House of the Day: 63 South Portland Avenue

Honestly, I wish you kids wouldn't knock Eva all the time. She has her issues, many of them good ones. She really stuck it out and I'm glad she is willing to take on harder cases which apparently this house may be. The big agencies have a lot of overhead and can only be in it for the easy money. The money may not be so easy now. Eva, God love her, is hanging in. She has been a moving force in Fort Greene for decades and real community mover and shaker who should be getting recognition, not flack over a website that doesn't have a enough wow factor for 20 year olds.

I'm not quite sure how or why South Portland is such a big deal to everyone. I have always felt it is depressing and many houses need some major facade work, stoop redos, ironwork redos (where there is none), some of the houses are shabby or stripped of much of their character.

I have to say I generally do prefer the look of the brick and wooden houses in the neighborhood with the occasional brownstone thrown in...but too many of them in a row with all that brown-dyed cement slathered on them, often not well, looks...well, plain dreadful to me. (Have a look at the block of Carlton between Willoughby and DeKalb...very picturesque...just one of the blocks that is very sweet).

I'm sorry. I really am. I wish I could get into the excitement over these "brownstone" facades...but they're not exciting and not even brownstone anymore. Yes, I really do like well laid brownstone structures where the stone has survived the last 100+ years without spalding and needing cementing over. If they hadn't cut corners building these houses, the stone facades would have lasted a lot longer. I have to say, it is a real shame...although, once in a while there are some very well done resurfacing jobs that are mildly convincing. There're some on South Portland actually.

There are a good number of houses in Park Slope that have very decent brownstone but they're all of later vintage than Fort Greene and positively NOT my taste except example for the rare example. This brings to mind the parlor screen of the house in Prospect Heights that was shown on This Old House. I find that spindle/machine carving very, very ugly. Also, the cheap, palsy, incised neo-greque patterns on the later brownstones and the motifs springing from orientalism (the floral motifs from Indian mogul architecture for example) are not my style and a pale shadow of the original.

I grew up around Federal architecture that harkened back to an earlier period. I have to say, American architecture using classism as a resource sprung off Georgian and movign into romanticism...all much more pleasing to me than the eclecticism and orientalism of the post-romantic period when so much was being massed produced on a much grander scale than previously. I have not been able to make the leap to the end of the 1800's/early 1900s...and the reaction to the eclectism (colonial revival and beaux arts) kind of get me down too. Frank Lloyd Wright though...that I like! I would much rather live in a 1950's house, quite frankly, than a late "Victorian" house with all that dreadful spindle work.

Every once in a while we run across a house with good detail and surfaces of brownstone left. We find them very charming, esp. if they've been left to weather without that perfunctory coating of brown cement.

Sorry for my long-winded Fort Greene analysis but the H.U. is out of town.

Posted by: BrooklynGreene at February 9, 2009 8:01 PM