The Doyenne of Ditmas
The Times ran a lengthy profile this weekend of Mary Kay Gallagher, who’s been ruling the real estate market of Victorian Flatbush for four decades. Gallagher, now 90, and her husband bought their house at 196 Marlborough Road in 1959 for $29,500. A decade later she got her real estate license at the urging of…
The Times ran a lengthy profile this weekend of Mary Kay Gallagher, who’s been ruling the real estate market of Victorian Flatbush for four decades. Gallagher, now 90, and her husband bought their house at 196 Marlborough Road in 1959 for $29,500. A decade later she got her real estate license at the urging of the president of the Prospect Park South Civic Association who thought she had the chops to recruit people who would care about the community and its special assortment of houses. As The Times put it, “Mary Kay Gallagher got into real estate as a kind of civic duty, to help find responsible guardians for the shingled, gabled and columned behemoths in her own backyard.” Since then, she has dominated the sales market in the area, to the chagrin of other brokers, some of whom accuse her of not treating all buyers equally. She would probably agree with that she discriminates, just not on the basis of race or religion. “I live here,” she told The Times. “I care who moves in, because what happens to these houses matters to me. In recent years, as the likes of Corcoran and Brown Harris Stevens have made inroads, albeit minor ones, to the nabe, the Ditmas doyenne has stood her ground from the house where she does her business. I get along with her, but there are people who don’t,” said Julie Kestyn, a long-time competitor. “She’s tough. I’ve been waiting for her to retire for the last 23 years, but why should she?”
She’s the One Holding the Keys [NY Times]
Photo by Seth Kushner
I haven’t seen MKG for over 25 years, but I used to know her when we each represented our neighborhoods at the old Brooklyn Brownstone Conference meetings. She sold me a book the Prospect Park South Assoc. had published in the 60s about that neighborhood’s architecture–after carefully questioning me to make sure I wasn’t going to use it for any nefarious purpose 🙂 .
There used to be a number of brokers who mainly sold in their own neighborhoods, with the aim of preservation and generally building the areas up. Nat Hendricks (founder of the Bklyn Brownstone Conference), in Boerum Hill was one. Shirley Juergensen, in PLG was another. Nat and Shirley have both left NYC, but MKG is still going strong.
I met her about 6 years ago when I was looking for a house. I saw a house that was very nice — kind of reminded me of the house I grew up in (perfect for 8 people) — but needed a lot of work, backed up onto railroad tracks and was much much too big for me. I was half talking to myself about what I would have had to do to the house and opining about the heating costs. She launched into an angry, impassioned and heated defense of the house…..”like, yeah, oh, you are right, where’s my checkbook?” She was a piece of work.
> That looks like DitmasSnark in about 10 years.
Oh no. I’ll have work done, trust me!
She was very gracious to my mother and myself when we looked at a house on 18th St. Neither of us felt steered away from anything, and my mother knew all about what it was like to be steered, and would not have put up with it. The deal fell through when the seller changed their mind and held on to the house, but that wasn’t Ms Gallagher’s fault. This was back around 1980, well before the neighborhood had been “discovered”. She was thrilled that we loved old houses, and that meant more to her than our race. I’m still sorry we didn’t get that house.
Architerrorist, I really love that photo–have seen it before. Seems like the perfect kind of organized chaos that a busy and successful business leads to. Her story is inspiring. It’s an amazing and wonderful neighborhood.
Check out this fantastic c.1976 photo of MKG in her home office, part of the Nooney Collection:
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=1055344&imageID=1563776&total=5&num=0&word=mary%20kay%20gallagher&s=1¬word=&d=&c=622&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=Collection%20Guide&sLevel=&sLabel=At%2520Home%2520in%2520Brooklyn%253A%2520The%2520Nooney%2520Brooklyn%252E%252E%252E&imgs=20&pos=5&e=w
I agree with Sparafucile on this one. The Times is really off-base with that remark. Daveinbedstuy is right. MKG loves the housing stock (as many of us do) and wants to preserve it. Period.
I suspect they are just trying to find buyers that will be conservators of a homes history and architectural detail. I doubt she’s violating fair housing laws.
This article includes an anonymous accusation, with no follow-up, that she’s engaged in what is, for a real estate broker, a violation of fair housing laws, and a nonsense statement about “she would probably agree” (If you think she might agree, why not ask her directly?)
Very shoddy reporting.