House of the Day: Woodframe on Middagh
While the exterior of this house looks like it belongs in Greenpoint, it’s actually located on one of the more charming streets in Brooklyn Heights. We hope the next owner of this house has enough dough to do the renovation justice. While the house has more of a 1970’s suburban vibe right now, the potential,…
While the exterior of this house looks like it belongs in Greenpoint, it’s actually located on one of the more charming streets in Brooklyn Heights. We hope the next owner of this house has enough dough to do the renovation justice. While the house has more of a 1970’s suburban vibe right now, the potential, especially given the extra-wide lot, driveway and carriage house, is amazing. With an asking price of $2.395 million, it looks to us like you could put close to a million bucks into fixing this place up and be in a decent place investment-wise. Do others agree or has old Brownstoner lost his marbles?
72 Middagh Street [Corcoran] GMAP
I hear you, Shahn, we’re on the same page. I agree with Naomi too, I was just more long winded and less detailed.
Me again – you have to look beyond the obvious, all of what you mentioned is easily gotten rid of and changed.The house is worth saving.
I’m sorry it’s not in the historical district, for some reason I always thought all of the Heights was a historical district. That doesn’t bode well at all.
Actually the listing says it is in the historic BH district but not landmarked. They probably did not landmark this particular building because of the changes to the exterior.
While the restoration may look 70’s ish, that’s cosmetic (at least insofar as the kitchens go). I grew up with that stuff to and hate it. It’s easy enough to get rid of the dark panelling and boring wallpaper. Takes vision and imagination to see the beauty of this house. It’s a federal house so you wouldn’t expect to see all the woodwork and ornate detailing anyway. And I would keep the little underpass- it’s a rarity and adds to the charm. It’s a far cry from a piece of c**p!
I wasn’t suggesting that it should be demolished, CrownHP, only that at that price it seems to be what will inevitably happen. The fact that the building somehow escaped Landmarks’ benevolent jurisdiction doesn’t bode well for it either.
I argree with you that it would be great if more people fantasized about what an ugly house could be with a little work rather than how large their bank account could be by developing the site. Love, unfortunately, is far more expensive than practicality.
We’re with Naomi
To be clear– the house itself is certainly worthy of restoration, I’d just tear out everything non-original and use the resulting gutted space as my starting point.
Although its hard to tell from the little pictures whats going on re: original details, this looks to me like it was a fairly extensive 70’s restoration. Doesn’t look to me like theres much there there. The floors are original, certainly, but the rest? I suspect that there is a lot of drywall and replacement woodwork (molding & doors), not to mention the stripped fireplaces. In any case, anyone who could afford this place to begin with hopefully wouldn’t feel limited to restoring this restoration.
Is anyone attending the open house? Knock on some walls, take a close lookm and report back to us.
not sure how anyone can call the interior “charming”. it looked like a house I grew up in on LI with the horrible dark paneling and the boring kitchen with wallpaper. Ther is nothing charming about this piece of cr**. There are other “charming” houses on the market worth preserving and being proud to call a Brooklyn Heights Historic Landmark…
The listing says the house is NOT in the BH Historic District. Nevertheless, IMO it would be a real shame to tear it down even if it IS possible.
Shahn,
Since I don’t have the money to work on my own house, let alone buy a big bux place anywhere else, I was just speaking hypothetically anyway. Apparently there are lots of really rich people out there, as evidenced by some of the prices we’ve seen on this site, and with all of the luxury housing going up in NYC, so I was just hoping that one of them would go for it. I have no problem tearing down something that is hopeless, but you, of all people, should know that almost anything can be restored, with time, expertise and a pile of money. The worst part of the house is the exterior siding, who knows what’s under there, it could be the original clapboard in pretty decent shape, as Bx2Bklyn said.
Houses on Mittagh are among the oldest houses in Brooklyn, New York City,even, and it would be a shame to tear it down, unless it was structurally unsound. Once gone, it’s gone for good, and that will be one less Federal house in New York, which doesn’t have that many to begin with. I’m sure that the price is over-inflated, most RE is anyway, but I hope someone with vision takes it on.
I was just fantasizing what could be done – “if I were a rich man/woman”. Deedle deedle.