864 Carroll Street

Your chance to own a piece of history: 864 Carroll Street.

The anchor house in a group of five designed by renowned Brooklyn architect William Tubby, 864 Carroll was built in 1887 as the epitome of the Queen Anne style, imagined by an architect at the height of his illustrious career. The five houses (864-872 Carroll St) in the heart of Park Slope's "Gold Coast" were designed to look to passersby as one large Elizabethan Mansion, showing all the hallmarks of American Queen Anne architecture: Red Brick facades over Rusticated Brownstone bases, custom wrought iron work, slate & terra cotta tile, Roman Arch entrances and sunburst patterns are all on display.

Though designed as a whole, each home has its own unique character touches, with 864 Carroll having the most details of them all. 864 features one of two eyebrow dormer windows peeking out from the attic and the only prominent Oriel Bow window projecting away from the Grand Study, providing panoramic views of the surrounding architecture and foliage. Using a central Winder staircase, Tubby created a sprawling, open floorplan on the Parlor floor that is the goal of Brownstone Brooklyn buyers today. The front room has two of the five decorative fireplaces in the house, plus very large plate & pane glass windows allowing light and air to waft in. Original White Oak Parquet flooring with diamond-in-box borders, high ceilings and an Oak & stained glass entry door are but a few of the period details still intact.

From the front door, you can look through the formal dining room to the kitchen and the flowers in the garden beyond. The Dining room - with its Herringbone floors, decorative mantle and original raised paneling - was originally decorated in a very popular-for-the-time Turkish theme, and the tile accents in the hearth reflect that. The massive kitchen is ready for a chef's touch, and there's even a powder room on the parlor level, a very rare item even today.

The second floor features a large study in the front of the house, an expansive bedroom in the back and the first of your two full baths. Again, original details abound, lovingly taken care of by the same owner for over 50 years. Tubby was ahead of his time when it came to using light: he incorporated not only the 16 square foot stained glass skylight over the stairwell, he also brought a light shaft down to the second floor, ending in a skylight in the 2nd floor bathroom, with a window in the third floor bath. The third floor has three bedrooms, and the aforementioned bathroom. All the bedrooms have large closets. All the bedrooms have their original 5 panel doors.

And on the third floor, behind a small door, up a hidden, L-shaped staircase, lies the real topper: a classic attic with quirky windows (the eyebrow is here) that create living landscape portraits.

Below all this, the basement itself is magnificent - it's the same footprint as the house itself including the extension, with 8+ foot ceilings and its own half bath. If all the room above isn't enough, you still have plenty of floorspace to go.

This is truly an opportunity to own not only a beautifully designed gem, but an actual piece of history as well. (The original owner, a frequent subject in all the New York City High Society pages of the day, eventually fell from grace in a Bernie Madoff style scheme and ended up in Sing Sing. More on that later.)