Building of the Day: 21, 25 Montgomery Place

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 21, 25 Montgomery Place, between PPW and 8th Ave.
Neighborhood: Park Slope
Year Built: 1892
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: C.P.H. Gilbert
Other buildings by architect: much of this block, as well as houses on Carroll and Garfield, Adams house, corner Carroll and 8th, Daniel Chauncey House, on Joralemon St.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Park Slope HD

C.P.H. Gilbert’s masterful design of Montgomery Place and his work on surrounding blocks constitutes some of Park Slope’s finest residential architecture. Montgomery Place was the brainchild of developer Harvey Murdock, who hired Gilbert to design at least twenty of the houses on the block, including his own, at number 11.

What separates this development from many of the others in the area, is that Gilbert designed each one for a specific buyer. They were not built on spec, and sold later.

We’ll probably never know how closely Gilbert and Murdock worked with each buyer, it could very well be they were satisfied with what was offered them, and just went with it.

If the interiors are as fine as the exteriors, what could they complain about? Both of these were built for Charles M. Reed, perhaps for himself and a family member.

Gilbert’s career would later take him to Manhattan, where he designed huge limestone and marble palaces for the super-rich, but here in Brooklyn, for the merely wealthy, he worked in rich brick, brownstone, and terra-cotta, most often with complementary Mediterranean tile roofs, and a multitude of fine wrought iron and stained glass.

21 and 25 Montgomery are not Gilbert’s best works on this block, certainly not the most intricate and inventive in shape or materials, but on a block of super-duper, visually stunning homes, sometimes it’s nice to relax one’s eyes with the merely really good.

And these houses are very good. At a whopping 33 feet wide each, they spread across three lots, negating the need for a number 23. Gilbert designed them to look like one enormous estate, with flanking bays and a flat surfaced center.

The smaller details here show his genius: the two story mansard roof, covered in Spanish tile, accented by the peaked dormers, the large arched casement windows on the parlor floor, and the unbroken line of colonettes on the third floor.

He was a master in the use of terra-cotta trim, with foliate panels entwining the house numbers, and twining up the sides, the heraldic griffins, and use of animal heads as brackets supporting the eaves on 21, which have great purpose in their beauty and whimsy.

For many, the highlights of the building would be the balancing of the left and right bays, different in shape and function, the angular right side with an exposed balcony below a bulls-eye window, the left gently curved with more ornamentation, an oval window, and a jealousy-producing balcony on the top floor.

I take it back, this may well one of his best groups on the block, a masterful work of subtlety surrounded by more obvious opulence.

[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]