Real Estate Monday

While we're on the block looking at a Pontiac, let's stick around for today's listing.  194 9th went on the market early last year, with Ideal Properties acting as the brokers. Over the course of the year the price bounced around between $1.699 & $1.499 million.  A few days ago the Ideal sign came down and I figured it was sold.  I was a bit sad, because I've always had a hankering for this place.  It hadn't sold though.  It's now a multiple broker listing, back again at $1.499, Sadly, the current reduction does not make my purchase of this property any more likely.

194, between Second & Third, is fronted by a hot dog store  The tiny store was formerly an auto repair shop, and the building it housed contains living space today.  This structure, I think, dates from the 30s.  I've often dropped by for a hot dog here and dreamed about quitting my normal work routine & setting up behind the counter.  The real draw when I stop though, is the older back house behind it.  You can see it if you look through the side gate & down the alleyway.  From pictures on the brokers' sites, it looks like any traces of original detail inside the house are long gone, perhaps the result of work in the 90s.   The Ideal photos show this clearly, but even the sorry looking newer shots don't put me off.  I can still use my imagination.

Imagination won't buy a house though. Another issue might be the lot next door, currently used for parking, but surely a prime development target.

Here's 194 fifty five years ago, when the auto shop was still around, and when it was bordered by buildings on both sides.

Photograph by John Morrell - Brooklyn Historical Society (Brooklyn Visual Heritage)



And across the street, a beautiful old wooden house.

This is one of my all-time favorite houses close to home.  I'd take it over an up-the-slope grandee brownstone any time.  It looks as if it's stood on 9th for a good while, maybe from the mid 1800s, certainly well before those park block lots were filled in.  It's practically under the viaduct, and you'll see it from above when you ride the train between Fourth & Smith.  It seems to have survived eighty years of Culver vibrations quite nicely.