A Grand Brownstone Holds the Corner in Fort Greene (Photos)

It is hard to resist the good looks of a brownstone against a bright blue sky, particularly a grand corner specimen like the one at 209 Washington Park. It’s one of a row of Italianate houses built by William Brush around 1870 just as Fort Greene Park — originally called Washington Park — was getting a redesign by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

Six of Brush’s houses survive in the row facing the park, all in various states of repair. The one at 209 Washington Park looks to be in near-perfect original condition — but it wasn’t always so.

When the stretch of houses was included in the Fort Greene Historic District in 1978, the designation report noted that No. 209 had lost its stoop, lintels and wooden cornice. There were still some original features surviving, including a cast iron railing, the quoined corner and the oriel window on the Dekalb Avenue facade.

Photos from the late 1950s show that some of those elements — the stoop and the cornice — were already gone 20 years before designation, but the lintels were still in place.

Quite clearly all those elements are back in place today.

The building last changed hands in 1999, with DOB permits showing work on the building soon after. Photographs show that by 2007 the house had been restored and the missing historic elements had been replicated.

The 19th century cast iron railing — called out in the designation report as an original element — is still in place.

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