New Owners Will Renovate, Keep as Rentals
By Linda Collins
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — The Brooklyn Heights mansion that the Eagle reported was on the market last fall with an asking price of $12 million, has sold for $10,980,000, according to Sandra Dowling of Brooklyn Heights Realty, who has been the exclusive leasing agent for its previous owners since 1990.
The mansion, at 82 Pierrepont St., corner of Henry Street, (and most well known for its somewhat checkered past) is known as the Herman Behr Mansion, named after the industrialist who built it for his family.
It is now a multi-family residential building with 26 rental apartments, according to Dowling, who handled the transaction along with Linda Vanderwood of Halstead Properties.
The new owners, who prefer to remain unnamed for this article, plan to renovate the units — 20 of which are free market units and six are rent-stabilized — and keep them as rentals.
The previous owners converted the building to apartments in 1977.
“People laughed at the time, they considered it a white elephant,” said Dowling. “But then the owners rented every apartment within the first week. And it has remained 100 percent occupied ever since, certainly since 1990.”
Designed by well-known Brooklyn architect Frank Freeman (he also designed the building at 55 Pierrepont and the old firehouse headquarters on Jay Street at MetroTech) and built in 1888-89, the “AIA Guide to New York City” describes the Romanesque Revival-style mansion as follows:
“After Behr, this mansion had a profane and then sacred existence prior to being converted in 1977 into apartments.”
The “profane” part refers to its existence as the Palm Hotel, when in its “declining years it was said to have housed the local madam and her lovelies,” reports the AIA Guide.
The “sacred” part refers to its existence as the Franciscan House of Studies and a residence for the Franciscan brothers, according to the guide. But local rumors state that it was a place for the monks to “dry out,” said Dowling.
The AIA Guide concludes, “Despite the structure’s social vagaries, Freeman’s design remains a distinguished monument on the Heights streetscape.”
The 20,000-square-foot structure has 6.5 stories, additional entrances on Henry Street, an elevator, a couple of small courtyards and several terraces and balconies.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2008
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