Brooklyn Heights’ ‘Asphalt Jungle’ house is for sale — for $12.5 million

Eye On Real Estate

October 28, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Autumn sunlight casts a hazy glow on 113 Willow St., which is now both for sale and for rent. Eagle photo by Lore Croghan

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Rent or buy.

You can go either way — if you’ve got the dough — with 113 Willow St., an 1820s-vintage house that was covered in asphalt shingles for at least a half-century.

The tar-paper shingles looked so out of place on the beautiful Brooklyn Heights Historic District block that we nicknamed the property the “Asphalt Jungle” House.

Alain Kodsi’s Heights Advisors, which handsomely restored the historic house, has tapped Douglas Elliman to market it for sale for a $12.5 million asking price. The listing agent is Alexander Maroni.

Since August, the stunning single-family home with a garden-floor “multi-purpose suite” has been available for rent for a $30,000-per-month asking price, as we previously reported. Brian Lehner of Brown Harris Stevens is handling that assignment.

The house is now clad in gray-blue-painted mahogany planks that are replicas of its original clapboard façade. There’s an eye-catching cast-iron filigree front porch that was added in the middle of the 19th Century.

The $12.5 million asking price matches the sum paid in 2012 for nearby 70 Willow St., where Truman Capote once lived. It remains a neighborhood house-sale price record.