FROM THE PAGES OF BROWNSTONER.COM Now on
A large Colonial Revival with porch
Single-family house with eight bedrooms near Prospect Park asking $2.868M
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COURIER L 42 IFE, FEB. 8–14, 2019 M BR B G
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Mayotte LLC, Arts of
Org. fi led with Sec. of
State of NY (SSNY)
11/21/2018. Cty: Kings.
SSNY desig. as agent
upon whom process
against may be served &
shall mail process to 939
E. 96th St., Brooklyn, NY
11236. General Purpose.
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Call
718.260.2555
To Advertise
Here
BY STEPHEN ZACKS
This single-family Colonial
Revival house is a little bit —
or a lot — of the suburbs stuck
right in Ditmas Park, with its
siding, two-car garage, lawn,
front porch and basketball
net in the driveway. The home
at 1221 Albemarle Rd. has no
fewer than eight bedrooms —
we can’t even imagine what
you need eight bedrooms for
in a single-family house in
Brooklyn, but that’s none of
our business.
One of them is tiny and identifi
ed in fl oor plans as an offi ce.
All we can say is this place is
sprawling, and despite a tidy
renovation, at least one of the
bedrooms, the one with a terrace
on the attic level, seems to
have linoleum fl oors.
The house has two fi replaces,
columned and bracketed
in the Colonial Revival
manner and apparently woodburning,
facing each other
from the far end of two bookmatched
living rooms. There
are parquet fl oors with inlaid
borders, and a bevy of stained
glass windows in the stairwell,
which appears to have walls
with a popcorn fi nish. In the
dining room, a giant fi replace
has been made over into a dish
cupboard.
The kitchen boasts an enormous
commercial range, which
makes sense if the house is really
as full as it asks to be, but
the room doesn’t have nearly
enough food storage. There are,
however, three, count them,
three big living rooms, helpful
for a house with potentially six
or seven (or more) kids.
We speculate the kitchen
was carved out of various pantries
and mudrooms, having
originally been located in what
is now the dining room, with
a butler’s pantry leading to a
dining room in what is now
one of the bay-windowed living
rooms. Either way, it would
be easy enough to restore the
original confi guration or keep
it as is.
Located in the Prospect
Park Historic District, 1221 Albemarle
Rd. refl ected Frederick
Law Olmsted’s ambition for
the design of Prospect Park to
stimulate developments along
neighboring blocks in all directions,
including the furtherest
side from Manhattan. Albemarle
itself is also lined with
Norway maples and punctured
by seven landscaped malls, or
medians.
The home was built for
real estate developer George
W. May in 1904, according to
the designation report, and
designed by the architect
William C. Lauritzen, who
inherited his father Peter J.
Lauritzen’s part in the fi rm
Lauritzen and Voss, but maybe
not his adventurous spirit. Apparently
Peter, having started
off a solid career building
Brooklyn social clubs, ran off
to join the Yukon gold rush
and never returned to architecture,
spending subsequent
years primarily occupied with
billiards — so says a different
preservation report.
The house is described as
a simple hipped-roof Colonial
Revival style that was once
covered with wood clapboard.
The front is defi ned by what
the report called a hipped roof
— partially obscured by the
huge trees — and pairs of Ionic
porch posts. The iron-grille
double doors also survived a
century of big families.
Hard to see all of this in
the photos, but the report says
there’s a peaked-roof dormer
with three windows, a threesided
oriel with stained-glass
windows, and a three-sided
bay and round-arched roof dormer.
With eight bedrooms and
fi ve bathrooms, it’s asking
$2.868 million, and agent Laura
Rozos of Compass knows the
rest. Can you fi nd something
to do with all of that space?
One of the home’s three spacious living rooms. Compass
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