Real Estate

Crown Heights Brownstone With Decked Out Dining Room, Window Seat, Mantel Asks $1.45 Million

The single-family townhouse hasn’t been on the market in over 60 years, and it shows in both the untouched details and rough edges.

by Stephen Zacks

01/02/2019 3 minute 0

This one falls in the needs-love category. A single-family townhouse at 1164 Union Street has a barrel-fronted brownstone facade with Ionic columns on either side of wrought iron double glass doors, with understated fluting and foliate panels around the windows.

It was built 1913-1914, when construction was booming in the area, anticipating the opening of the subway system stretching across Brooklyn. The Nostrand Avenue tube finally opened on August 2, 1920, and well, that was another time.

The brownstone hasn’t been on the market in over 60 years, and it shows in both the untouched details and rough edges. The trees in front are overgrown enough to obscure the front entirely from Google Street View, which could fill the windows with green in the summer.

Inside, the parquet floors need refinishing, and fresh paint wouldn’t hurt. The home is rich in original and luxurious features, which appear to include a stair hall with fireplace flanked by built-in bookcases, pocket doors, and dining room replete with wainscoting and coffered ceiling. The wood moldings, picture rails, and window trim look to be in good condition, and there’s a window seat in the upstairs window bay.

The builder advertised houses on Union Street (and other houses they were building at the time) as “easy housekeeping houses” and noted that they were near the Eastern Parkway subway line, then under construction. (Imagine it’s like the Los Angeles subway expansion, which is investing $120 billion in new lines, while New York struggles to come up with funding for a system with six times more riders.)

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With four bedrooms on the second floor, seven closets, 2.5 bathrooms, a dressing area, and an English basement with windows and room for storage and a shop, it’s got plenty of room to breathe. The condition of the kitchen and baths are unknown as there aren’t pictures but the listing, from Bryan Rettaliata and Jessica Buchman of Corcoran, advises to “bring your contractor.”

It seems to be an estate sale. Does the ask of $1.45 million leave enough on the table to put some money into updates?

[Listing: 1164 Union Avenue | Broker: Corcoran] GMAP