The Doyenne of Ditmas

The Times ran a lengthy profile this weekend of Mary Kay Gallagher, who’s been ruling the real estate market of Victorian Flatbush for four decades. Gallagher, now 90, and her husband bought their house at 196 Marlborough Road in 1959 for $29,500. A decade later she got her real estate license at the urging of the president of the Prospect Park South Civic Association who thought she had the chops to recruit people who would care about the community and its special assortment of houses. As The Times put it, “Mary Kay Gallagher got into real estate as a kind of civic duty, to help find responsible guardians for the shingled, gabled and columned behemoths in her own backyard.” Since then, she has dominated the sales market in the area, to the chagrin of other brokers, some of whom accuse her of not treating all buyers equally. She would probably agree with that she discriminates, just not on the basis of race or religion. “I live here,” she told The Times. “I care who moves in, because what happens to these houses matters to me. In recent years, as the likes of Corcoran and Brown Harris Stevens have made inroads, albeit minor ones, to the nabe, the Ditmas doyenne has stood her ground from the house where she does her business. I get along with her, but there are people who don’t,” said Julie Kestyn, a long-time competitor. “She’s tough. I’ve been waiting for her to retire for the last 23 years, but why should she?”
She’s the One Holding the Keys [NY Times]
Photo by Seth Kushner