Building of the Day: 158 South Oxford Street
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy. Address: 158 South Oxford Street, between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue Name: Private Home Neighborhood: Fort Greene Year Built:…
The BOTD is a no-frills look at interesting structures of all types and from all neighborhoods. There will be old, new, important, forgotten, public, private, good and bad. Whatever strikes our fancy. We hope you enjoy.
Address: 158 South Oxford Street, between Hanson Place and Atlantic Avenue
Name: Private Home
Neighborhood: Fort Greene
Year Built: 1860
Architectural Style: Italianate
Architects: Unknown
Landmarked: No, inexplicably
Why chosen: I grew up in a house that looks very much like this. That house is way upstate in central New York, so it always makes me smile to see this one on this block, here in the midst of Brooklyn. Like any good country house, this sits on high ground, overlooking what once was farm country, soon taken over by the rapid growth of Brooklyn. The house, with its beautiful Gothic trimmed porch and symmetrical windows, is a rare beauty. In 2007, this property was on sale for $13 million, with the provision that the house be saved, but the carriage house and adjacent property was to be razed for condo development. That doesn’t seem to have happened, thankfully. The house is on the list for the proposed expansion of the Fort Greene Historic district. With several other significant buildings on this block, I wonder why this block wasn’t included in one of the two historic districts (BAM and Ft. Greene) in the first place. There are only a handful of these houses left, and very few in such good shape. Let’s protect them now, rather then when the ‘dozers are rumbling up the street.
In the 1960s, this was the location of the Ceraso Funeral Home. My mother’s godmother, Anna Ceraso, lived on the top floor, and her son and his family who ran the funeral parlor lived on the middle floor, and the business was on the bottom floor. There were no doors between the floors… you went up a big open staircase between the two upper living areas. Commadre Anna, who was elderly, mainly stayed in 2 rooms on the top floor, and the rest were roped off very elegantly furnished parlors. She always received us in her kitchen, where she served homemade pastry, and my brothers and I would walk in the big hallway and peek into the roped-off rooms. The whole family were really lovely wonderful people.
yes, too bad about the interior but at least the facade is intact and seems quite well kept (hallelujah)! beautiful place. thanks Montrose.
That’s a shame about the interior.
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Interior essentially stripped – tragic.
c
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Ancestry.com 1888 Brooklyn directory yields: “Henry Maddock, crockery, home: 158 S. Oxford”
Special bonus: Maddock’s office was 48 Park Place, across from the hated “Ground Zero Mosque”
What is now known as 158 South Oxford was, in the 1870s and earlier, given as 124 South Oxford. In 1869 William N. Seymour, a Manhattan hardware merchant, was listed at that address, but I cannot work him any further back.
And, if I may interject, Elliot put his pants on one leg at a time.
Christopher Gray
Well, Elliot is sometimes wrong (just look at the Assumption Church from a week or so ago), but 1860 feels about right as an outside date (which means 1850s is within reason too).
Landmark districts were much more restrictive in the early years, hence a lot of stuff was left out in the interest of purity. Recently, LPC has revisited a lot of areas (including Soho, Greenwich Village, Fort Greene, etc.).
Wonderful.
What a lovely house and thank you for the write up. I do enjoy this feature montrose morris. its fun to look at these homes and try to imagine “old brooklyn”. thanks for highlighting these special places.
Which means it was built after some of the rowhouses in Fort Greene, so it was probably not farmland, but just one of the many large estates in the area.