Brooklyn Heights

Brooklyn Heights’ ‘Asphalt Jungle’ house shows its restored face to the world

May 19, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The tarps have been taken off 113 Willow St., revealing its old-fashioned clapboard façade. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan
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Back To The Future.

A Brooklyn Heights house that was covered with asphalt shingles for at least a half-century has been restored to its classic style of yesteryear — and is showing that old-fashioned face to the world.

The tarps and sidewalk shed that hid 113 Willow St. for months were removed in recent days for the big reveal.

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The newly restored façade of the 1820s-vintage house is there for all the world to see, with sleek gray-bluish clapboard, black window shutters and a delicate cast-iron filigree front porch.

Now the house looks like it did in the 1930s when famed shutterbug Berenice Abbott photographed it. That photo can be found in the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections.

For nearly two years, the Brooklyn Eagle been following the renovation of the “Asphalt Jungle” house, whose nickname came from the ghost-hued asphalt and man-made fiber shingles covering its clapboard façade.

As previously reported, when those shingles were stripped off 113 Willow, the old clapboard underneath them was decayed, and had to be replicated with mahogany planks.

The single-family townhouse is located in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Investor Alain Kodsi of Heights Advisors bought the house through an LLC for $2.9 million in December 2012. Heights Advisors is doing a gut rehab of its interior as well as the exterior fix-up.

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