For Rent: Idyllic Family Home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

UPDATE: It’s rented!:-)

ASK MY KIDS, they’ll tell you: Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, is a great place to grow up. Especially on Verandah Place, the most coveted block in perhaps the most charming neighborhood in brownstone Brooklyn. It’s a row of mid-19th century brick carriage and mews houses, with a vest-pocket park right across the street and a highly regarded public elementary school two blocks away. Never was there a better street for skateboarding or jumping rope; car traffic is minimal. The river, the harbor and Brooklyn Bridge Park are a few blocks away; so are the best Middle Eastern and Italian groceries you’ll find in NYC.

And how often does a four-story, five bedroom, three bath townhouse with a great garden come up for rent on Verandah Place, especially one that’s just undergone a two-month spiffing up from top to bottom? Not often, let me tell you. If I could afford it, I’d live there myself (and did, for 20 years), but right now, it’s for rent, with a long lease possible.

Our 1850s townhouse is bright and ridiculously charming, full of simple details that characterize its classic architecture: original cove moldings, four-panel doors, rare black marble fireplaces (two working) and harmonious, perfectly square rooms.

Live there, work there — the garden level would lend itself beautifully to use as a studio or professional office, or as a guest suite, play or media room.

The entire house is freshly painted, with newly refinished floors. The kitchen has custom cabinets, honed granite countertop, Sub-Zero fridge and Viking stove next to a large dining room with wood-burning fireplace.

But why take my word for it? Have a look at my many photos, below. The official listing is here. Check out the professional photos on the realtor’s site (especially if you want to see the park across the street), or contact me at caramia447 (at) gmail (dot) com for further details.

P.S. Scroll all the way down to read some quirky factoids I’ve pulled together about Six Verandah Place and its location.

Welcome!

Parlor floor entry. Stairs go down to studio/garden level. Library/den to left, formal parlor ahead to left, beyond classical columns.

Library, den, media room, what have you. 15’x15′. Closet to right, double entry doors.

Come on in to parlor/living room. Door straight ahead leads to wrought iron balcony down to garden.

Major gap here: The photos above show just two angles on a 15’x22′ room with a marble mantel and two six-over-six windows overlooking the garden. Now up we go to the second floor…

Room straight ahead can be used as study or small bedroom. Overlooks garden. I wrote many a magazine article there.

View from dining room into hallway. Staircase, of course, original.

Dining room. About 15’x18′. Marble fireplace burns wood. Knoll credenza stays.

Bathroom on second floor has stall shower, washer/dryer, window overlooking street.

Coming up to top floor landing…

Master bedroom has skylight, arched windows, two closets, overlooks garden, rooftops.

2nd top floor bedroom.

3rd top floor bedroom.

Top floor bathroom with deep soaking tub.

Oh, wait! There’s another whole floor downstairs, on the garden level… and a full storage basement below that.

Two room studio can be used for myriad purposes. Guest suite, playroom, teen hangout, professional office. Another access to garden.

        

Garden-level bathroom has full tub, 1940s green tile.

Private garden with slate patio.

THE LORE OF SIX VERANDAH PLACE

• The house is pre-Civil War, built in the mid-1850s.
• It has more original interior detail than any other on the block (and I’ve been in most of them). That includes 4 marble mantels, cove moldings on the parlor floor, and the staircase/balusters. The ornate fixture in the front entry hall was once a gas fixture and is original to the house.
• Legend has it that the house is part of a row of five, all built by one gentleman on Warren Street for his five daughters and their families. These were not carriage houses, though there are several on the block; they were always one-family houses.
• The house is backwards! (That may be true of the whole row of five.) What is now the front facade of the house was originally the rear facade. If you stand in the garden and look up, you see its full size.
• The house is backwards probably because access was from Warren or Henry Street. There must have been an opening or possibly a road that ran through what is now the back garden in the 19th century.
• The rear parlor (living room) was originally the front parlor. We opened up the hallway and inserted the columns (which are salvaged porch columns) in the late 1980s, shortly after we bought the house.
• We also raised the ceilings on the top floor in the two back bedrooms (when we bought the house, those two rooms were an attic you couldn’t stand up in) and added the three arched windows.
• The kitchen dates from 2000. Cabinetry is custom maple, and the appliances (Viking, Bosch, Sub-Zero, etc.) have all been professionally refurbished.
• Cobble Hill Park became a park in the 1950s. Prior to that there was a church there, and Verandah Place was gated. The church was torn down, and a supermarket was set to go up in its place. The community objected, and the park was created. The sandbox is centered on a unique concrete dolphin that has been there since the ’50s and was preserved in a 1989 park renovation.

Want more info? Email me: caramia447 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Covetable Carriage Houses

MY POST THE OTHER DAY about a mews alley in Cobble Hill re-opened my eyes to the 19th century carriage houses that still exist in Brooklyn — not in great abundance, which makes those that remain all the more special.

The yellow one, top, on Sidney Place in Brooklyn Heights, probably belonged to some wealthy individual who lived in one of the oversized brownstones on the block.

There’s a concentration of large carriage houses along Vanderbilt Avenue in Clinton Hill, below, a major thoroughfare now as it was in the 1870s or ’80s, when these were most likely built. I’m guessing the larger ones on Vanderbilt were the equivalent of commercial garages or bus depots.

Off Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, on Nevins and Bond Streets, there are a few carriage houses of simple design, of a piece with the pre-Civil War brickfront row houses there.

Here’s one of my longtime favorites, below. It’s on Pacific Street between Court and Clinton Streets in Cobble Hill. There are half a dozen carriage houses/garages on that same block, right off Atlantic Avenue, a busy omnibus route in the 19th century.

Mews-ing in Cobble Hill

Cobble Hill Park, Brooklyn

WHAT IS IT ABOUT A MEWS that I (and others) find so irresistible? Nineteenth century brick carriage houses are neither as elegant nor as large as your classic high-stoop brownstones, but in neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, they can cost just as much.

I guess you can’t put a price tag on that sense of being hidden away in a place time forgot, where people never stop exclaiming — even after years of residence — how remarkably quiet it is, how hard it is to believe you’re right in the middle of the city.

Verandah Place, looking west

The dictionary definition of a mews is “a street lined by buildings originally used as stables but now often converted into dwellings.” It’s a chiefly British usage, apparently. In this country, use the word ‘mews’ and you’re likely to hear, “Oh, you mean that little alley with the cute brick houses?”

I should know about living in a mews. For twenty years, from the mid-’80s until a few years ago, my family lived on Verandah Place in Cobble Hill, in a house we still own. There are other carriage houses in the neighborhood, but it’s the only mews (Brooklyn Heights has three that I can think of: Love Lane, Hunts Lane, and Grace Court Alley). I remember the original ad that brought us to the “coveted mews block,” and how I knew instantly that yes, I would be happy there. It was an ideal place to raise kids, on a traffic-free lane perfect for skateboarding and ball-playing.

Only a few of the houses were actually stables or carriage houses, with doors wide enough for carriages to enter. A couple still have intact pulleys, used for raising bales into the hayloft. The rest were small working-class dwellings. Ours is one of five built in the 1850s for (legend has it) the daughters of a homeowner on neighboring Warren Street.

There wasn’t always a park across the way. Until the 1950s, there was a church, and Verandah Place was gated. (I’d love to know where the name came from and whether some of the houses had verandahs. I’ve never seen them in a mews, but cast-iron balconies were not unheard-of in the area). The church was torn down, and a supermarket set to go up in its place. The community objected, and Cobble Hill Park was created in the 1960s.

I was reminded of the international appeal of the mews when I saw the one in central London, below, in last month’s New York Times real estate section. The pink house, once a stable, has 2BR and 2 baths and is on the market for the equivalent of $2.4million, more or less what the Cobble Hill mews houses would go for today. Click here to read all about it and see a slide show of the interior. 

Prospect Heights: It’s Not All Brownstones

I’M STILL HAPPILY DISCOVERING my new neighborhood of Prospect Heights, and haven’t even scratched the surface. It’s been too cold to walk around just for fun. I’ve seen only the blocks immediately adjacent to mine, and the main avenues, where I shop, eat, and do my errands.

I’m starting to appreciate Flatbush Avenue. Along this stretch of it, leading up to Prospect Park, there are large brick apartment buildings that must have been quite elegant in their late 19th century day. Today’s tacky stores detract from the street level, but if you look up, you see a bit of history. The date, the building’s name, and the cornice detail, top, suggest the Prospect View must have been a very desirable address.

The square turret on the late Victorian building, above, is like something out of Peter Pan, which is not atypical of the area.

The former carriage house, above, however bastardized, is a reminder that Flatbush Avenue was once the main route for horse-drawn vehicles, first carriages called omnibuses, then horsecars, which ran on tracks. They carried the residents of the developing areas around Prospect Park, which opened in 1873, down to Fulton Ferry landing where they could catch one of 1,200 boats a day to Manhattan.

Plaza Street rims Grand Army Plaza, a majestic traffic circle with an unoriginal triumphal arch and an extraordinary 1932 fountain with figures of Neptune and the Tritons (best photographed in spring, when the water’s on). On Plaza Street, pre- and post-war apartment buildings, above, alternate.

The controversy has died down over Richard Meier’s 1 Grand Army Plaza, above, a glazed behemoth that is a century newer than any other building in the area. When modern architcture is good, and this assured, subtly complex building is very good, it’s welcome in my book.

The main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, above, is apparently considered one of the most important Art Deco buildings in America. It has a concave facade designed to fit around Grand Army Plaza’s oval contours. Ground was broken in 1912 for a Beaux Arts building similar in style to the nearby Brooklyn Museum, but costs and city politics slowed construction (so what else is new?) By the time construction recommenced in 1938, styles had changed and new architects were commissioned. It opened to acclaim in 1941.

Between the grand portals, below, with gilded figures from history and myth, and the inscription

Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts and noble things that tower above the tide, the magic word that winged wonder starts, the garnered wisdom that has never died

the library is an inspiring destination on a bitter cold day.

After a day of local errands, I like to stop into Pequena, below, a colorful and high-spirited Mexican restaurant on Vanderbilt Avenue. I assume the festive lights are seasonal, but maybe they’re a year-round fixture. How should I know? I’m new in town.

Whole House in Cobble Hill Can Be Yours Tomorrow!

KNOW ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO RENT a 5BR, 3 BATH TOWNHOUSE in Cobble Hill? A truly special four-story house, on a coveted park block, with great light, two working fireplaces, a high-end kitchen, wood floors, lots of original detail, and a delightful garden?

That would be mine. It’s been vacant for two whole weeks, and I’m getting nervous.

Sure, I was smug a few months back, sitting pretty with my rental property 100% occupied, crowing about the strength of the rental market. That was when I thought I could, as usual, segue easily from tenant to tenant. That was before this damn recession affected me personally.

I even had the nerve to start a blog subtitled “Old Houses for Fun and Profit.” Well, forget the profit. With the Cobble Hill house unrented, my monthly income is suddenly halved, and there’s no fun in that, either.

I thought I was doing everything possible to rent the place, listing it with several brokers and painting the house top to bottom. But I haven’t tried blogging about it until now.

So: if you are (or know someone who is) a large, solvent family in need of an extraordinary dwelling in a prime Brooklyn neighborhood to the tune of $8,000/month — a lot of money, granted, but it’s also a lot of house — e-mail caramia447@gmail.com without delay, and save a hefty broker’s fee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE LORE OF VERANDAH PLACE

A few quirky tidbits about the house and its location:

• The house is pre-Civil War, built in the 1850s.
• It has more original interior detail than any other on the block (and I’ve been in most of them). That includes 4 marble mantels, parquet floors on the parlor floor, cove moldings on the parlor floor, and the staircase/balusters. The ornate fixture in the front entry hall was once a gas fixture and is original to the house.
• Legend has it that the house is part of a row of five, all built by one gentleman on Warren Street for his five daughters and their families. These were not carriage houses, though there are several on the block; they were always one-family houses.
• The house is backwards! (That may be true of the whole row of five.) What is now the front facade of the house was originally the rear facade; that’s why the front is unimpressive.  If you stand in the garden and look up, you see its full size.
• The house is backwards probably because access was from Warren or Henry Street. There must have been an opening or possibly a road that ran through what is now the back garden in the 19th century.
• The rear parlor (living room) was originally the front parlor. We opened up the hallway and inserted the columns (which are salvaged porch columns) in the late 1980s, shortly after we bought the house.
• We also raised the ceilings on the top floor in the two back bedrooms (when we bought the house, those two rooms were an attic you couldn’t stand up in) and added the three arched windows.
• The kitchen dates from 2000. Cabinetry is custom maple, and the appliances are all status symbols (Viking, Bosch, Sub-Zero, etc.)
• Cobble Hill Park became a park in the 1950s. Prior to that there was a church there, and Verandah Place was gated. The church was torn down, and a supermarket was set to go up in its place. The community objected, and the park was created. It was renovated in 1989.