Building of the Day: 88-94 Clinton Avenue

Brooklyn, one building at a time.

Name: French Flats buildings
Address: 88-94 Clinton Avenue, between Myrtle and Park Avenues
Neighborhood: Wallabout
Year Built: late 1880’s-early 1890’s
Architectural Style: Queen Anne
Architects: Parfitt Brothers
Other buildings by architects: In Clinton Hill-Cornelius Hoagland House, 410 Clinton. Other-Berkeley, Grosvenor, Montague Apts, Bk Hts, St. Augustine’s Church, Grace Methodist Church, Park Slope.
Landmarked: Not yet.

The story: There are some architects who can always be counted on to deliver a great building, and the Parfitt Brothers are at the top of that list. By the last decades of the 19th century, the residential streets of Wallabout were attracting builders of flats and tenement dwellings to accommodate the workers in the nearby factories. It is certainly easy enough to build a decent multiple unit building for the working class, but I applaud the developer who went the extra step to have the Parfitts design three truly beautiful buildings here at the end of Clinton Avenue. The English-born and educated Parfitts; Henry, Walter, and Albert, were masters of a very Anglicized Queen Anne style, and could mix materials and ornament with great skill. These very nice, but basic, brick eight unit flat buildings are elevated by their use of materials and ornament. The stone bands at lintel and sill levels unite the three buildings with undulating lines that carry the eye across the group. So too does the pressed metal cornice, studded with rosettes, that extends unbroken across the group. And then you have the terra cotta trim. The matching panels underneath each window unite the group, and are a fine decoration. The doorways elevate the buildings into another level. Romanesque arched double doorways are lined with elaborate Byzantine acanthus leaf trim, a fine keystone acanthus leaf bracket, and the gorgeous spandrels with Byzantine leaf flora morphing into highly imaginative wolf-headed dragons. I love it! This entire group of buildings has been well cared for, and is amazingly intact, a rare thing in any neighborhood. These should be protected so that future generations can walk by here, unaware, and be in for a rare treat. Here be monsters!