Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: James H. Lounsbery House
Address: 321 Clinton Avenue
Cross streets: DeKalb and Lafayette avenues
Neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Year built: 1875
Architectural style: Italianate
Architect: Ebenezer L. Roberts
Other buildings by architect: In Clinton Hill: 232 Clinton Ave, Charles Pratt, Sr. home, Chapel of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Washington Avenue Baptist Church, as well as wood-framed and masonry rowhouses throughout the neighborhood. Also South Brooklyn Savings Bank Building on Atlantic Avenue in Cobble Hill.
Landmarked: Yes, part of Clinton Hill Historic District (1981)

When you think of big ol’ brownstone Brooklyn mansions, something like this comes to mind. It stands majestically and impressively on Clinton Avenue, on a block with other large and impressive homes. When oil baron Charles Pratt, the richest man in Brooklyn, decided to start his collection of family homes on Clinton Avenue, back in the 1870s, he started a real estate rush that soon transformed this once suburban block of more modest homes into one of late-19th-century Brooklyn’s richest and most architecturally important neighborhoods.

Photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark
Photo by Scott Bintner for PropertyShark

Clinton Avenue had long been a desirable spot. Most of it stood high above the Wallabout Bay, far from the stink and noise of industry, and was home to many of early Brooklyn’s successful people. Suburban wood-framed villas on generous lawns dotted both sides of the block up until after the Civil War. Then Charles Pratt showed up. He was the owner of Astral Oil, a very successful oil and kerosene producer, with factories in nearby Greenpoint. He would later merge with John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, making him Brooklyn’s wealthiest man.

Mr. Pratt decided to make Clinton Avenue his home, and invited his oil executive friends to join him. Many did, and Clinton Hill is thick with the homes they commissioned and lived in. This house was one of them. In the early 1870s, Pratt’s favorite architect was Ebenezer L. Roberts, a talented man who collaborated with Pratt on his own palatial home, as well as on Pratt projects such as the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, which is now Brown Memorial. Pratt fell out with his church and then had Roberts design and the chapel for Pratt’s new Emmanuel Baptist Church. Roberts also designed many Clinton Hill row houses for Pratt and other clients.

1942 Photo, showing 321 in the center. The corner houses are now gone. New York Public Library
1942 photo, showing 321 in the center. The corner houses are now gone. Photo via New York Public Library

In 1874, while Pratt was planning his home, his colleague and friend, James H. Lounsbery, took his advice, and decided to build his own estate down the street. He also hired Roberts, and this large, brownstone mansion was designed for him. Construction of the house began in 1875, but Lounsbery would not live to enjoy it. In 1877, the executors of the estate, which included Charles Pratt, sold the house to David Harrison Houghtaling, a tea merchant.

Mr. Houghtaling was a very successful tea merchant and banker. He lived in the house from 1877 until 1894. He and his wife were among the founding members of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. He was a staunch Republican and a member of the Union League Club, and was a founding member and president of the Oxford Club. He was also a Trustee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, and was appointed Brooklyn Park Commissioner between 1882 and 1885. After selling the house, he and his family moved to the Gramercy Park area, where he died at the age of 79, of pneumonia, in 1913.

Tax photo: early 1980s. Municipal Archives
Tax photo: early 1980s. Municipal Archives

The house was sold to Hiram V.V. Braman, a dry goods importer, in 1894. He was president of the firm Braman, Ash & Barker. Braman’s name shows up over 75 times in a newspaper search, but most of them relate to his second job as a real estate developer and landlord. He was involved in a lot of transactions, foreclosures and other real estate business.

He and his wife were members of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, and were sometimes mentioned in the same articles as the Pratt’s and others on “the Hill,” so they obviously travelled in many of the same circles. Mrs. Braman often entertained here at the house, hosting luncheons of the local ladies.

In 1931, the house changed hands again, this time falling into the hands of the Woodward School. The school was a local institution, a small private elementary school for boys and girls located at 506 Washington Avenue. They were founded in 1927. The school wanted to expand into junior high classes, and bought the house and carriage house for use as classrooms. An article in the Eagle in 1931 noted that work would soon begin to transform the house into new classrooms. The kindergarten would move into the carriage house.

Clinton Hill Brooklyn 321 Clinton Avenue
Photo by Beyond My Ken via Wikipedia

Having the school in the building probably saved it. During World War II, Clinton Hill was seen as the perfect place for new housing for military personnel, their families and workers at the Navy Yard. Many of the old mansions had been long abandoned by their original owners, who had moved on to tonier neighborhoods, and were being used as apartments, churches, or sitting empty.

The large properties were purchased, and torn down. Right next door, the houses on the corner had been torn down for one of the Clinton Houses in 1942. But this house was spared.

312-314 Waverly Avenue. Lounsbury house carriage houses. Photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark.
312-314 Waverly Avenue, Lounsbury house carriage houses. Photo by Scott Bintner for PropertyShark

The Woodward School eventually moved to Park Slope, and into another old mansion, the Hulbert mansion on Prospect Park West. It merged with Poly Prep, and is there today. They held onto the house until the late 1970s, and it lay empty for a number of years.

When I first started coming to Clinton Hill in the late 1970s, early ’80s, it was boarded up. It was great to see it become a co-op in 1987. There are 12 units of varying sizes on the property today. GMAP

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