House of the Day: 1290 Pacific Street Revisited
When we looked at 1290 Pacific Street a year ago, it was listed with Brooklyn Properties for $1,450,000. Having failed to sell, the 1899 Queen Anne house is now with Corcoran hoping to fetch $1,310,000. Here’s what we said last time: “On the one hand, its a one-of-a-kind house with an impeccable architectural pedigree; on…
When we looked at 1290 Pacific Street a year ago, it was listed with Brooklyn Properties for $1,450,000. Having failed to sell, the 1899 Queen Anne house is now with Corcoran hoping to fetch $1,310,000. Here’s what we said last time: “On the one hand, its a one-of-a-kind house with an impeccable architectural pedigree; on the other, unfortunately many of the people who have that kind of dough to spend aren’t ready to rock Crown Heights yet, historic district or not.” Think it’s got a shot with this lower price?
1290 Pacific Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
HOTD: 1290 Pacific Street [Brownstoner]
Brownstoner:
When I mentioned this house to my brother when it was first posted a year ago, he mentioned that it was one of his fundamental memories of our growing up in Crown Heights during the 1950’s. (We lived one building down the block on Pacific Street.)
Seeing the interior shots is a real eye opener. Back then the house seemed very dark, especially because it was set behind the street and an iron fence. But the big windows, apparently, create a very different character inside.
We never got in the place, not even during Halloween, when we and our pals would go up and down the block hitting up the neighbors. Somehow we knew not to go past the fence, especially after the owner’s gardener chased my brother and his pals off the grounds with hedge cutters one afternoon.
The occupant was an elderly lady who always sat in the window left of the front door. She was there most times of the day, never moving and never saying a word. How old? Looking back I’d guess in her eighties. How long had she lived there? Who knew. But judging from the house and the big black Lincoln always parked in her drive, she was clearly a hold-over from the street’s richer days.
But how could someone live in such a big house all alone? This made her the subject of fascination and conjecture by us kids. Some suggested she was so old that she may have built the whole neighborhood. Others postulated she was crazy. Looking at the interior photographs now and imagining them filled with furniture from the teens and twenties when she may have arrived at the house, I imagine she was one of those Crown Heights ladies of probity and rectitude. The last of a type.
There were a few others like her on the block, including an elderly woman and her mother who occupied an apartment in our building’s twin. Lots of lace, floral wall paper and tea cups. Hushed conversations with my mother as her two boys played on the oriental rugs. Impassive, Victorian expressions in public, smiles and melodious voices in private.
They moved from the block, and we did, too. But the old lady at 1290 stayed put. What happened to her?
When I spoke of 1290 to my brother, the man — now in his fifties — cracked a big grin. He was that kid scrambling over the fence all over again. A small thrilling moment that helps define a childhood. And helping to keep that old lady alive.
Nostalgic on Park Avenue
THL? Where art thou?
Has anyone been inside it? Why so few photos?
goldie…you don’t have to go very far west. In fact just get off of 78 or 80 at the first exit in PA!!!
love it, w/a kitchen overhaul and an airlift to a better location (even in c.h.). if it gets that price, i’ll wear an obama shirt to a wester PA biker bar.
Brooklyn Heights has lovely homes and yet everywhere you turn you see evidence of rent-control hovels left over from when the area was a “low-rent” haven in the 1950’s and 60’s. That was fifty years ago! Neighborhoods don’t change all that quickly, especially with NYC’s rent-regulation laws. People stay put in their apartments until they die. It’s NY. That’s the way it is. Neighborhoods evolve quite slowly although the real estate hype moves at lightning speed.
Crown Heights really has lovely homes… I think it will return to the neighborhood it once was… The bones are already there…
Great house, not great location.
Worth maybe half the asking.
This house is absolutely fantastic. I went to a BP open house quite awhile back. The problem is the block. It’s across the street from a a lot where there’s a lot of loitering. I believe that is the lot where there is going to be a hotel, so this may change.