Most Popular Stories 2024: A Partition Sale in Bed Stuy, Change in Gowanus

The end of 2024 is almost here, so we take our annual look back at the stories that garnered the most attention from readers this year. Brownstoner visitors were drawn to news on affordable housing lotteries, with multiple stories on the list, as well as legal struggles for homeowners, and the transformation of Gowanus by an extensive and controversial rezoning.

Click through the list below to find Brownstoner’s top 15 stories of the past year.

15. Charming Warren Place Mews House With Large Garden, Parking Asks $2.75 Million

For a sense of Brooklyn charm it is hard to beat the petite mews houses of Warren Place. Commissioned by philanthropist Alfred Tredway White in 1878, the stretch of Gothic Revival workers’ houses are tucked behind a fence with a shared garden and pedestrian-only access in the Cobble Hill Historic District.

At just 11.5 feet wide and two rooms deep, they aren’t overflowing with space, but this one on the market at 11 Warren Place has been renovated to fit in a bit of storage. Most notably, it comes with a rare deeded parking spot and a large garden with a shed outfitted with electricity.

14. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for 125 Williamsburg Units, Including $544 Studios

An affordable housing lottery has opened for 125 apartments in a long-in-the-works south Williamsburg development, with units starting at $544 per month.

13. Extensive Construction in Gowanus Forecasts a Very Different Neighborhood Ahead

Gowanus, an industrial and low-lying neighborhood, has been undergoing a sudden and sweeping transformation over the past year and a half. Swathes of low slung 19th and early 20th century brick industrial buildings have been demolished. In their place, ubiquitous on many blocks, are active construction sites ringed by green construction fences. Walls are starting to rise on a handful of developments, and at least two sets of towers and a nine-story apartment building have topped out.

12. Brooklyn Paramount Set to Open Next Month With Music Shows, Restored Opulent 1920s Interior

Still putting the finishing touches on its highly anticipated restoration, Brooklyn Paramount is getting ready to open its doors March 27 as a live-music venue.

Newly released renderings of the 1928 Fort Greene theater, closed for decades, show an impressive Roccoco fantasy interior with a columned marble lobby and theater with an elaborately adorned gold-painted plasterwork ceiling with glass backlit in blue.

11. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens in East New York With $750 Units

An affordable housing lottery has launched for 13 apartments in a new development on the corner of Atlantic and Miller avenues in East New York, one of a number of new developments rising on the rezoned thoroughfare.

10. Overflow Crowd Packs Gowanus Church for Rowdy Meeting Over Migrant Shelter

Spaced elbow to elbow in Hoyt Street’s City Life Church Monday night, Gowanus locals aired their concerns at a community meeting on a migrant shelter for 400 men slated to open in a former factory building on 3rd Street.

9. Live in Grand Style in Sally Jessy Raphael’s Dutchess County Mansion, Yours for $6.5 Million

Transformed in the early 20th century from a modest country home to a grand Tudor Revival pile, this Dutchess County estate has been home to former talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael since the 1990s. Packed with intricate woodwork and an abundance of rooms, the house is just one of the architecturally intriguing structures on the 25-acre property known as Elmwood Farm.

8. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens in Gowanus With $888 One-Bedrooms

An affordable housing lottery has opened for another new Gowanus building that benefited from the neighborhood’s rezoning. Still under construction, this one is a 13-story, 193-unit block-long development that runs between Union and Sackett streets along 4th Avenue.

7. Brownsville Affordable Housing Lottery With $774 Three-Bedrooms Opens

An affordable housing lottery has started for 165 truly affordable apartments in an under-construction Brownsville building, with one-bedroom units starting at $484 per month.

6. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for Fort Greene Tower With Units From $750

An affordable housing lottery has opened for a new 21-story, 294-unit tower blocks away from Fort Greene Park, with apartments starting at $750 a month.

5. Rockland County Mid-Century Modern House With Atrium, Sunken Living Room, Yours for $625K

You can embrace some woodland style, inside and out, with this mid-century house that is a bit of a time capsule with much of its original character intact. That includes an indoor garden complete with a tree, a sunken living room, and wood-covered walls and ceilings.

4. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for Modern Flatbush Build With $823 Units

An affordable housing lottery has opened for a modern-looking 13-story, 171-unit development in Flatbush. Running from Aurelia Court to Triangle Junction mall, the complex at 1634 Flatbush Avenue replaces a gas station formerly on the site.

3. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens in Crown Heights With Units From $454

A truly affordable housing lottery has opened for 36 apartments in a new 100 percent affordable development in Crown Heights, with units starting at $454 a month. Dubbed Weeksville Place, the new eight-story, 45-unit building has risen on a formerly vacant and overgrown lot.

2. Court Allows Partition Sale of Bed Stuy Home in Family for 75 Years

Ayisha Doyle, like her mother and her children, was raised in the grand brownstone on Jefferson Avenue in Bed Stuy. She still calls the house home, one of five generations of her family who have done so since her great-grandparents purchased the 1880s single-family house in the 1940s.

1. Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for Fort Greene Apartments Starting at $910 a Month

An affordable housing lottery has launched for 87 apartments in a new development on Fort Greene’s South Portland Avenue. The site formerly belonged to an orphanage and is now among a row of church-owned properties.

Related Stories

• Most Popular Stories 2023: Woman Fights Home Investors in Court, Gingerbread House for Sale
• Most Popular Stories of 2022: The Demolition of the Dangler Mansion, Affordable Housing Lotteries
• Most Popular Stories of 2021: Development in Downtown Brooklyn, an Ikea Hack

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