The Architect Was Also The Client
On October 23, 1886 the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide logged Plan 1633 for a row on the south side of Hancock Street east of Marcy Avenue. The architect named on that filing was Montrose W. Morris, and so was the owner. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's profile for 236 Hancock Street, Block 1839, Lot 5, repeats it: c. 1886, architect and builder Montrose W. Morris, original owner Montrose W. Morris. Within two years of opening his office in 1883 he had bought this ground and developed it himself.
Queen Anne, Not Romanesque
Hancock Street does hold some of Brooklyn's finest Romanesque Revival rows, but they are other buildings: Nos. 222 to 230 and Nos. 273 to 285. This one is Queen Anne, in red brick, brownstone and terra cotta. It is one of five houses at 236 to 244, composed A-B-C-B'-A'. Morris filed No. 238 a year earlier, probably as a model, then filed the other four. As an end house, No. 236 frames the row: three full stories to an elaborate cornice, an arched tripartite window with a recessed loggia alongside it on gargoyle brackets under a tiled ceiling, and at the first story pilasters carrying a classical frieze of putti above a brick box stoop with classical relief. The pitched roofs and buttressed dormers belong to the three houses in the middle.
The Lot Next Door
The lot is unusually wide: 41.5 feet of frontage over 4,560 square feet, against a building only 20 by 48 feet. LPC explains the arithmetic. This lot absorbed the site of 234 Hancock Street, built as one of a pair with 232, and 234 was Morris's own house, where he lived with his wife Florence until his death in 1916 and welcomed clients who came to see his work in the neighbourhood. It burned in the 1960s. The grassy west yard is its footprint.
The Record, And One Open Question
236 to 244 Hancock Street is the cover photograph of the Bedford Historic District designation report, LP-2514, Designation List 485, adopted December 8, 2015. The house is a contributing building in that district and not an individual landmark. At the 2015 survey the cornice, the primary door and the stained-glass transoms at the first and second stories were still historic; the windows were replacements and a fire escape crossed the facade. City records log alterations in 1991 and 2015, and class the building C1: a three-story walk-up, seven residential units, 2,880 square feet.
