Building of the Day: 538 Carlton Avenue
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: 538 Carlton Avenue, corner of Dean St. Name: Peter F. Reilly House Neighborhood: Prospect Heights Year Built: 1899…
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: 538 Carlton Avenue, corner of Dean St.
Name: Peter F. Reilly House
Neighborhood: Prospect Heights
Year Built: 1899
Architectural Style: Renaissance Revival
Architect: George F. Roosen
Landmarked: Yes
This house, quite different and much more ornate than the others on the block, was built for moving and storage king, Peter F. Reilly, whose enormous Gothic style warehouse is nearby, at 491 Bergen St, near 6th Ave.
The house sits on the corner of Dean St, which would have made it quite close to Reilly’s earlier and more utilitarian warehouses, which were also on Dean, now across from the AY site.
Reilly’s ads were a fixture in the Brooklyn Eagle, at the turn of the century, his business was very successful, and he became quite wealthy, and this house shows it. It is a riot of all kinds of ornament, most noticeably the shields, cartouches, fruits and foliage, and finely carved Green Men and other masks which adorn the facade and side of the building.
In fact, it was one of those Green Men staring down on me as I rode the B65 bus up Dean, that first brought the house to my attention. The house is quite finely built in Indiana limestone, the carving and ornament is of very high quality, and there is an ornate R carved quite prominently above the front door, in the third floor window lintel.
It looks as if Roosen, or Reilly, more than likely, just couldn’t find a motif he didn’t like, so they used them all. Peter F. Reilly had truly arrived.
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
I’d actually like to know more about the Storage Vault on Bergen, near 6th because it reminds me so much of Brooklyn Tech. Were they designed by the same architect?
Bob, the house was built in 1899, which puts it way past a transistional kind of date, which would have been about 10 years before that. Everything else is Renaissance Revival, except the arched windows. I would still call it RR, with a little creative license on the part of the architect, to perhaps stray from the straight lines of classic RR architecture. Besides, arches are a part of Classical architecture, and thereby Renaissance architecture, too, and there are plenty of buildings in Brooklyn classified as RR with arched windows.
Despite that entryway (and the white limestone) wouldn’t those rounded windows on the ground and top floors make this building transitional between Romanesque and Renaissance revival?
MM:
How interesting. I always knew that this was a unique house. In my teenage years, a friend dated the son of the owner. I’m almost 90% sure that they didn’t know the relationship between the house and the warehouse on Bergen Street. Thanks!
1899 -post Chicago Exposition, brownstone is out, limestone is in. This is a nice, fancy house for I am sure a very fancy gentleman.
I have started reading up a little on the San Diego Pan American exposition of 1915, which ushered in the love for all things Mission and Spanish colonial. It’s interesting how these expositions really set the tastes for the following years. in the 1920’s there was the Arts Decoratifs exposition in Paris.. another case in point.