Dean Sage Mansion. Image Credit: CityLand

The owners of the Dean Sage Mansion in Crown Heights North Historic District sought to build addition to the 1870’s mansion. In the mid-nineteenth century the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn underwent suburban development of freestanding villas. Today, only a few of the Sturgis villas remain, one of which is the Dean Sage Mansion at 839 St. Mark’s Avenue, a rare High Gothic style mansion built in 1870 by architect Russell Sturgis. The Mansion, which gained additional wings in the 1930s, is one of only a few of Sturgis’s designs in New York today. (read more…)

Landmarks credited the residents of Crown Heights for generating designation. On April 24, 2007, Landmarks voted unanimously to designate the Crown Heights North Historic District encompassing 472 Brooklyn buildings built between the 1860s and the 1930s.

Landmarks Chair Robert Tierney opened the comments by saying that the importance of the designation became clear to him when he stood within the homes of Crown Heights’ residents and viewed what he called “the strength of the neighborhood.” Tierney credited the residents for spurring the designation, adding that he asked Denise Brown, of the Crown Heights North Historic Association, to speak following the commissioners’ comments. Commissioners Jan Hird Pokorny and Roberta Brandes Gratz both emphasized the extraordinary variety of architecture within the new district, referring to the fact that the newly designated buildings include row houses, mansions and churches built in the Romanesque Revival, Georgian, Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival styles of architecture. (read more…)

Landmarks takes first step towards designation of new, 470-building historic district. On June 20, 2006, Landmarks voted to hold a public hearing on the proposed Crown Heights North Historic District, which will encompass 470 buildings, primarily along Dean and Pacific Streets; St. Mark’s, New York, Nostrand and Bedford Avenues; and Grand Square in Brooklyn.

At the June 20th vote, Landmarks staff provided a synopsis on the area’s transformation from farmland to the rapid row house construction that followed the Brooklyn Bridge’s opening. Among the buildings mentioned were the 1850-55 frame house on Dean Street, the Queen Anne style row houses at 1164-1182 Dean Street, and the New York Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. (read more…)