD SOMETIMES GO OVER THE FENCE ONE OF US WOULD CLIMB OVER TO RETRIVE IT AND HE WOULD COME RUNNING BEHIND YOU WITH A GARDEN TOOL. SEEMED LIKE HE LIVED IN THAT BIG HOUSE BY HIMSELF. U NEVER SEE ANY BODY COMING IN OR OUT OF THAT HOUSE FOR SOME REASON. EVERY BODY KNEW EACH OTHER AND THE LANDLORDS OF EVERY BLD ON THAT BLOCK BUT NOBODY KNEW WHO OWNED OR LIVED IN THAT HOUSE. KINDA SPOOKY BACK THEN.

Posted by: guest at July 2, 2008 5:56 PM