House of the Day: 500 Marlborough Road
This new listing at 500 Marlborough Road in Ditmas Park West looks like a lay-up at $1,350,000. The three-story Victorian woodie is in excellent shape as far as the original architectural elements go. (Love those parquet floors!) The bathroom and kitchen also look like they’ve been recently redone in a way that fits with the…
This new listing at 500 Marlborough Road in Ditmas Park West looks like a lay-up at $1,350,000. The three-story Victorian woodie is in excellent shape as far as the original architectural elements go. (Love those parquet floors!) The bathroom and kitchen also look like they’ve been recently redone in a way that fits with the overall vibe of the house. There’s also a shared driveway, to boot. Other than the heating bills, what’s not to like? Is there anything negative we’ve glossed over?
500 Marlborough Road [Mary Kay Gallagher] GMAP P*Shark
I’m a 20+ year resident of the area. This was a planned suburban community with one or two builders using several architects. As orignialy built some had extensive fretwork, built-ins and stained glass. No two houses are alike inside or outside, and quite a few have no detail left. A shared driveway here is unusual.
Whether it’s worth over a million, I can’t say, but if someone is willing to pay the price it’s worth it to them I wouldn’t think of living anywhere else in NYC.
This house is definitely not an Eastlake Victorian, which sounds to me like what you are describing. You’re right- houses built in this era (post 1900) tend to be transitional, although they are still frequently referred to as “Victorians,” by lay people and experts alike.
The block looks like it might be pattern book, but I’d have to research that to be sure. It’s a pretty basic, cookie-cutter design. However, these houses do have, or at least had, a fair amount of interior detail, in terms of carved woodwork and glass. The glass in this house is generous and certainly more Victorian than craftsman.
However, if you are looking for real Victorian follies – try Prospect Park South. Plenty to gawk at there. You can also try Bedford Ave. in South Midwood (turrets and campaniles galore), Ditmas Avenue (in Ditmas Park), and Ocean Parkway (Ditmas Park).
After seeing what lists for right at a million in Ditmas last Summer, I can believe a house fully renovated like this would sell for $1.25 to $1.35. This one is really nice.
However, if we’re talking true Victorians, I confess I’m not all that impressed with the houses marketed as Victorians in Ditmas. There are so little detail in them, compared to other Victorian house stock all around the country. They’re really quite plain, here. Victorians in other cities knock your socks off. Huge rooms with high ceilings, lots of detail on the exterior and interior both. Aren’t the Ditmas houses built later after 1901 when Victoria’s rule ended, and the style became more plain and transitioning into the craftsmen style? I didn’t see the year this one was built, on the listing. I’m not dissing this style of house or its more plain craftsment detailing, which I like, I’m just saying it’s not what I visualize when I hear “Victorian”. I picture the super detailed, huge huge Queen Anne I lived in, in college.
Chicago actually has a ton of brownstones along the Gold Coast, there are also many beauties in the Lincoln Park and in Wicker Park neighborhoods. The city probably has more brick row houses and greystones, but it definitely has it’s share of brownstones.
I think the Brooklyn Borough historian may have qualified his claim with the phrase “contiguous.” That would certainly make sense.
Kuroko!
I LOVE Port Townsend. I was just thinking about it the other day, in fact… But, alas, no – I am pretty sure it doesn’t have a larger number of surviving freestanding single family/two family wood frame Victorian homes than Victorian Flatbush.
As for Victorian Flatbush… one hundred years ago it had more than twice the number of such homes… Entire neighborhoods were swallowed up by apartment buildings after the war. Vanderveer Park, the first such development, was roughly equal in size to what suvived in all of Flatbush today.
Kindly supply your social security number.
Thanks.
Guest at 3:37 –
Sounds like you should put your house on the market, if you’re so unhappy with the neighborhood. What are you asking?
Last time I checked my name really was Erin Joslyn. How ’bout you, Bob Marvin 🙂