From the May 2011 Civic News article, “Ten Years Ago in the Slope (…and 20 and 30, Too), May 2011.” Return to main article.
1981
22d Annual House Tour Offers New Old Houses, Auxiliary Enticements
This year’s House Tour, the twenty-second offered by the Civic Council, will feature not only fourteen splendid historic Park Slope houses of classic Nouveau and Victorian architecture, but several side features, each worth of special attention on its own!
The Brooklyn Museum has made it possible for the Civic Council to offer a free pass to the Museum with each house tour ticket. For those of you who haven’t noticed, or whose memory needs refreshing, the BM is not only a fine piece of Victorian architecture, but has one of the finest collections in the United States.
Guided tours of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Grand Army Plaza will be available. The recreated turn-of- the-century office of The Old-House Journal will be open to visitors. Berkeley Institute will show slides of decorative stencilling techniques, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music will offer a series of musical programs. House tourists may have free refreshments in the Berkeley library, or buy a cocktail at the Montauk Club, one of the Slope’s truly historical institutions, where they may see the mahogany panelling, stained-glass, and frescoes, or watch a magic lantern show.
The houses on the tour are on Lincoln and Berkeley from Fifth Avenue to the Park, and along the avenues between. They include an 1862 farmhouse of yellow clapboard, a classic five-story brownstone of the ’80s with three bathrooms on the ground floor and music-room walls covered with hand-blocked French linen; a living room with flooring pieced together with marble from an old Brooklyn hospital, and topped with 60 feet of white brick arches; and a house which was recently purchased at auction for less than $20,000 (pioneering is still possible in Park Slope!).
The houses include some that are renovated and restored, some in-progress; they reveal parquet, mahogany, and marble floors, pine, tin, and wedding cake-plaster ceilings, elaborate columns, carved woodwork, skylights, fretwork, original wall tiles, rare stained-glass and bay windows. Some owners will be standing by to discuss decorating and renovating.
Tickets may be purchased in advance for $5 each from Iris Fearon […]. Advance tickets include a free copy of The Walk Park Slope Guidebook, as well as the free Museum pass. On the day of the tour — May 17, remember — tickets will be sold for $6 at the Arch at Grand Army Plaza and at the corner of Union Street and Seventh Avenue.
Sanders Theater
The Sanders Theater building at Prospect Park West and Fourteenth Street will be converted to a store on the ground floor with condominiums above.
The UBA newsletter reports that the conversion will include about 20 two- and three-bedroom units costing $90,000 to $100,000 per unit, and will take about a year to complete. No date for beginning the work has been set.
Carroll Street School Expands
The dumpsters outside 112 Carroll Street signal the renovation of that building for the coming expansion of the Carroll Street School. The renovation is to be completed before the fall ’81 school year begins.
In the fall, preschool and kindergarten classes will move into the “new” building. Art, music, dance, and library will also be housed there.
The main building will be used by the elementary school, which will expand during the next three years to include seventh and eighth grade programs (beginning in 1982-83 and 1983-84 respectively).
Dr. Bongsoon Zubay, headmistress, says that Carroll Street will provide a complete program of the highest-quality education, and to expand specialists’ programs for the entire school. Benefits of adding seventh- and eight-grade classes, Dr. Zubay says, are these:
- To provide students with a sense of completion at the end of eighth grade, and an opportunity to proceed directly into high school;
- To place students in a better position for choosing a high school, public or private;
- To serve as a preparatory school by helping upper elementary students prepare for entrance tests to Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Performing Arts, and Music and Art, as well as for John Dewey and a number of independent schools;
- To provide a rigorous academic program under the care of warm, sensitive and professional teachers in classes averaging 15 or 16 students.
The school hopes also to add industrial arts programs, a full-time language program, expanded computer programs, and a typing course.
Methodist Hospital Centennial
Methodist Hospital will celebrate its one hundredth anniversary on May 15 with a series of events, the climax of which will be a dinner party under a giant tent amid the cherry blossoms and ‘giant elms of Prospect Park. After a social hour, musical entertainment, and dinner, the keynote address will be offered by the Honorable Harry Blackmun, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Electoral District
At a recent Civic Council meeting, vice-president John Muir said that, in the geography of American politics, a “community” is or ought to be a “compact, contiguous, and socially unified” area, or a set of social entities — neighborhoods, racial clusters, groups in favor of leaving the district lines undisturbed; others felt the Council should consider taking action to try to alter the apportionment so that Park Slope could function as one political entity.
The Civic News and the Civic Council are eager to hear the opinions of members of the community on this issue.
Park Slope Library Reopens
The Park Slope Library, which has been in temporary quarters at the Knights of Columbus building at Eight Street and Fifth Avenue, closed on April 1 to move back into its permanent quarters on Sixth Avenue at Ninth Street.
The 1906 Carnegie structure has been extensively renovated. A staff member says, “We hope to be settled in our newly renovated home and ready for business in early June.”
Second Mortgages
Greater New York Savings Bank has announced that second mortgage loans are available for the first time in its history in response to New York State legislation which became effective on March 1. Loans have been available to the public since April 1.
Manual Kessman, Chairman of Greater New York, said, “We believe this kind of lending is essential to meet the credit needs of our local communities,” since, he pointed out, the value of most homes in today’s market far exceed the value of their first mortgages. “The current value of the home,” he said. “less the amount of the first mortgage is value that belongs to the homeowner. This equity is collateral against which the homeowner should enjoy borrowing power in the form o[ second mortgages.”
GNY will offer its second mortgage as an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM), based on adjustment of interest rates every one or three years depending on the borrower’s preference, over the underlying term of the loan to a maximum or 20 years.
In other states, Kessman pointed out, second mortgages have proved popu1ar with the public for such uses as payment of college costs, redecorating houses, or paying off other debts.
Baltic Street Vacant Lot
The deadline for proposals to the City Housing Preservation Department for construction on the vacant lot at Fifth Avenue and Baltic Street is April 24, 4 p.m.
Specifications for the proposals are these: a supermarket space, including 120 parking spaces, 66,000 square feet; fifty housing lots for buildings of no more than 44 feet high.
No Section 8 housing will be constructed, though section 8 aid can be applied for after construction. If the housing is condominium, Section 235 funding may be used; if not, conventional financing will be used.
Ansonia Bought
Helmsley-Spear has bought the Ansonia Factory at Seventh Avenue and Thirteenth Street, and picked up the option on the two-story garage across the street from the factory.
Since all this property is commercial, the development of it will displace no one. Residents of the South Slope expect it to do a great deal towards the improvement of the blocks around the factory.