House of the Day: 679 St. Marks Avenue
This one’s not for the faint of heart. This one-time beauty queen at 679 St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights is ready for a gut and asking $400,000 for the privilege. This is priced at about $80 per buildable square foot. (The house is only 2,700 square feet but the 2.43 FAR allows for another…
This one’s not for the faint of heart. This one-time beauty queen at 679 St. Marks Avenue in Crown Heights is ready for a gut and asking $400,000 for the privilege. This is priced at about $80 per buildable square foot. (The house is only 2,700 square feet but the 2.43 FAR allows for another 2,300 square feet to be built.) Is this a good deal? If you think you could condo it and sell the finished square feet for, say, $450 a foot, there’s gotta be some room for profit in the equation, don’t you think?
679 St. Marks Avenue [Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
Does anyone outhere know if the house at 887 St. Mark’s Avenue was destroyed by fire around 1959 or before or what happened to it? One of my relatives lived there way back. But the house is gone now. There is a church there now.
11:27:
Your description of kids playing on a summer’s evening and “throwing shadows a mile long” is exactly what I remember from my Crown Heights’ boyhood.
Are there many things more pleasureful than a good Brooklyn street?
NOP
NOP- I loved your post (gee- you and MM can really compete in the literary dept!) I even saved it to read again. I’m a friend of MM’s so you know I mean that in a good way! Wish I had seen the Betsy Ross in its heyday. Sounds like a lot of the old, incredible apartment buildings the Bronx used to have. those are making a comeback now- especially on the Grand Concourse.
I love these old houses- I grew up in the projects- actually in a great one, Hillside Homes, which is listed as a success story in the architectural guides. It was a wonderful place to grow up- we did have stickball and stoop ball too but something has always drawn me to the old houses. They are very haunting and much more beautiful than a brick box.
I understand why the B’klyn Children’s Museum had to rebuild, but somehow I think that the way museums display things now, the way they teach, the atmosphere takes away all the mystery and wonder that really engage a child and make them want more. I complain a lot about the disneyfication of the imagination- it’s all put out there in a prepackaged form. It makes “imagination” so easy and preformed- but I guess at that point it’s no longer imagination.
Still, every summer I love hearing the sounds of kids on the street running around and still playing kid’s games. Last summer I came home in the late afternoon and the sun had lit up the street so it was very golden, and the kids were running around, throwing shadows a mile long and made the sidewalk look like it was moving. The elderly were sitting lined up in their chairs, both sides of the street and our very well fed colony of cats were crossing the street to eat at the next feast.I don’t know- it just was such a beautful Crown Heights moment- Sad to think that future NYers living in big “luxury” condos won’t know moments like that. the neighborhoods won’t be the same, the light won’t be the same, even our daily interactions won’t be the same. But for now it endures.
NOP, I don’t know if it’s still called that, or its status. Let me do some research and I’ll get back to you on that one.
MM:
So some of the buildings on St. Marks have gone co-op? I wish Brownstoner would post their apartments for sale. It would be a kick to see photos and plans.
Is the “Betsy Ross” at corner of New York Avenue one of these? When I was a boy, it was considered the neighborhood’s best address. I always enjoyed visiting friends there because it seemed so “modern” — even though it was neo-Georgian in style. Wood paneled elevators. Step-down livingrooms. Turqoise tiles in the bathrooms. And at the rear, apartments with spectacular views of Manhattan’s skyline. Real sophisticated living. Or so everyone thought at the time.
NOP
NOP, I have a photograph from the NY Public Library archives, of St. Mark’s Place between Nostrand and New York, when the block only had mansions. They were magnificent dinosaurs from the gilded age. The barn shaped carriage house originally behind the Strauss mansion is the only survivor of that group. A couple of years ago I met a lady who has lived in CHN since the 40’s, and she also told me about the mansion where the library is now, as well as the 2 mansions that made up the Children’s Museum.
Those apartment buildings are still here, of course, but some have fared better than others. Some are well kept co-ops, some very low income warehouses. The larger ones have amazing interior courtyards, lobbies with fireplaces, stained glass and marble. It’s easy to imaging white gloved doormen and elevator operators. It’s also easy to picture kids having a ball running around all of the places you mentioned.
You really need to come visit again. I think you would be pleasantly surprised at how much is still just as you remember.
Thanks again for opening that door of memory that leads to my neighborhood.
BFM:
And too old to at first think of Googling “Tardis.”
Thanks for the reference!
NOP/BCHM
Brenda from Flatbush:
I guess I’m too old to be a geek. What does “Tardis” mean?
NOP/BCHM
NOP, your post is worth a thousand credits’ worth of courses in “urban affairs.” Thanks for that wonderful trip in the Tardis.*
*Geeks will get it.