See Unique PLG Interiors With the Return of the House Tour This Month

For design and architecture enthusiasts, the return of spring means house tour season and the chance to ogle the interiors of private homes. Brooklynites will be throwing open the doors to their dwellings this month for the return of the Prospect Lefferts Gardens House & Garden Tour.

The 52nd edition of the tour will include the chance to look inside eight homes and gardens on Sunday, May 31. The day also offers the chance to enjoy refreshments and conversation in “The Lefferts Lounge,” an outdoor space with live music coordinated by PLG Arts.

Some of the participating houses this year include a Benjamin Driesler-designed row house filled with original details, a 1920s standalone with a finished attic, a rowhouse setup for multi-generational living, and a renovated limestone with an open plan main floor and a conversation pit in the garden. The houses are scattered inside and outside the original Lefferts Manor area. The exact locations will be revealed to ticketholders on the day of the tour.

The Prospect Lefferts Gardens house tour was started by the Prospect Lefferts Gardens Neighborhood Association in 1969 with the express purpose of integrating the neighborhood and countering the block busting that was going on at the time. Their effort was a success and the event, put on by the Lefferts Manor Association, is now a fundraiser. The history of the house tour was documented in 2018 by local Bob Marvin in the organization’s newsletter, “The Echo.”

While house tours once proliferated in Brooklyn as a way to lure potential homeowners to the borough, the number of tours dropped in the last decade. In addition to the Prospect Lefferts Gardens event, the regularly offered tours remaining are the Park Slope Tour in May and the Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant annual tour in the fall.

Tickets for the Prospect Lefferts Gardens tour are $40 and available online. The tour on May 31 runs from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and happens rain or shine. Check-in on the day is in front of IX Restaurant at 43 Lincoln Road. Ticketholders will be able to get their tour booklet, wristband, and booties to wear in the houses.

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