303 Park Pl: If You Don't Like Old Houses, Don't Buy One!
You’d think that people who have no appreciation for older architecture could find a house that’s already missing its original details when it comes time for them to buy something. Instead, some people (like the new owners of 303 Park Place) buy a gorgeous historic home and proceed to strip it to the bone. Here’s…
You’d think that people who have no appreciation for older architecture could find a house that’s already missing its original details when it comes time for them to buy something. Instead, some people (like the new owners of 303 Park Place) buy a gorgeous historic home and proceed to strip it to the bone. Here’s what the Craigslist ad (which expired over the weekend) said:
Due to remodeling of a 100-year old Prospect Heights 1-family brownstone, we are offering selected antique Victorian architectural items. This is a one-time chance to improve your home with gorgeous authentic details that are seldom on the market. Items include Victorian oak fireplace mantels, redwood staircase complete with 3 stair runs, curving railings, balusters, Tiffany-style stained glass window panels, Victorian solid gingerbread entrance doors, antique tin ceiling tiles, ornate glass ceiling chandeliers, hinges and doorknobs and more.
Can any neighbors let us know what the couple plans to do with this place? Ugh.
House of the Day: 303 Park Place [Brownstoner] GMAP P*Shark
Victorian Antique Architectural Items [Craigslist]
No, 10:28. You must live in dark, oppressive, serious-wood interiors. You must appreciate every ‘detail’ that fine Victorian craftsmen lovingly put there (they put them there for a reason, no?). You must imbibe the tone and feel of a more civilized, graceful and genteel age – the decades between 1875 and 1900.
You must do these things – OR YOU CANNOT OWN AND DWELL IN ONE OF OUR BROWNSTONES!
Gosh Mr. Brownstoner, I disagree completely! Where are you going to get all your arch salvage if not from old buildings that were badly maintained and desperately need to be updated. A modern interior/gorgeous brownstone exterior mix is really amazing, and a perfectly good way to live. It’s what we are doing now and LOVE it!
Plus, if you want to live in a certain neighborhood, your choices are limited to the housing stock available. If small cramped rooms with frosting on the walls and ceiling and dark, dingy wood everywhere else aren’t your style – you gotta make some changes.
Gut it, gut it, gut it!!!!
” Please continue to gut these horribly out of date interiors and bring them into the present”
LOL-sounds like my mother whern I bought my house 30+ years ago. It must be a generational thing. The person who wrote that must be over 90 or under 30.
At least these interior details will be available for people to restore houses that were “modernized” in the ’50s by people who couldn’t afford to buy those nice suburban ranch houses, but wanted the next best thing 😉
I’m with Mr. B.–I don’t get why you’d buy something with irreplaceable stuff “they just don’t make any more” and then rip it out…but then, we bought an old house that had already been raped of 95% of whatever modest “period detail” it already had, and treasure the few bits left, so we’re coming at it from a very different perspective. But if we’d wanted a clean, modern interior, I can’t picture that we would’ve bothered looking (or paying for) a detail-filled brownstone. If you wanted to live in a Victorian brownstone, would you shop for a minimalist loft and then start putting up fancy moldings and stained glass and ornate woodwork? You could, but why would you?
that place sold for $1.65mm, around $50k over the asking price. go prospect heights!
I’d do the same thing. I like the exterior of the buildings but not the old, rotting, 100 layers of paint thats 3 inches thick, rotting old electrical wires, all the fixtures that are painted over and over, peeling paint, rotting wood, crumbling floors and stairs, yeah, hate me because I bought the building and want to live in it.
Sounds like it time to organize a lynching mob. What do you say we get some baseball bats and educate them about architectual appreciation? I’ll bring the torches if someone else can bring the plaster moldings.
Yes, more of this should happen. I love when this kind of shit gets under Brownstoner’s skin (and all of his disciples that post on this site). It’s like someone drown some puppies in a bag, and now we get can all indignant and morally outraged about it. Please continue to gut these horribly out of date interiors and bring them into the present.