Brownstones
October 16, 2009
Owner Takes Park Slope's Pink House Off Market
Local media were abuzz recently when Park Slope's hard-to-miss pink brownstone on Garfield Place went on the market for nearly $2.3 million, but The Brooklyn Paper reported yesterday that Heights Berkeley Realty, the firm selling the house, took the property off the market due to legal complications. The grandson of owner Bernie Henry, who painted the house bright pink in the 1960s, "is under investigation for forging key documents that have put a cloud over who has legal ownership of the building," according to the Paper. As for the ostentatious color of the home, the article mentions that of course a buyer could repaint it, but one local resident commented: "It’s like anything else in life: at first, you hate it because it’s new. But then you come to love it. And then you don’t want it to ever change."
Famed Pink House Pulled Off Market in Legal Dispute [Brooklyn Paper]
Park Slope's Pink House 4 Sale [Gothamist]
Photo by Karen Bonna Rainert
September 3, 2009
Dumping on Vanderbilt Avenue
The Local brings us the bizarre story of the vacant building at 384 Vanderbilt: yesterday afternoon, a swath of garbage and debris lined the avenue between Gates and Greene, where construction workers had been cleaning out the building. It turns out that the waste, which caused damage to at least one of the cars lining the street, was the result of a $900 dispute between the workers and a contractor hired to remove the waste. But the refuse lining the street wasn't the only stinky aspect of the work at 384 Vanderbilt: one resident and one employee of the neighboring Brooklyn Veterinary Hospital pointed out that the people behind 384 Vanderbilt have been running renting fraud schemes and are currently developing 384 in violation of landmark regulations. Luz Santiago, the Brooklyn Vet employee, said: “There was a hustle there. That’s a ten-dollar job on a three-million-dollar brownstone. Even if you hustle, you gotta do things proper.” GMAP
The Day: Dumped [The Local, NYT]
Photo by Matt Lieber/The Local
June 22, 2009
Ben & Jerry's Milks Brownstone Lust in New Ads
We can't quite pinpoint why, but for some reason these Ben & Jerry's ads that have been popping up all over town hold a certain appeal for us...
March 5, 2009
Closing Bell: Brownstone Voyeur
Brownstone Voyeur is a new joint project from casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. The project will be a regular Thursday series that will take you behind those pretty Brooklyn facades to see what’s inside. First up, a classic modern in Cobble Hill.
December 22, 2008
Brownstone Interior Destroyed Modernized by Artist Couple
We had mixed emotions reading the Times Real Estate story this weekend about the older artist couple who financed the purchase of a Stuyvesant Heights brownstone four years ago by selling a Basquiat that one of them had picked up for $100 back in the Eighties. (Anyone know what block this is?) Aren't there enough brownstones that have already been stripped of their original detail that someone wanting to create a modern space could avoid destroying yet another piece of history? Yes, these folks were considerate enough to call in a salvage company to save the architectural artifacts, but it's still a bummer. And how about all that tree-cutting? What a soap opera! Update: Okay, it's sounding like the Times article might have overstated how salvageable the interiors of this place were, so it's looking like we came down a little too hard on these folks. Apologies.
Bankrolled by a Basquiat [NY Times]
Photo by Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times
April 23, 2008
Unprotected Sunset Park Being Destroyed Bit by Bit
The website Cititour has an advocacy post about the destruction of brownstones in Sunset Park. The item focuses on the house above, on 54th Street and 6th Avenue, part of "a row of turn-of-the-century brownstones with stained glass windows and fireplaces [that] are being destroyed bit by bit." The blog writer argues:
Witnessing this destruction should make the case for giving the area landmark status before it's too late. The neighborhood has been seeing an all-out assault on row houses in recent months as real estate prices remain fairly high. Some are being torn down to make room for condos, others are having additional floors added, and still other two-family homes are being converted into 4-families, again with the city's blessing, and a total disregard to the neighborhood. It's a crying shame.
While we don't doubt that new construction in Sunset Park is felling older buildings, we're unaware of whether there is an organized movement afoot to landmark the area. Can Sunset Park readers fill us in?
A Brownstone Dies In Brooklyn [Cititour]
Photos from Cititour.
April 2, 2008
It's Almost House Tour Time
Birds chirping, daffodils budding...home and garden tours, on the horizon! Nine house and garden tours have been scheduled for the coming months. First up is the Fort Greene House Tour, which'll take place on Sunday, May 4th; the following weekend the Brooklyn Heights House Tour will happen, followed by the Park Slope Civic Council House Tour on May 18th. After that, there are tours scheduled through the beginning of fall for Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Boerum Hill, Victorian Flatbush, Crown Heights North, and Bed-Stuy. A full listing with info on which organizations to contact for more info is on the jump.
March 26, 2008
Brooklyn Brownstones Stay All in the Family
This morning The Observer reports on how many kids who grew up in houses in the Brownstone Belt are, as adults, moving back in with mom and dad. The trend is seen as having a lot to do with brownstone neighborhoods now being hip and yet frequently unaffordable for recent grads who might otherwise make a go of it alone:
All the graduates interviewed for this story agreed that living on your own in New York City was possible, especially if you had a well-paying corporate job. But for those who hope to someday own property in the areas where they grew up, or to make a career in a less lucrative field, living with your parents makes a certain kind of sense; you can’t afford not to.
The bigger question, maybe, is how much more prevalent this phenomenon is in brownstone areas (which often have bigger houses than in other parts of the city) than it is in other NYC neighborhoods or even the U.S. as a whole. Could this just be part of a larger cultural shift in which more kids are coming back home post-college, or is it indeed more common in brownstone Brooklyn?
Full Brownstone Nests) [NY Observer]
Photo from Orchard Lake.
December 17, 2007
Living in a Cobble Hill Townhouse/Time Capsule
Talk about old-school. According to the cover story in this weekend's City section, the house at 312 Clinton Street in Cobble Hill has been in the same family for five generations, and it's filled with mementos ("collections of bottled fainting remedies, thigh-high men’s socks, and mint-green sales slips for coal") and obsolete appliances, like an Easy brand washing machine built around 1940. The house was purchased in 1866 by the great-great-great-grandmother of its current resident, Nora Geraghty. Geraghty says the house's collection of antiques and lack of some modern amenities have occasionally made her feel like she couldn't "live a modern, normal life," but that the way it connects her to her family's past ultimately justifies the clutter and lack of some mod cons. “The way I feel about my great-great-grandmother,” says Geraghty, “my great-great-grandchildren will feel about me, unless New York is gone by the time they’re born. Because in a thousand years, this place will never be sold.” Are there readers who have been living in the same house as their ancestors and can relate to Geraghty's reluctance to change her property?
The Ghosts of Clinton Street [NY Times]
Photo of 312 Clinton by Kate Leonova for Property Shark.
December 10, 2007
Why Townhouses Are Priced at a Discount
Between 1997 and 2006, townhouses in Manhattan appreciated at a slightly slower rate than condominiums, according to Radar Logic. The reason, according to The New York Times, is basically that a house is a hell of a lot more work than an apartment.
“You hate when you come home from a trip with a lot of luggage and have to drag it up the stairs, or you’re in a huge hurry to leave and you have to run back up to the third or fourth floor dressed up in high-heeled shoes because you’ve forgotten something,” said Barbara Fox, president of Fox Residential Group, who lived for two decades with her husband, James Freund, in a 7,000-square-foot town house on West 73rd Street near Central Park. “And you hate when you have to have repairs because there’s always got to be somebody there to answer the door.”
So, townhouse dwellers, what are your greatest gripes about non-doormaned, vertical living?
Town House Living: The Untold Story [NY Times]
Photo by Littlekim
April 17, 2007
More Nor'easter Wreckage, Prospect Heights Edition
And you thought your house got hit hard by the torrential rains of the last two days! A reader sent in this photo of the tree that used to stand in her back yard. Since it's as tall as a five-story house it reached as far as four-yards away when it toppled yesterday. The estimated cost of removal? $1,800. It's pretty amazing it didn't crush any fences or nice garden furniture. (Gotta love those 130-foot lots they got over there.)
Rain, Rain, Go Away [Brownstoner]
April 16, 2007
Rain, Rain, Go Away
Anticipation of the Nor'easter which began yesterday morning gave us uneasy flashbacks to the biblical floods of October 2005. A month after moving into our newly renovated house, we learned the hard way that the original waste line (which was made of out clay pipe back in the day) had basically disintegrated. When the pounding rains came that fall, the rain collected on the roof, ran down the drain pipe (which fed into the waste line, we learned) and smacked into the pile of earth that our century-old pipe had become. With no place else to go, the water surged up to the first point of release--the tenant's tub and toilet. We ended up having two episodes of major flooding in the apartment. Amazingly, there was only a couple of thousand dollars of damage and the parquet floors emerged unwarped. Still, to say it was a traumatic experience would be an understatement.
So we felt some sympathy for the poor Park Sloper whose clogged drain pipe (above) caused his basement to flood. There have also been some three posts (count 'em one, two, three) on the Forum so far; if you have any experience in these matters, please take a moment to lend your advice. We'd also be interested in hearing other stories of rain damage from the last 24 hours. Watcha got?
The Great Flood of Aught Seven [Flickr]
April 11, 2007
Arch Prof: Brownstones, Good. New Construction, Bad
Over on Stay Free! magazine's blog, there's a great interview with Robert Zagaroli by editor (and limestone owner) Carrie McLaren, associate professor of architectural technology at New York City College of Technology and life-long Brooklynite. The Topic: Were older buildings in general (and brownstones in particular) really built better than today's new construction? Here's what Mr. Z had to say:
It's a cliché, but brownstones truly were built to last. New construction tends to be cheaper in two senses: it costs less and is lower quality. Today, it's perfectly legal to build with half-inch gypsum board, but most people can put their fist through it. If the house gets wet or moldy, the walls can't handle the wear and tear. The standard in brownstones was plaster. You still have plaster walls in 200-year-old houses because plaster is very durable. The materials used in 18th and 19th century construction lasted longer: plaster, brick, and wood from old-growth forests. Today, the labor doesn't exist to install those products. The technology has changed. All wood now is farmed. There is no old-growth forest to tear down, so the wood industry has harvested trees for the last 30 years. It plants fast-growing trees, but the wood shrinks and therefore it's not as reliable, not as durable, not as sturdy, accurate, or dimensionally accurate. Newer wood has a shorter shelf life.
More on planned obsolescence, the NYC building code and why stainless steel kitchen are so 'nineties on the link.
Are Old Houses Really Built to Last? [Stay Free! via Curbed]
April 10, 2007
Front Page Forum: Brownstone Trim Color
Over the weekend, the owner of this brownstone in the Capital Hill nabe of Washington D.C. posted on the Forum, looking for some input on what color to paint his window trim. Since we're partially color-blind, we won't weigh in too much on this one, except to say that we think white should be avoided at all costs on brownstones and even many brick houses (unless it's clearly a Georgian thing). We're probably overly biased against white windows since it's the predominant color of the vinyl windows that mar otherwise beautiful facades in many of the less expensive parts of Brownstone Brooklyn. We went with black, which is pretty much the default color. There were a couple of commenters on the Forum banging the table for dark, dark green. Where do you stand on the issue?
Help Selecting Trim Color for Brownstone [Forum]
February 22, 2007
Brownstone Renos: A Contrast In Styles
The House & Home today section compares the renovation approaches of one couple who went for a bold modern approach to renovating part of their brownstone overlooking Fort Greene Park with that of hardcore preservationists and Clinton Hill old-timers Jim and Sharon Barnes. Here's what we had to say about the modern reno after seeing it last May on the Fort Greene House Tour:
Clearly the boldest departure from brownstone tradition on the Fort Greene House Tour was the parlor floor renovation at 203 Washington Park which featured poured and buffed concrete floors as well as an open-plan loft-style kitchen/dining/living area. We thought the modern approach was largely successful but agree with an earlier commenter that the juxtaposition to the shlubby traditional hallway was a little jarring. Perhaps the coolest part of the design, though, was the giant wall of windows overlooking the garden.
Interestingly, modern and spare does not mean cheap: The Phillips spent $400,000 renovating the bottom two floors.
By contrast, the Barnes have painstakingly restored their Clinton Avenue house over the past twenty years, along with seven other rental properties in the neighborhood. Preservation, to the Barnes, is a kind of calling. “Every one of the people who I met over the years who’d bid on this house were going to tear it to smithereens," says Ms. Barnes. "What is unique about this house is that it is intact.”
A Flood of Foreclosures, but Should You Invest? [NY Times]
FGHT: Modern on the Park [Brownstoner]
Photos by John Lei for The New York Times
January 25, 2007
The Brownstone Mailbox Dilemma
During our renovation, we were too busy worrying about things like plumbing and flooring to even think about a mailbox. And now here we are, almost a 18 months after moving in, and we still don't have one. We've been keeping an eye out for something antique but haven't found anything. We just can't bring ourselves to put up one of these metal boxes either. Granted, they look better when they are recessed into the stoop but we have to believe there are better options out there. What have some of you done? Our tenant is getting tired of wet mail.
January 22, 2007
HOTD: On the Greenpoint Waterfront, Sorta
While calling this "waterfront property" (as the listing does) may be a bit of a stretch, there is certainly a bit of a cul-de-sac vibe working for this three-story house near where Greenpoint Avenue dead-ends. And, to be fair, you probably can see a little of the East River from the front windows. Judging from the choice of materials on the ground-floor exterior and the fact that the house has been in the same family for three decades (and that the realtor didn't include any interior photos), we're not optimistic about finding tons of charm inside the front door. The only reason we can find to justify the asking price of $1,390,000 is the unused FAR — enough, perhaps, to build couple of extra floors.
Waterfront Two Family [Greenpoint Properties] GMAP P*Shark
January 19, 2007
House of the Day: 53 South Oxford Street
This four-family brownstone at 53 South Oxford Street is looking pretty darn expensive to us at $1,975,000 given the kind of renovation it just received. While not completely devoid of detail, the kitchen photo, complete with baseboard heating, doesn't give us a high degree of confidence. Nor does the fact that the property just traded at $1,345,000 back in July. A couple layers of poly and some Home Depot cabinets later and the owner's trying to mark it up 50 percent. We don't think it's gonna fly. He also made the strange choice of going with a brokerage firm called Prospective Properties that can't seem to get its website under control. We're thinking $1.6 million, $1.7 if he's really lucky.
53 South Oxford Street [NY Times] GMAP P*Shark
January 18, 2007
402 Pacific Street Gut Job
There's a big ole renovation underway at 402 Pacific Street in Boerum Hill. It appears, however, that things have been help up by a few Stop Work Orders. Something to do with structural shortcomings. Anyone on the block have the scoop?
Update: As a reader points out, we already discussed this building and its owner's less-than-neighborly ways back in June. Check the link.
Bad Form: Unpacific on Pacific [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
January 12, 2007
FNY: South Portland, Brownstone Paradise?
While lamenting the fact that Queens only had six blocks represented in TONY's Top 50 list last year, Forgotten NY grudgingly makes a visit to Ole Numero Uno, Fort Greene's South Portland Avenue. FNY notes that, although the brownstones between Dekalb and Lafayette appear identical at first glance, you can tell that they were built in different sections at different times. (Anyone know more about that history?) FNY also notes that, according to Brooklyn By Name, the street was named after Portland Place in London. And the reason for all the North and South street names in Fort Greene? The creation of Fort Greene Park, which cuts a number of them in two.
Brownstone Paradise? [Forgotten NY]
January 10, 2007
Mysteriously High Price on Grand Avenue
Here's a stumper right in our own back yard. According to Property Shark, the brownstoner at 354 Grand Avenue sold in December for a whopping $1.9 million. Even if this were one of the larger-scale brownstones on the next block this price would seem quite high. But this is a 13-footer across from a row of newish row houses lacking the charm that the neighborhood is known for. If accurate, there must be some development twist to the purchase. As far as we can tell though, the property is not contiguous with any larger lots or buildings. It also falls just outside the Clinton Hill Historic District line. Any theories?
GMAP P*Shark
January 8, 2007
House of the Day: 674 Park Place
Although the listing claims this house is in Prospect Heights, 674 Park Place's location between Franklin and Bedford puts it squarely in Crown Heights in our book. The 19-foot-wide, three-story building has some nice original detail but is far from mind-blowing. Judging from the dimensions, the house is deceptively large, with at least some of the floors built 55-feet deep on the 131-foot lot. The house last changed hands exactly three years ago for $590,000, so the current asking price of $893,000 doesn't surprise us--we'd guess prices in this area on average have easily increased 50% since early 2004. Interestingly, we noticed that 586 Park Place, which had been cut from $1.15 million to $995,000 back in the fall, had recently sold. City records haven't been updated yet, so we don't know the price. Number 586 is bigger than 674 but it had some tenants in place that probably merited a discount. As you can see from this map, 674 would not be included in the Crown Heights Historic District currently on track to be created by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
674 Park Place [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
Head-to-Head in Crown Heights [Brownstoner]
January 2, 2007
Mothering Brooklyn: Evelyn Ortner
We're not sure if Evelyn Ortner ever read Brownstoner.com, but it's doubtful the site would have ever come into being had the strong-willed preservationist not pioneered the revival of her Park Slope neighborhood back in the 1960s, leading the landmark drive, luring young couples from Manhattan and winning the support of bankers and gas company execs alike. Judging from the piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, she might not have appreciated some of the discussions that draw attentions to some of the problems that still face many brownstone nabes still undergoing a process of revitalization, but hopefully she would have taken pleasure in the pure concentration of people who, like her, have an obsession with these old houses and communities.
Mothering Brooklyn [NY Times]
December 27, 2006
Reuniting in a Bed Stuy Brownstone
There were a couple of things that stayed with us after we read Sunday's piece in The Times about the Indian family who moved into a beautiful brownstone in Bed Stuy last summer. The first was their decision to stain the parquest floors cranberry and green. This looks fine to us in the photos but we're wondering what others think of this idea. We were more struck by Rina Banerjee's description of the first time she visited the neighborhood:
"I came for a visit five years ago and honestly I was a little scared,” Ms. Banerjee said. “I walked out of the Utica subway station and there was a gang of boys there fooling around and I was worried, but I decided I had to know the neighborhood and I asked them for directions and they were so kind that I immediately felt comfortable. It’s amazing how a neighborhood’s reputation impacts your thinking about it even before you see it.”
Food for thought indeed.
Family Reunited in a Brownstone [NY Times]
November 15, 2006
A Modern Reno We Could Live With
Designed by the same architects responsible for the reno of the double-wide West Village townhouse that reportedly sold last week for $37.5 million, this 7,200-square-foot Brooklyn house is a wonderfully clean and light example of a succesful modern renovation of an old structure. While the traditionalist in us hopes that there wasn't much original detail left to destroy before this reno began, we gotta hand it to the firm 1100 Architects for a pretty stunning job. Here's what they have to say about the project:
The aim of this renovation was to create a family home that fully integrates the site’s rear garden into the plan of the house, while creating both familial and private spaces. Occupying the existing footprint, the new building employs glass and aluminum to create a more open and continuous feeling in the back of the house. These materials, in addition to a new staircase connecting the garden and the second floor, firmly establish the garden as an extension of the house and as a communal location. Using green roof technology, a private garden accessible from the master bedroom creates a small, personal outdoor space. Inside, the house is designed to fit the needs of the family.
Who knows where this is? We'd guess Brooklyn Heights but can't be sure.
Residential: Brooklyn Brownstone [1100 Architects]
Record Set for Downtown Single-Family Home? [Curbed]
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