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January 28, 2005

Starting in the Cellar

There are a couple of things we needed to do before it started getting cold. The most important was the boiler. Lack of heat can lead to structural and cosmetic problems, ranging from burst pipes to cracked plaster. The brand name on the boiler is American Radiator & Standard Sanitary, the precursor to American Standard. The stairs leading down to the cellar are narrow and not much to look at. Since we are on a tight budget, we're afraid they are going to remain that way for the foreseeable future.

In what we can only take as a good omen of things to come, the cellar has a bar that's probably twenty or thirty years old. Our theory is that the cellar was the equivalent of the dorm common room when the house was an SRO and chopped up into tiny apartments. Behind the bar we found a bunch of old paperbacks, so we guess it doubled as the in-house circulating library as well.



There was also an antique harpsichord in the other corner on a small stage. Unfortunately, someone (allegedly a disgruntled tenant who was getting evicted) poured concrete into it so we had the seller remove it before closing. But the stage is still there. Hopefully another good omen.

Posted by brownstoner at 9:45 AM | Comments (8)

January 26, 2005

X Marks the Spot

On Saturday, we did a final walk-through with our pro-bono architect (Brownstoner Sr.) and our General Contractor. In addition to finalizing the contract with the GC, we tagged the walls slated for demo so there would not be any unfortunate mistakes when the sledgehammers come out.

On Sunday, we dug out of our spot in Williamsburg and made our way over to Clinton Hill to do the snow shoveling and salting duty that comes with being a building owner.

Posted by brownstoner at 1:15 PM | Comments (1)

January 25, 2005

A Plethora of Fireplaces

The house has nine fireplaces. Six are marble (all of which need to be stripped) and three are wood. The wood fireplace in the upper right is one of two wood ones on the top floor. This difference likely can be explained by the fact that the top floor was added roughly 30 years after the rest of the house was built. One issue we're having is that none of the fireplaces work right now. We don't want to have to rip open the walls above the fireplaces so we are considering installing gas fireplaces. Any thoughts?

Posted by brownstoner at 11:50 AM | Comments (15)

January 24, 2005

A Little History

The Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the Clinton Hill Historic District offers this description of our house and its immediate neighbors:

"This row is comprised of nine brownstone houses erected 1873-1874. Nos. (redacted) were built by Thomas Skelly, while Nos. (redacted) were the of the builders Lambert & Mason. These three story Italianate houses with basements show details typical of the style, including projecting window enframe- ments, boldly carved foliate brackets supporting triangular door pediments, foliate keystones, parlor-floor balustrades, rusticated basements, and bracketed overhanging cornices. Alterations include a fourth story addition at (Brownstoner's house)...Among the original residents of this well-preserved row were merchant and real estate broker Joseph Almirall at (Brownstoner's house), tobacconist Antonion Gonzalez, painter Alexander Seabury, hardware dealer Joseph Tucker, weigher Theodore R. Brown, lawyer Julius E. Ludden, coal dealer Charles Carroll Smith, and glass dealer George W. Almy."

More recently, the house has been an SRO for at least the past two decades and probably longer. We recently met the former owner of the next-door house who gave us a colorful description of the cast of characters who lived in our place until they were cleared out over the past two years by the woman who sold us the house. It sounds like it was mostly drug dealers--in fact the neighbor was held up at gun point by the drug dealer who used to inhabit the front room on the parlor floor. The rear room on the parlor floor has a bunch of graffiti in the closets--in striking contrast to what is the most ornate room in the house.

We are now days--knock on wood--from obtaining the Certificate of Non Harassment that we need to proceed with the project. This Certificate is necessary to change the Certificate of Occupancy from SRO to one-, two- or three-family. We would not wish this process on anyone, but more on that at a later date. The bottom line is we need the Certificate to be issued in order to get our DOB permits. Barring major disasters, both should happen this week and we should be able to start demolition.

Posted by brownstoner at 6:23 AM | Comments (3)

January 23, 2005

Existing Floorplan

Technically, the Garden level floor is called the basement because it is a couple feet "below grade" and therefore does not count legally as an official floor of the house. The result is that this house is technically considered a 4-story house, even though there are really 5 inhabitable floors. As far as DOB is concerned, then, the Parlor floor is the First floor, and so on.

Posted by brownstoner at 11:20 AM | Comments (17)