House of the Day: 51 Midwood Street
Midwood Street is the gift that keeps on giving! A couple weeks ago we spotlighted 66 Midwood, which recently hit the market for $1,849,000; that was on the heels of #20, #22 and #77 all hitting the market in recent weeks and months. Believe it or not, yet another beautiful house on the street is…
Midwood Street is the gift that keeps on giving! A couple weeks ago we spotlighted 66 Midwood, which recently hit the market for $1,849,000; that was on the heels of #20, #22 and #77 all hitting the market in recent weeks and months. Believe it or not, yet another beautiful house on the street is up for sale! 51 Midwood (which one knowledgeable insider tells us is the nicest of the lot) is asking $1,600,000. The 4,000-square-foot pad has some top-notch woodwork as well as a remodeled kitchen going for it. Which of these babies do you think will cross the finish line first?
51 Midwood Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
The best way to use the space is to use the dining room downstairs as originally intended, as Bob Marvin says. The center stair hall can be used as a library, music room, office, place for a collection, or something like that. The rear family room is the living room. The front parlor is for entertaining Jehovah’s Witnesses. The original butler’s pantry is where you store the punch bowl and mother’s china, and it comes in handy for catered affairs for 300. The only thing I am not sure of is what you do with six bedrooms. This house could work very well for a religious family with lots of children — including the second kitchen.
so whats the inside story on Midwood strret – why the mass exodus?
Aw, shucks BoerumHill!
Thanks
I considered a house with this type of parlor floor arrangement but ultimately decided against it because I couldn’t figure out how to make the layout work. If you use the parlor floor as originally intended (front parlor, stair hall, dining room), then you end up with a huge dining room but two really small potential living rooms (the front parlor here is probably only about 14.5 feet long, not counting the bay, and it’s hard to furnish the stair hall because you need room to circulate through it). If you use the parlor floor as shown in the floorplan, then you have a small front parlor and a big rear parlor, but the dining room won’t really accommodate a table for 6 (because of the circulation issue) and it’s far from the kitchen (i.e., the butler’s pantry). It’s all pretty to look at, but not very practical.
Agreed, Bob (minus the “it’s” for its) 🙂 Contracts not yet fully signed at 77 Midwood, but no open houses since April, so they must be ironing things out there.
Every Brooklyn neighborhood should have an ambassador as knowledgeable (and affable) as Bob Marvin. You’re like Marty without the over-the-top schtick.
This is a co-exclusive with BHS: http://www.bhsusa.com/brooklyn/midwood-street/townhouse/1227369 The BHS listing has nicer photos in my opinion – why Corcoran went with those bizarro close-ups is beyond me.
And there are two kitchens. The one on the parlor floor was recently redone and is gorgeous (in the space Corcoran calls the butler’s pantry) – it’s not large but it’s perfect for entertaining on the parlor floor. This house was on the house tour last year or the year before and is lovely throughout.
My understanding is that 77 found a buyer after one open house, so the race to see which will cross the finish line first is over. I think I’m the “insider”who said that this is the nicest of the lot and I really do believe that, although my opinion is influenced by the simple fact that I know this house (and it’s owners) better than the other three on Midwood I. I do really like the kitchen and, having lived with a similar configuration for 36 years, very much prefer having the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor (where the builders intended them to be in 1898).
I’ve been thinking a lot about these four Midwood I houses being priced so high. My first impression was that the asking prices were wishful thinking but, with 77 Midwood selling so rapidly, I think something else is happening and that PLG, in general, and Lefferts Manor, in particular, are now being seen for what they are in their own right, rather than as a less expensive alternate to other brownstone neighborhoods, even though these four houses ARE still priced considerably lower than comparable houses elsewhere.
Lefferts Manor,with it’s unique (for brownstone Brooklyn) single family covenant and zoning has so much going for it in it that IMO these asking prices are justified, even in the face of flat prices elsewhere. I write that even though I’ve personally emphasized my neighborhood’s relatively low prices for the last generation. Things are really changing.
last one out’s a rotten egg and dart 🙂