FROM THE PAGES OF BROWNSTONER.COM Corner
Neoclassical row house in Park Slope
Four-bedroom townhouse with modern
interior in historic district asks $4.895M
BY STEPHEN ZACKS
We could write a whole special
treatise on light vs. dark
colors in the visual culture of
Brownstone Brooklyn based
on this four-bedroom house
in the Park Slope Historic District,
part of a row designed
by the prolifi c architect Axel
Hedman. The townhouse at
602 Sixth St. was built circa
1909 in an eclectic neoclassical
style, its pale limestone facade
inspired by the City Beautiful
Movement of Daniel Burnham
and Frederick Law Olmsted’s
1893 World’s Columbia Exposition
in Chicago.
But in contrast to the 20thcentury
white interiors of Le
Corbusier or Richard Meier,
its curved bays and bracketed
cornice, striped with columns
and banded by carved
fl oral panels, have nothing of
the austerity of the modernist
movement. The interior, however,
is another story.
In 2017, the current owners
bought it from the longtime
owner for $3,650,000, and
the contemporary taste for
all-white interiors prevailed
in its renovation. Wood panels
in the dining room got
painted over with the bright
white palette that dominates
everywhere, from the formerly
vintage, now minimalist
white kitchen cabinets, to
the off-white carpeting in the
bedrooms and the hex mosaic
tiles in at least one of the four
bathrooms.
One exception is the media
room, where the owners
COURIER L 20 IFE, DEC. 7–13, 2018 DT
embraced the even more recent
paint-everything-darkgray
trend. Also spared were
the pier mirror in the parlor
and the exposed beams,
stained dark brown, in the
English-basement ground
fl oor. Its front room is staged
as a studio and offi ce with
white epoxy fl oor and a desk
facing the street through bay
windows.
Apart from that, they
changed the light fixtures,
opened skylights, replaced
all but the stained glass windows,
and upgraded the mechanicals,
adding central
air. There is also a new laundry
room, dressing room,
and parlor-floor powder
room.
Technically a two-family,
ROOM WITH A VIEW: This dreamy parlor looks out onto a picturesque
Park Slope block. Compass
the home has a fl exible layout
that can be used as a singlefamily
or as a two-bedroom
top-fl oor rental over an owner’s
triplex.
Listed by Maria Ryan and
Libby Ryan of Compass, the
townhouse is asking $4.895
million.
Is the price warranted?