Building of the Day: 49 Prospect Park West

Address: 49 Prospect Park West, between 1st and 2nd Street
Name: Originally the Henry Hulbert Mansion, now Poly Prep Lower School
Neighborhood: Park Slope
Year Built: 1889
Architectural Style: Romanesque Revival
Architect: Montrose W. Morris, new addition by Platt Byard Dovell White (2005)
Landmarked: Yes, Park Slope Historic District

Why chosen: The first time I saw this house, I admit, I gawped at it like a tourist at the Vatican, it is some house. Much has been written about it, good and bad, but the sheer mass of the place is impressive. It’s actually two houses, the right side, where all of the really impressive stuff is, belonged to financier Henry Hulbert, and the smaller left side was the home of his daughter, Susie, and her husband, Joseph Sutphin, a partner in H. C. Hulbert & Co. This house was Montrose Morris’ largest private house to date, and was commissioned when he was at the height of his Romanesque Revival period, and was busting out as one of only several go-to Brooklyn architects of the uber-rich. While this house was going up, he was also building the Alhambra Apartments, as well as the row houses on Hancock Street on his home block. The house was almost alone here on PPW, which was called 9th Avenue, back then, and it must have looked like a gleaming chateau on the edge of the park. Almost all Romanesque Revival buildings are built in dark brick and brownstone, like the fabulous CPH Gilbert, Adams House, on 8th and Carroll, this house’s only real stylistic rival in the Slope. Morris chose limestone for the Hulbert House facade, pre-dating the White Cities trend by several years. The result is that the details and the texture stand out here, even more than they would in brown: the rough cut ashlar blocks of stone, contrasted by the delicate Byzantine leaf carving, the round and faceted turrets, the bold archways, and the massing of chimneys. Also present are classic Montrose Morris details: the columned loggias, the liberal use of stained glass and wrought iron, and a love of carved detail. Note the dragons curled above the dormers, and in the corners, and the writhing foliage around the face of the Green Men on the front facade.

Inside, the house was furnished with all of the appropriately impressive wood details, grand parlors, fireplaces, state of the art bathrooms, and a billiard room with an upper story gallery. When the various schools that have been in this house for years took over, much of the interior detail was lost, but what is still here is still very impressive. This house was a huge success for Morris, who would go on to design several other large Romanesque Revival mansions in Park Slope, for other millionaires, but this is the only one in that particular style that survives. His later works, in a more Classical Renaissance Revival mode, are also in the neighborhood, most also on Prospect Park West. A modern addition was added to the school in 2005, designed by Platt Byard Dovell White. As the AIA Guide says, it has a lot of respect for the building it is attached to.