Brooklyn, N.Y. | $2.9 Million
A Dutch Colonial farmhouse, dating to about 1766, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms, on a 0.51-acre lot with an 1899 barn
This property, which is known as the Wyckoff-Bennett-Mont House and is on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the few Dutch Colonial farmhouses in Brooklyn to remain in private hands. Just three families have owned it since it was built by Hendrick H. Wyckoff before the Revolutionary War, as the anchor of a 100-acre farm in what is currently the Madison neighborhood in southern Brooklyn.
Cornelius W. Bennett bought the homestead in 1835, and his descendants remained there until 1982. A 2010 New York Times story noted that his great-great-granddaughter Gertrude Ryder Bennett, who was born in 1901, wrote two books about the house, in which she “recalled watching horse races on Ocean Parkway, visiting the Canarsie Indians, and growing up by kerosene light” because “her grandmother feared both newfangled gas and electricity.” (The house now has these comforts, as well as central heat and air-conditioning.)
In 1983, Annette and Stuart Mont paid $160,000 for the house and all of its contents, which had accrued from previous owners and included antique furniture, quilts, toys, tools and historic documents. Following their deaths, it is in the possession of their children and is being sold with many of the furnishings and artifacts.
The house sits in a parklike lot at the corner of East 22nd Street and Avenue P, near the intersection with Kings Highway. Around the turn of the 20th century, to meet the requirements of a planned street grid, it was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to face west, and its foundation was excavated to create a large, brick-lined basement. Dormers and the columned veranda were added, as well.
Size: 3,000 square feet
Price per square foot: $967
Indoors: Original wide-board floors, sash windows and hardware have survived the centuries, as has paneling described in the application for historic preservation status as “of museum quality.”
A Dutch door with strap hinges and a pair of blue-green bull’s-eye windows opens to a hallway with 250-year-old floorboards. Parlors to the right and left have symmetrical layouts, each with a pair of front-facing windows and an arched, paneled closet on either or both sides of a nonoperating fireplace. (The southern parlor’s firebox is surrounded by original Dutch tiles.) Each parlor connects to a smaller chamber with a pair of windows facing back.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
