House of the Day: Beautiful Details, Fabulous Fireplaces in a Bed Stuy SRO

Here’s an interesting one. It’s a four-story Renaissance Revival brownstone, at 176 MacDonough Street in Stuyvesant Heights, with eye-popping details and a serious catch: It’s classified as an SRO, or single-room occupancy dwelling.

To start with the positive: The place looks spectacular. It’s got ornate woodwork, wainscoting, pier mirrors, crown moldings, bay windows, and six mantels of carved oak and mahogany, with period tiles laid alongside. The listing says it’s got some original light fixtures, which would make them over a century old.

What’s in the pictures looks to be reasonably well preserved, too — but there’s plenty that isn’t depicted. And when a listing suggests you “bring your preservation architect” and emphasizes that the house is being sold “AS-IS,” it seems a fair guess that there are a few rough spots. It’d be interesting to see what, and where.

Then there’s that C of O. Did we mention that it’s an SRO? The listing – from Halstead broker Morgan Munsey – says the house has been occupied as a single-family for the past decade, so presumably it comes without tenants.

Still, there’s a hornet’s nest of potential complications there, from financing issues to a possible need to try to change the C of O, a prospect as alluring as eating the glass from one of those pier mirrors.

What do you make of it, and the asking price of $1,400,000?

176 MacDonough Street [Halstead] GMAP
Photos via Halstead