PLG, Boerum Hill House Tours This Sunday

Great post Bob. Thanks.

If that were the case BH, I’d never have “discovered” PLG myself 🙂

Here’s an article I wrote for the current(house tour) issue of the Lefferts Manor Echo:

“It was spring 1974 and my wife and I, who had been renting in Park Slope, had been looking for a house for several months. All we knew was that we wanted an historic house in an attractive neighborhood. We started in the Slope, but houses we liked cost too much (close to$100,000!) and those we could afford were on the “bad”
blocks (west of 7th Avenue), had little detail, and had been chopped up into apartments.

We looked in other brownstone neighborhoods, like Prospect Heights, Ft. Greene, and Boerum Hill, but the houses we saw needed far more work than we were ready to undertake.
We looked at neighborhoods in Flatbush, such as Ditmas Park and even the western part of Staten Island. We loved the details, especially front porches, to be found in old frame houses, but were leery about the high upkeep of a wooden house. More ominously, we were dismayed by the surprise many white sellers in Flatbush expressed that a young white couple was considering buying there. We wanted to live in an integrated neighborhood, but were disturbed by “white flight” and the cynical notion that integration was the brief period between the first black family moving in and the last white family moving out.

We went on all the brownstone house tours that spring, but by early June, when the 5th annual PLG tour came around, we were pretty discouraged. We had never heard of Prospect-
Lefferts Gardens and were pretty sure that there couldn’t possibly be nice brownstones so far into Flatbush. We decided to skip that tour and go for a drive in the country instead.

It rained on June 2nd, spoiling our plans. For lack of anything better to do, we went on the PLG tour. It changed our lives! What wonderful houses, full of beautiful detail! What friendly people! How wonderful that there was this section within PLG called Lefferts Manor,
where we could afford a single-family house. On top of that, we learned some neighborhood history, about how the area had withstood “block busting” and “white flight” in the ’50s and ’60s and continued to attract home buyers of all races.

We stopped looking in other neighborhoods. By late summer we found “our” house. We’d been negotiating for another house on the same block, but fell in love with this house the moment we saw it. It was sadly neglected, but all the original details were intact. It was exactly what we’d hoped for.

Getting a mortgage on an old city house was a challenge back then, Only one bank would even accept an application, and they required 40% down. By early October we had
closed on our house and on Christmas Eve 1974 we moved in.

We’d never have moved to Lefferts Manor without the house tour. We’ve worked on every one since then and had our house on tour four times”.

All true, I promise!

Here are the PLG Advance ticket sales locations–we make it easy by having locations throughout brownstone Brooklyn

–until close of business Saturday, May 22

Prospect Lefferts Gardens

K-DOG & DUNEBUGGY
Gabrielle Lowe
43 Lincoln Road
(between Flatbush and Ocean Avenues)

Brooklyn Heights

BROWN HARRIS STEVENS-Brooklyn
Bill Sheppard
129 Montague Street
(at Henry Street)

Boerum Hill
STERLING PLACE
Robert Wilson
363 Atlantic Avenue
(between Hoyt and Bond Streets)

Park Slope

AGUAYO & HUEBENER REALTY GROUP
Roslyn B. Huebener
138 Seventh Avenue
(between Carroll and Garfield)

BROWN HARRIS STEVENS-Brooklyn
Bette Cunningham
100 Seventh Avenue
(at Union Street)

STERLING PLACE
Robert Wilson
352 Seventh Avenue
(at Tenth Street)

UNDER THE PIG
ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES
Troy Files
355A Fifth Avenue
(at Fifth Street)

Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market

Saturday May 22 only
Weather permitting

Brooklyn Flea Market

Lafayette Avenue
(Vanderbilt and Clermont Avenues)
Saturday May 22 only
Weather permitting

Tour day ticket sales are at K-Dog (first listing above).

Volunteering for the BH tour, should be fun. Hoping to get some good ideas for the Crackhouse renovation.