Real Estate

Boerum Hill Floor-Through With Dining Room, Sleeping Alcove, Mantels Asks $2,950 a Month

Here’s a one-bedroom rental in a 19th century Boerum Hill Italianate brick building with old-fashioned styling and a dining room — at least as currently configured.

by Stephen Zacks

04/04/2019 4 minute 0

Here’s a one-bedroom rental in a 19th century Boerum Hill Italianate brick building with old-fashioned styling and a dining room — at least as currently configured.

It’s on the top floor of a circa 1860 building now divvied into three units and owned since 2012 by the ominous-sounding Corax Corporation of Roxbury, Conn. A unit on the third floor rented about three years ago for a similar price, and a garden and parlor-level duplex is filled with fairly glorious moldings and trim, old listings show.

Notwithstanding the corporate ownership, the interior has been carefully renovated to effect an historic look, with original moldings stained dark, bead board, a new fretwork screen between the kitchen and dining room, tin ceiling in the dining room, and old fashioned gas lights (or replicas).

The bedroom is tucked into a bracketed alcove open to the living room. In photos that makes the apartment come off looking more like a studio, and at barely 500 square feet, it’s not terribly big either.

But the alcove, which faces the front of the building, could be curtained off. Or you could use the entire room as the bedroom, squeezing both living room and dining together on the opposite side of the unit.

There’s only one small closet (plus a cupboard in the bathroom) and no laundry in the building.

While diminutive, the unit has some notable historical details. These include decorative marble mantels in the living room and dining room, wooden shutters, a pier mirror, medallions, diagonal wood flooring and the aforementioned moldings.

The kitchen has the feeling of a country kitchen with its flowery tile backsplash and vintage stove. There’s lots of counter space and cabinets, wood wainscoting and molding. The bathroom is not shown, but in the floor plan it’s quite small and carved into the middle of the apartment. It opens into the living room (or bedroom, depending on how you configure the unit).

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188 Bergen Street is in the Boerum Hill Historic District, and the designation report describes it as a circa 1860 modified Italianate. It doesn’t have the curved lintels typical of the era, but it does have the tall ground-floor windows, a cornice with curving brackets, and ornate metal work on the gate and stoop. A plaque on the facade says the building was constructed in 1855.

Asking $2,950 a month, it’s supposed to be an apartment for a household earning $118,000. Broker Cordelia Stephens of Halstead is showing it in an open house Saturday, April 6 from 2 to 3:30 pm. Is it enough room for the dollar?

[Listing: 188 Bergen Street, APT 3 | Broker: Halstead] GMAP