I.D. This Photo, Win a Book
Charles Lockwood, author of the definitive Bricks and Brownstone, sent in this photo of a mother and child on a brownstone stoop that he bought online. He’s not sure where it is and is offering a signed copy of his book to the first reader that can correctly identify the location. Guesses?
Charles Lockwood, author of the definitive Bricks and Brownstone, sent in this photo of a mother and child on a brownstone stoop that he bought online. He’s not sure where it is and is offering a signed copy of his book to the first reader that can correctly identify the location. Guesses?
Those mansaard roofs are on Macon just west of Stuyvesant but they are on frame/clapboard buildings. I can’t remeber seeing any on stone buildings.
rfr’s point is also borne out by the design of the ironwork.
rfr is right about these houses being designed as a group, and the facade divisions not corresponding to the stoops. (There are at least two blocks like this in Crown Heights designed by well-known architects but the decoration is totally different.)
The single window in the basement is distinctive. At least it would be rare in Bed Stuy, as you can see if you check Google map streetview. (Though I remember mansard roofs with windows somewhere around Halsey and Stuyvesant.)
The single window in the basement is distinctive. At least it would be rare in Bed Stuy, as you can see if you check Google map streetview. These houses were designed as a group.
The photo frames three window bays as if they were a single, symmetrical house, but those three bays include TWO stoops. I’ll bet we’re actually looking at part of a row of two-bay houses whose relatively modest width is masked, or at least played down, by a more monumental facade whose ins and outs don’t correspond to the divisions between the dwellings inside.
The two projecting bays that are cropped off on the right and left sides of the frame look symmetrical. The circular repeats on their uppermost friezes match, and it looks like both have inverted brackets at the “eave” level of the central mansard. (The scroll of the right-hand bracket is only faintly visible.) Both of these “pavilions” (sam, 12:40) probably also have matching pointed roofs (more visible on the left), but they may not mark the ends of the row.
Maybe this can help someone else, because I don’t have a clue where these houses are.
Looks to me like she’s wearing some kind of very plain walking outfit circa 1890s, particularly going by the shape and tilt of the hat, but it’s very hard to make out details.
None of the people in the photograph appear to be posing for it, which is quite remarkable.
Sam, the house looks like it’s brick. It’s so narrow, and yet appears to be a single-family house, that in Brooklyn at least (no idea re Boston) the price of this house would have been in the middle. A doctor or merchant would have lived in one of the wide, elaborate townhouses one sees in Stuyvesant Heights or Park Slope. Someone of lesser means would have lived in a two-family.
I find it odd there is no stained glass in this house. Could it be older than the 1890s?
The reason I suggested Harlem is that these feel familiar to me from my high school days. Can’t say exactly which street—anywhere from 140s and Convent on down, and both east and west. It’s entirely possible that these are not in NY, but the feel of the street is familiar. You’ll even still find similar (other than front door hoods) on the Upper West Side.
To me, the lady in the second story window looks dressed up and is carrying a muff. She is looking to see her daughter and the Nanny go off to school or some errand, probably school. The house looks failry grand to me as it is faced in limestone and even the dormer windows are limestone, rather than the more traditional(in Brooklyn) wood.
This isn’t Brooklyn.
Maybe Manhattan.
The reason I say Harlem is because there are several rows of houses there with end pavilions that project out at the ends of Second Empire rows. It is a French stylistic touch. Folks in Brooklyn were a bit too Unitarian to go for French touches, Boston too proabbly, So I’m going with Manhattan, specifically Harlem.
Also, the orientation of the sun, to my eye, points to an East-facing house on a North-South street. Harlem seems less likely for that reason.