A CURE FOR WEALTH ON CLINTON AVE (1895)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Along an avenue shaded with tall oaks and plane trees once sat the home of a rich old recluse who’d been swindled of nearly all of her life’s savings in her declining years. A “tumble down” and “badly dilapidated old three story frame house,” the structure “stood forlornly upon the lot at 439 Clinton Avenue in Fort Greene,” noted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The roof of the house was “surmounted by a queer little cupola, and the whole structure looks as if it might fall in at any moment.” In short, the Eagle sardonically noted, the house looked as if the owner, Mrs. Caroline Barry, had lived in it ever since the death of her husband “without either painting it or repairing it in any way.” The Eagle was likely going a bit over the top with regards to the house’s condition, as it seemed much out of place situated between stately structures of brick and brownstone all along Clinton Avenue. But as the house has been gone for more than 100 years now, it is impossible to know what its actual state was for certain. What we do know, though, is what it looked like from a drawing done by the newspaper and from Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. From the […]
