39 Willow Place

The city's lot record dates the building at 39 Willow Place to 1848. Block 260, lot 7. Twenty five feet of frontage on a lot twenty five by one hundred, inside the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. The year is a municipal fact rather than a marketing one, which is not something every house on a landmarked street can say.

The dates around it line up. Two years earlier, in 1846, the four houses at 43 to 49 went up behind a single continuous portico, the last colonnade row still standing in Brooklyn Heights. A year before 1848, the houses at 2, 4, 6 and 8 appear for the first time in the city directories. Willow Place was built in short groups and built quickly, in the Greek Revival that was the working vocabulary of the moment, and number 39 belongs to that run.

On November 17, 1965, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held its hearing on the proposed Brooklyn Heights Historic District. More than forty witnesses spoke in favor of designation. None spoke against it. Otis Pratt Pearsall, co-chairman of the Brooklyn Heights Association's preservation committee, read the inventory into the record: of the 1,284 buildings fronting on streets inside the boundary, at least 684 predated the Civil War, and 405 of them were Greek Revival.

The designation came down six days later, on November 23, as Calendar No. 9, LP-0099. It was the first historic district in New York City. Number 39 is one of the 405. The red brick front, the high stoop on its brownstone base and the dentil cornice along the roofline are the fabric that argument was made about.

The front is the part the record protects. Everything behind it is recent work. Colberg Architecture opened the house up, found the rear wall compromised, and reconstructed it to match what had stood there while meeting current standards, all of it under Landmarks review. Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, security and networking are new throughout.

What came back is roughly 6,000 square feet over five levels. Six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a Plain English kitchen in honed Bianco Carrara, solid white oak floors, original millwork restored in place. The elevation entered into the 1965 record still faces Willow Place. The house standing behind it was made in this decade.