Building of the Day: 170 Madison Street
Brooklyn, one building at a time. Name: Detached wood framed house Address: 170 Madison Street Cross Streets: Bedford and Nostrand Avenue Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant Year Built: Before 1880 Architectural Style: Italianate Architect: Unknown Landmarked: No The story: Most buildings, like most people, live quiet unnoticed lives, special to only the few who are well acquainted….
Brooklyn, one building at a time.
Name: Detached wood framed house
Address: 170 Madison Street
Cross Streets: Bedford and Nostrand Avenue
Neighborhood: Bedford Stuyvesant
Year Built: Before 1880
Architectural Style: Italianate
Architect: Unknown
Landmarked: No
The story: Most buildings, like most people, live quiet unnoticed lives, special to only the few who are well acquainted. This house is one of them. As development began in Bedford, the first houses were wood framed row houses and detached and semi-detached dwellings. From the 1880 map of the block, you can see that at that time, Madison Street was typical of that trend. Most of the houses on this block, between Bedford and Nostrand, are wood-framed.
As time passed, many blocks saw their wooden houses replaced by masonry. On this block, many of the houses were covered over with siding or stucco. More were torn down, lost in the urban mess that was much of Brooklyn in the mid-20th century. Over the last 40 years, infill housing of dubious quality and style replaced what must have been tidy rows of houses, similar to the wood framed rows of Wallabout, the South Slope and elsewhere. The result is a block of eclectic and sometimes awful architecture, upon which this house now stands out as a gem.
It was probably not part of a developer’s row, but was most likely built for the first owner. It was always a stand-alone home. It’s a very attractive Italianate single family home, with a wide and welcoming porch with gingerbread trim, a steeply pitched roof, and an attic. You can find similar homes in towns and cities across America. This one must have belonged to someone of means, due to the size of the lot and the house, which had a large extension that almost doubled the size of the house, as can be seen in the maps, the latest dating from 1904. That extension is still there, in some form. I like this house a lot. It’s a proud survivor, no doubt due to a series of stalwart homeowners.
(Photo:Nicholas Strini for Property Shark)
It has been in the same family since at least the 1960’s. Lets just hope that if it comes on the market in our life time, that it does not get swallowed up as a development site.
Which is unfortunately what the house is worth more as than a single family house in need of restoration & updating, on as you say a “mixed block” of not necessarily beautiful owner occupied houses, which is typically what someone wanting to live in such a house would want.