House of the Day: 204 Jefferson Avenue
This Montrose Morris-designed house at 204 Jefferson Avenue in Bed Stuy is yet another magnificent wreck, and may have been the subject of mortgage fraud going back years, judging by its title history. A Building of the Day in September, the 1891 house has an unusually elaborate entrance, fancy plaster details, original mantels, built-ins, stained glass window…
This Montrose Morris-designed house at 204 Jefferson Avenue in Bed Stuy is yet another magnificent wreck, and may have been the subject of mortgage fraud going back years, judging by its title history. A Building of the Day in September, the 1891 house has an unusually elaborate entrance, fancy plaster details, original mantels, built-ins, stained glass window transoms, inlaid parquet floors, and on and on.
It’s also quite large, over 4,000 square feet, with four stories and an extension. It is still a single family home and appears to have never been divided up.
Needless to say, it needs all the usual work and probably more. The stair banister seems to be missing.
It sold for $1,200,000 last month to an LLC. Before that, it sold for 700,000 in 2006. (Over the years, a long string of lis pendens were filed against the property and various owners, going back to at least 1990, many filed less than a year after the house changed hands — a pattern than can indicate fraud.)
Now the ask is $1,650,000. The listing calls it the “perfect Bedford Stuyvesant restoration project for the new year.” Has anyone seen this place in person?
204 Jefferson Avenue [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP
Beautiful house. Hopefully some single family will buy it and restore it to its former glory. I can envision myself with a can of stripper taking every panel down to the bare wood and restoring all of it. Wish there were more pictures and fullscreen functionality. Given that seems to be the preferred norm, and easy to do with html why aren’t realtors doing the fullscreen photos on every listing. Can’t really remark on the price other than to say I wish we had had the means to buy several houses in Bed-Stuy and Bushwick a few years ago and just held onto them. The markets have spoken and some people are simply taking the market’s profit. An age-old phenomenon.
Hi, what kind of stripper would be in the can in this fantasy? I am actually asking on a serious note as I am embarking on stripping the woodwork on our parlor floor with SoyGel. Wondered if you had any advice based on your experience?
I’ve just been using Rock Miracle, available at any local hardware store (Crest for me) which is your run of the mill toxic fume Methylene Chloride based gel stripper. It’s not flammable but you’d want to have open windows and wear gloves while doing it – it stings like fire when you get it on you (all the time in my case). Brush it on, wait 10 minutes, scrape the gunk off into a tin can like a coffee or large tomato can. Once you leave the waste cans outside for a couple days in the sun, all the liquid and smelly stuff evaporates and you can toss the dried remnants in the trash (I know, probably not environmentally friendly, but neither is that lye based stuff). Repeat until all the old paint and such are gone, then I finish the last strip by wiping it down immediately (while still damp from the stripper) with an old T-shirt cloth and mineral spirits (plain old paint thinner which can be flammable if allowed to concentrate). I’ve done all the woodwork in the house (that I wanted to strip), salvaged mantles, iron fireplace frames, as well as removed all the old paint off the old floors, etc. using it, but I’m old school. It works very well, fast, and doesn’t really create the mess of goo that those organic, lye, or citrus based types make. When doing the mantles and even the old front doors, I take them apart and take them outside and lay them across trash cans. I’ve done the other stuff in place. I’ve also done 2 pianos, 3 antique tables, chairs, bookshelves, and other various furniture pieces with it over the years.
I love the Tiffany glass throughout this place and really nice plaster work. I hope the person that buys this places restores the home. Herman Hagedorn grew up in this house as a young boy: Hermann Hagedorn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hagedorn
Right. That’s something people aren’t accepting; I don’t want to accept it as it means Bed Stuy becoming less affordable for many, but the facts are the facts.