Bed Stuy Brownstone With Pier Mirrors, Six Mantels, Renovated Kitchen Asks $2.595 Million

Filled with gleaming woodwork, this 1890s Bed Stuy brownstone has some fine original details as well as modern updates.

by Susan De Vries

09/13/2021 5 minute 0

Filled with gleaming woodwork, this 1890s Bed Stuy brownstone has some fine original details as well as modern updates. A renovation of the single-family at 312 Lewis Avenue retained features like pier mirrors, wainscoting, mantels and plaster medallions while updating the electrical, plumbing and HVAC.

It is one of a row of eight three-story brownstone houses with rough-faced stone trim and bracketed cornices designed by architect F. B. Langston for A. W. Blazo in 1890. Langston and Blazo were also responsible for the four-story tenements that bookend the block. Brownstoner’s Suzanne Spellen described Langston as “one of the heavy hitters” of architecture in Brooklyn with houses scattered across Bed Stuy, Crown Height and Park Slope. After apprenticing with Amzi Hill, Langston set out on his own, designing houses that featured a mix of influences, including the popular Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles of the time.

No. 312 seems to have served as an investment property in its early years, with for-rent ads from 1892 through the early 20th century noting its box stoop, brownstone facade and hardwood trim in hazel and sycamore. Early residents of the house were the Alfred E. and Jemima M. Horn family who appear on the 1900 census as renters of the house and then reappear in city directories and newspaper accounts as living in the house again from roughly 1905 to early 1910. Alfred, who arrived in Brooklyn from Liverpool circa 1870, was a manufacturer of a rather specific item: bungs, stoppers used to seal up barrels of beer and other goods.

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Records show that the house had 12 furnished rooms in the 1950s but in 2019 it received a certificate of occupancy after conversion from a two-family to a single. The floor plan is much as it would have been back in the 1890s, with dining room and kitchen on the garden level, double parlors above and two floors of bedrooms.

The parlor level includes a pier mirror and original stair in the entry and another very impressive pier mirror with shelves for bric-a-brac in the front parlor. The rear parlor has one of the six mantels in the house, many of them with overmantel mirrors and original tile surrounds.

At the front of the garden level is the wainscoted dining room with storage built-into a niche and another impressive mantel. Awash in white, the kitchen at the rear has a tin ceiling, subway tile backsplash and Carrara marble countertops. A laundry room and a full bath are also tucked into the garden level.

The upper stories include a street-facing bedroom on the second floor with an en suite bath. The floor also holds another area for laundry (stackables in a closet off the hall), a second bedroom and a full bath with white fixtures and bead-board wainscoting. The four upstairs bedrooms — two large ones and two petite that would work well as home offices — share another full bath.

Outside, the fenced-in rear yard includes a brick patio bordered on two sides by beds filled with bamboo.

The house was a Rental of the Day in 2018 when it was on the market for $8,000 a month. Listed with Morgan Munsey and Perri Defino of Compass, it is asking $2.595 million. What do you think?

[Listing: 312 Lewis Avenue | Broker: Compass] GMAP