The houses on Montgomery Place in Park Slope, many of which were designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, are quite varied in style. Someone once told me that the variation was partly due to the fact that the houses were intended to serve as model homes — potential buyers could view them and choose to have them replicated elsewhere in the borough. That seemed a little fishy to me, so I dismissed it as folklore.<\/p>\n
Lately, however, I’ve noticed that some of the house styles on Montgomery are in fact repeated in slightly modified form on other streets in Brooklyn. The Gilbert house in the photo above, for example, was completed in 1890. From 1892 to 1894, homes by other architects that are very similar to Gilbert’s (and virtually identical to each other) were built on Carroll, 5th and Dean Streets (all data is from the LPC designation reports). Another Gilbert on Montgomery from 1889 has doppelgangers on 4th Street that were built in 1891.<\/p>\n
I still don’t think there’s any truth to the model home story. However, I can’t seem to find any houses in Brooklyn that are similar to Gilbert’s designs and also predate them. It looks like Gilbert inspired a number of copycats in his day. Montrose, any insights or theories?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The houses on Montgomery Place in Park Slope, many of which were designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, are quite varied in style. Someone once told me that the variation was partly due to the fact that the houses were intended to serve as model homes — potential buyers could view them and choose to have them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"schneps_byline":"","schneps_post_style":"","schneps_post_source":"","schneps_syndicated_read_more":"","schneps_post_source_sitename":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_html":"","schneps_syndicated_thumb_src":"","schneps_post_source_shortname":"","schneps_post_source_url":"","schneps_post_source_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"districts":[],"class_list":["post-55137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/model-homes-on\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Model Homes on Montgomery? (Calling on Montrose)","url":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/model-homes-on\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.brownstoner.com\/forum-archive\/2011\/04\/model-homes-on\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":""},"articleSection":"History","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"LowerUWSider"}],"creator":["LowerUWSider"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Forum Archive","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"2011-04-11T21:58:48Z","datePublished":"2011-04-11T21:58:48Z","dateModified":"2011-04-12T07:47:59Z"},"rendered":"