Axel Hedman-Designed Bed Stuy Corner Limestone Overflowing With Details Asks $2.75 Million
Here’s an interesting investment property: a sprawling early 20th century townhouse with nine units and a storied past.

Here’s an interesting investment property: a sprawling, Axel Hedman-designed 1899 Bed Stuy house with nine units and a storied past. A four-story corner house with a bowed front, it’s at 139 Bainbridge Street, in the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District.
Brownstoner columnist Suzanne Spellen wrote a three-part story on the house’s history a few years back, calling it “one of the most beautiful on this street of fine townhouses and large mansions.” She outlined its initial incarnation as a single-family home occupied by a clan of prominent Brooklynites and covered its stints as a charitably run home for wayward women and a guest house for the Brooklyn Presbyterian Home for the Aged.
Spellen includes an ad for the then-newly built house touting its “wash basins with Tennessee marble” and the “choice hardwoods throughout.”
At least some of those hardwoods remain, as evidenced by the shot of the entrance foyer, with its columns, wainscoting, fretwork and original balustrade.
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What you’ll find elsewhere is an open question. There’s a beauteous front parlor, with bay windows, stained glass, plaster detailing and a parquet floor, but the rest of it is not pictured, save an unexciting renovated bathroom.
The house — owned by the same family for the past three decades, according to the listing — comprises nine units (all Class A, according to HPD). There’s one two-bedroom, two-bath; two studios, and six one-bedroom apartments, the broker tells us.
There’s a good deal of space — the four-story house measures 22 by 75 feet — and a complication for any potential buyer: an unspecified number of the units come occupied, by tenants on rent-stabilized leases.
Listed by Tricia Lee of Compass, the house is asking $2.75 million, a dollar-per-square-foot price that reflects the leasing setup and possibly condition to boot. What do you make of it?
[Listing: 139 Bainbridge Street | Broker: Compass] GMAP
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