Rainy Night in Brooklyn

WHEN IT’S DAMP AND DRIZZLING AND DARK BY 5, and some trucker has sideswiped your car and taken off your driver’s side mirror, and you find yourself walking home in the rain from an auto body shop in gritty Gowanus, you’ve got to seek out beauty wherever you can find it (or become powerfully depressed).

A pretty iron railing, a rare gem of a 19th century wood-frame row house with a mansard roof, the warm light emanating from the windows of a brownstone parlor, whimsical stone faces carved in a Romanesque facade…

a purple painted doorway in a montone row of brown stone, a crazy turquoise bay on an otherwise somber apartment building…there’s plenty to smile about, even through the raindrops.

Things are changing in Gowanus, signified by the coming of Whole Foods, announced yesterday. A movement associated with the Park Slope Civic Council, Future of Fourth Avenue, hopes to beautify what seems a hopelessly ugly strip, below.

Within three blocks of the body shop, where used to be other auto body shops and a church called Jesus Never Fails Church of God, there’s the welcoming Bar Tano, on the corner of Third Avenue and 9th Street; the three-month-old Michael & Ping’s which bills itself as modern Chinese (the decor may be modern, the food seems about the same); and a tin-ceilinged pie shop called Four and Twenty Blackbirds, filled this afternoon with laptop-wielding hipsters with a hankering for homemade bourbon sweet potato, honeyed pumpkin, or caramel apple pie ($4.50/slice). I resisted.

Romanesque Revival mansion on Sterling Place and 7th Avenue, Park Slope

I’ve been reading about the history of my new neighborhood, Prospect Heights. It boomed in the decade between the 1873 opening of Prospect Park and the 1883 opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Horse-drawn omnibuses plied Flatbush Avenue from Fulton Ferry landing, from which 1,200 ferry boats a DAY made the crossing to and from Manhattan.

Romanesque Revival apartment building, Prospect Place near Flatbush Avenue, Prospect Heights

Romanesque Revival style prevailed, with hefty arches over doors and windows, and terra cotta facades heavily carved with flora and faces and other motifs (maybe because Chanukah starts tomorrow, I kept seeing six-pointed stars, below).

Brooklyn is rich in architectural decoration. That’s even more apparent now that I’m living deep in late-Victorian territory. There’s always something new to notice.

Above, Disgruntled, apprehensive, rageaholic: three faces from the facade of the red Prospect Place building above.

Anybody care to venture a guess as to who these gargoyles were, and why they look so pissed off? Were the faces modeled on real people? They look anything but generic.

1820s Farmhouse + 24 Acres + Nursery Business 899K

HERE’S AN OLD HOUSE THAT COMES WITH A NEW LIFE, should you be in the market for one. Loomis Creek Nursery in Columbia County, N.Y., was well-known to me in my years of gardening upstate. It was a boutique nursery with out-of-the-ordinary offerings and fantastic annual display borders. Its owners are re-locating to the West Coast and the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle, which includes an 1820s farmhouse, is for sale.

Read all about it in the broker’s listing, below:

Successful high-end nursery and landscaping business ideally located in southern Columbia County is now being offered for sale on 24 acres, with an 1820s farmhouse, a pool and several outbuildings. Branding and customer following have been well-established in the 8 years of operation. This turn-key business is offered with all of the equipment, inventory and initial consultations essential to the continuation of this profitable venture.

In keeping with the mood of this bucolic setting, the charming 2906 sf, 3 bedroom, 2 bath 1820s farmhouse, surrounded by terraced decks and meandering stone paths, is landscaped for privacy. There is an in-ground pool with a poolhouse tucked away on the other side of the road, 2 barns, and a garage – all eclectically and beautifully landscaped. Featured on The Martha Stewart Show, in The New York Times, on such blogs as A Way to Garden and Rural Intelligence, and The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Tours.

Click here for a PDF with lots more photos.

For more info: Kathy Duffy | 518.822.0800 x11 | email

I Get Around

Fine row of 19th century storefronts, Northern Liberties, Philadelphia

I’VE BEEN MOVING AROUND SO MUCH LATELY, my head is spinning. Hence the random assortment of images in this post.

A few days after moving into my new apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, I took off for a week in Maui. I was back in New York all of two days before heading down to Philadelphia to meet a new tenant and a painter.

Federal-era corner building in Northern Liberties, Philly, now a popular brewpub

Got to hang out in Brooklyn another couple of days…

Flatbush Avenue’s own Flatiron building, near Bergen Street

where I did much of my Thanksgiving food shopping at Damascus Bakery on Atlantic Avenue it Brooklyn Heights. It has become a full-service Middle Eastern grocery in recent years. I went there primarily because Sahadi’s, the old standby, was mobbed, but I’ve since decided I much prefer the offerings (below) from Damascus anyway — all tops.

Meanwhile, Sahadi’s opened a pop-up holiday gift store, below, on the same block, for those food gifts (pistachios, dried fruit, candies, sticky baklava…) everyone likes.

Then I high-tailed it to Ancram, N.Y., in Columbia County, for a high-spirited Thanksgiving weekend with cousins.

Impeccable three-story eyebrow colonial, Ancram

Quintessential Hudson Valley dairy barn, late 18th c.

Hope you all spent a satisfying Thanksgiving with people you love.

Monticello Yellow + Orange Options

I’VE NEVER BEEN TO MONTICELLO (note to self: go), but I knew Thomas Jefferson’s dining room was famously aqua (a color, in Colonial times, said to aid digestion). Recent research showed that the iconic blue dining room was later whitewashed for about a decade, and then painted an intense yellow in TJ’s last years.

Last June, the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation stepped forward to sponsor the re-painting of the dining room, above, as part of an ongoing restoration of parts of the house. Now Monticello Yellow is available to all. I smugly observed that it’s close to the Benjamin Moore “Dalila” I picked for the living room in my new Brooklyn apartment — even more vibrant.

With confidence in my color sense boosted, I began searching “orange bedrooms,” as I’ve decided pink is not going to work for my bedroom or me at this time. The ones below are inspiring.

Interior Design Schools

Southern Accents

Below, the master bedroom in a Brooklyn Heights townhouse belonging to interior designer Kathryn Scott. The color is Ralph Lauren’s Hot Orange, and I’m going to give it a try when I can get to a store that sells Ralph Lauren’s complete line (Home Depot no longer does).

Along with Tangerine Dream, Pumpkin Patch, Sunbaked Orange….I’ll get it right yet.

Nice to Meet You, Prospect Heights

I’M RE-ACQUAINTING MYSELF WITH BROOKLYN after an absence of a year-and-a-half, and discovering my new neighborhood, Prospect Heights. It’s hardly major culture shock, since I lived in Brooklyn most of my adult life, but still, there’s a learning curve. A person has to figure out where the nearest laundromat is, which delis carry soy yogurt, exactly what time you have to re-park your car after double-parking on alternate-side days in order to nab a spot, and so on.

Sure, I rented this apartment largely for its proximity to the Brooklyn Museum, the botanic garden, and the public library, but right now, the quotidian stuff is taking precedence.

Typical Prospect Heights limestone

This morning I joined the pre-Thanksgiving madness at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, though all I bought was a bunch of eucalyptus (I’m going upstate for the holiday and not doing major cooking). Then I went to a 12:30 class at Shambhala, a storefront yoga studio three rather long blocks away, where I was the oldest by far (I tend to be conscious of these things). This neighborhood is young, something I never felt in Springs, where gray-haired people like me go to retire.

I had lunch at my go-to café, Milk Bar (where I also raised the median age considerably), and popped into Met Food for staples. Everything I need is right around the corner, either on Vanderbilt or Flatbush Avenues – banks, drug stores, about seven dry cleaners, hardware, shoe repair – convenient as hell, yet neatly tucked out of sight of my handsome landmark block.

Then I went to Pintchik, the venerable paint store, for yet another paint sample. I’m homing in on a color for my bedroom. With the yellow living room, below, a great success (according to everyone who’s seen it), I feel I need something equally strong for the bedroom.

I started in the coral family, moved to pink, and now I’m thinking red/orange. Clearly it will be on the warm side of the color wheel, but nothing so far feels right. The Pintchik guys will get to know me well.

Of course, as I made my rounds, I checked out the row-house architecture on surrounding blocks and was fascinated by how the styles differ from older neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, and Boerum Hill, which are filled with Federal and Greek Revival brickfronts and classic brownstones. Here in Prospect Heights it’s more varied, stylistically, and closer to turn-of-the-20th-century, with lots of limestone.

Looking at the decorative detail on a short stretch of Prospect Place between Vanderbilt and Underhill, I saw several carved faces in the lintels above doorways, something I never noticed much before. It must have been a late 19th century thing; the one below even looks like a mad Teddy Roosevelt.

I’m back in Brooklyn, but in some ways it’s a whole new world.