Building of the Day: 580 Macon Street

Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Row House
Address: 580 Macon Street
Cross Streets: Malcolm X and Patchen
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: late 1880’s
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architect: Amzi and Henry Hill
Other Buildings by Architect: Most of MacDonough St, Stuyvesant East, and throughout much of Bedford Stuyvesant
Landmarked: No, but part of the proposed Stuyvesant East HD

The story: When we do walking tours of Bedford Stuyvesant, we always joke that Bedford Stuyvesant could have been re-named “Hillville”, or “Hilltown.” The father and son team of Amzi and Henry Hill were responsible for designing a vast swath of fine rowhouses, tenements and apartment buildings all across Bedford Stuyvesant, as well as Clinton Hill, Park Slope, and parts of Crown Heights. Amzi started his career in 1849, with his earliest buildings being in the Italianate style, but he came into his own when he became known as the master of the Neo-Grec style. He was then astute enough to move again with the times, and by the early 1880’s, was designing in the Romanesque Revival/Queen Anne style, always keeping his own signature stylistic traits intact. His son, Henry, apprenticed under his father, and went into partnership with him in 1889. It’s often hard to distinguish where one partner ends and another begins, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Henry far surpassed Dad in short order, and was the creative force for most of the 1880’s and beyond. Amzi died in 1893, and Henry would practice through the early 1900’s.

At this time, the late 1880’s, the prevailing architectural style was the Queen Anne style, a wonderful pastiche of creative license, allowing and encouraging all kinds of massing and mixture of shapes, materials and ornament. This house is one is a long row of similar houses, and is a wonderful example of how the standard city lot row house can be embellished with style and great taste. First of all, you have this unusual mixture of rough cut stone, both brownstone, and a greenish/grey limestone. It’s common to find rough cut stone on the ground floor, with brick or smooth stone above, but here we have that very textural feeling throughout the building, interspersed with the smooth limestone blocks framing the windows on the top two floors only. Other fine details include the unique inset bay window, the faux peaked roofline, with the slate covered mansard roof behind and above it, the unique round window on the top floor, and of course, the carved limestone details in the expertly carved face, as well as Byzantine leaf trim on the façade.

This building, and its close neighbors share the Hill propensity to place carved faces in between their arched parlor floor windows, and this group is particularly interesting, with this strong turban-clad and bearded face, followed by another exotic turbaned face, fierce lion, woman, and a sneering grotesque. Amzi and Henry designed most of this block, on both sides of the street. The unique design for this house was repeated a couple of blocks away, too, showing that if it works, use it! Welcome to “Hillville”, hopefully soon, a landmarked neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, known as Stuyvesant East, much deserving of historic preservation. GMAP