After Years on the Market, Clinton Hill’s Remarkable Pfizer Mansion Enters Contract

After a long stint on the market, one of Brooklyn’s most beloved homes has entered contract.

Located at 280 Washington Avenue in the Clinton Hill Historic District, the Queen Anne brownstone is referred to as the Pfizer Mansion, and has a colorful history: one of a pair of houses designed in 1887 by Marshall J. Morrill for Charles Erhart, one of the Pfizer co-founders, it was first occupied by Erhart’s daughter, followed by the Brooklyn Public Library and then a Catholic girls school. Eventually, a musician bought it and one of the former members of the post-punk group Killing Joke lived there as his roommate.

It went on the market in 2018 with a price tag of $13.5 million, which dropped to $9.2 million in the most recent listing. It entered contract in April, which was first reported by The Real Deal. 

The home’s most recent owners are well known in the neighborhood and to Brownstoner readers for hosting musical and other events at their home and helping get Clinton Hill’s Greene Hill Food Co-op off the ground. Brownstoner has written about the home numerous times previously, including in the instance when the owners found historic artifacts while doing the renovation. The property is also special enough to have merited its own write-up in the New York Times.

The 25-foot-wide home easily covers the period detail basics — inlaid floors, eight wood-burning fireplaces, leaded glass windows, arched nooks, transoms — and reaches jaw-dropping heights in the level of unique detail. Singular features include a vintage Otis elevator and a room papered in hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper that holds only a bathtub, among others.

[Photos via Douglas Elliman]

Related Stories

• Clinton Hill Mansion With Vintage Otis Elevator, Bathing Room, Parking Asks $13.5 Million
• The Insider: Over-the-Top Mansion in Clinton Hill
• Washington Avenue Pfizer Mansion Sells. Finally!

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