Building of the Day: 562 Bergen St
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy. Address: 562 Bergen Street, with 577, 579 Carlton St, (Bergen, corner of Carlton) Name: Row Houses Neighborhood: Prospect Heights…
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.
Address: 562 Bergen Street, with 577, 579 Carlton St, (Bergen, corner of Carlton)
Name: Row Houses
Neighborhood: Prospect Heights
Year Built: 1893
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: Magnus Dahlander
Landmarked: Yes (Prospect Heights Historic District)
This group of houses was designed to look like one very large mansion. The architect treated us to two spendid views of the house, one on the Bergen Street side, which is the actual entrance to the corner house, and one on the Carlton St. side, which feature the other two houses in the group.
This is is signature Magnus Dahlander work. No one else was such a master of the large Romanesque arched doorway. He used this device in only three lot-wide rowhouses in Brooklyn, as discussed here.
This arch would have made the fourth, only it is placed on the side of the building, I might add, to great effectiveness. Who wouldn’t want to go in and out of that entryway?
Looking at the group from the Carlton St. side, you get the full view of what looks to be a large mansion with twin symmetrical towers on the ends. This is in actuality the facade of two and a half separate houses.
What separates a master from a journeyman architect? Dahlander extends the center roof-line down into the corner houses, bringing them into the center house. What a great optical illusion!
The center house is only between the two drainpipes. If you really look at the composition, it’s off center, and not symettrical at all. He has a false center at eye level, with the bay window and the two doors, but that parlor window is not the center at all, true center is the tip of the peaked roof.
Great stuff from a really good architect able to use his imagination to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
Ah!
I see!
I’ll scrutinize more closely next time I walk by.
Thanks Montrose.
Pidgeon, it’s not two and a half homes, it’s three, but my point was that if you look at it from the Carlton Ave side, the tower, and a tiny bit of wall from the Bergen St house makes up the left side of the “mansion”. Then you have the center house, and the house on the right, also with a turret. It looks perfectly symmetrical, but it’s an illusion. The left side is only “half” a house, the center is really off center, and the right is holding up its end. The roof line connects them. It’s really a nice piece of work.
I like the dour grimness!
It’s welcoming, in a unsettling way.
Whenever I walk by, I feel something pulling me in slightly.
lovely composition. as I have previously stated, high-style architecture is mostly about the art of illusion.
The color scheme seems unusually dour and grim. I’m hoping it’s paint or grime.
I love this building.
Thanks for analysing it, MM.
I don’t understand one thing, though…
How is it two and a half homes.
A half???
Love these ultra-Victorian Victorians with the corner turrets. Seems a hallmark of city Victorians. You see them on both houses and apartment buildings. Lots of times there is a store at the bottom, on the corner, though I don’t know if they were original.