Building of the Day: 351-353 11th Street, 398-402 10th Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: Row houses
Address: 351-353 11th Street, 398-402 10th Street
Cross Streets: 5th and 6th avenues
Neighborhood: Park Slope
Year Built: Between 1880 and 1883
Architectural Style: Neo-Grec
Architect: Thomas Corrigan
Other buildings by architect: Other properties on these two blocks, and in neighborhood, as well as in Bedford Stuyvesant. Both row houses and flats
Landmarked: No

The story: These houses caught my eye as I was looking at some old maps of Park Slope while researching another property. It’s always unusual to see some kind of garage or outbuilding behind closed-in lots, so I took a closer look. What I found was unusual: two sets of identical houses back to back on 10th and 11th streets, between 5th and 6th avenues in Park Slope. Not only were they identical, they were unusual in their own right. The house at 351 11th Street is the usual 20-foot-wide row house, but its next door neighbor is an unusually wide 30 feet. Oddly enough, the houses that back this pair are not on similar sized lots. The lot directly behind 351 11th Street, the 20-foot lot, is 398 10th Street, the 30-foot house, and similarly, the lot behind 353 11th Street, which is that block’s 30 footer, is 402 10th Street, the 20-foot-wide house. What keeps the lot lines from looking skewed is the presence of two outbuildings that span both lots. There must be a story here.

The 1888 map of the street notes that one of the outbuildings was a carpentry shop. Both outbuildings were two stories. The reason the 30-foot buildings are 30 feet wide was to accommodate a 10-foot-wide gate and driveway that led to the back. This feature is quite common in other older neighborhoods, like Brooklyn Heights and Wallabout, where many clapboarded wood framed houses had the drive that led to the stables in back. Whoever designed these buildings took that idea and used it on these brick Neo-Grec row houses.

The houses were designed and built by the Corrigan family. William Corrigan, the patriarch, was the property owner/developer, and was also the mason in their early projects. William and his wife lived in one of the 30-foot houses, 353 11th Street. He had come to Brooklyn from Ireland as a child with his parents, and grew up in Brooklyn. He enlisted in the Union Army when the Civil War began, and had an illustrious career, moving up in rank to lieutenant. He fought throughout the entire war, and was an important line officer in the battle of Spotsylvania, after which he was personally commended for bravery by General Grant.

Upon returning to Brooklyn after the war, Corrigan went into the building trade, then real estate development. William Corrigan became an inspector for the Brooklyn Building Department as well. He had a son, William S. Corrigan, who also became an architect for the family. Another Corrigan, James G., was a real estate agent, and he too lived here. There were actually five sons in total and a daughter. I think Thomas Corrigan, who also worked with them as an architect/builder, was William’s brother.

The Corrigans developed a lot of properties in this part of the Slope in the early 1880s, including several other groups of houses on these two blocks. They also built houses and flats buildings in Bedford. It would not be surprising to learn that the Corrigans used the outbuildings as workshops for their home building business. William Corrigan died here at home, at 353 11th Street, in 1910. He’s buried in Green-Wood.

Today, the two 30-foot houses have modern garage doors closing off the driveways. Above the driveway opening on 398 10th Street is an oriel bump-out, which breaks up the width of the façade. All four of the buildings still have fine wooden cornices above. The one at 398 is still a one family home. No. 402 has a set-back dormer on the top floor, adding at least another half floor of space. On the next block, the Corrigan house, 353 11th Street, does not have an oriel bump-out. It also has the front door next to the side driveway, not on the far left side, as 398 10th Street has. Today, it’s a two-family. Next door, it’s hard to see if there is a dormer on the top floor, but it doesn’t look like it. This smaller building today is a three-family house. I find these houses very interesting….GMAP GMAP

(398-401 10th Street. Photo: John Cleary for PropertyShark)