232 Adelphi Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 232 Adelphi Street by Carter Horsley

This handsome, former, 2-story, church property at 22 Adelphi Street between Willougby and DeKalb avenues in Fort Greene was erected in 1888 and converted to 12 rentalapartments in 2015.

Originally, it was the St. Mark’s Protestant Episcopal Church that was founded in 1949 as a chapel of Holy Trinity P. E. Church in Brooklyn Heights and subsequently St. Michael’s Episcopal Church and it had been built on the site of the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Messiah.

The present structure was a large Gothic Revival Church, whose small chapel as designed, according to the city’s landmark designation report on the property by L. B. Valk.                                                                                                                                                                           According to a January 15, 2013 article by Francesca Norsen-Tate in the Brooklyn Eagle, the church was described in the July 14, 1888 edition of The Churchman was “pure Gothic and the general style of the church will be cruciform, with naves, aisles, transcepts…and spacious chance.” 

“There will be a lofty gable, with traceried windows of fine lancets and beneath five smaller lancrets.  Entrances at the side open into the north aisle and the entrance (to the south side passes under a massive tower which is quadrangular to the height of the gable and octagonal above that, attaining in all a height of 100 feet.  The stained glass windows representing St. Mark, at the rear of the old chancel, will be used in the new church,” the article continued.

According to an article by Zoe Rosenberg January 27, 2015 at ny.curbed.com, “a housing co-housing collective eyed the property and the empty lot behind it as the site for their egalitarian communal living concept” and “the empty lot behind the church was scooped up in late 2010 to give rise to five two-family townhouses.”

That article indicated that the church conversion under Serabjit Singh of Beards LLC kicked off around 2013” and that “RSVP Studio and N-Plus handled the remodel of the landmarked church” and “S.DG Design did the interiors.”

The building has  a very prime Brooklyn location and is about equidistant from Fort Greene Park and Pratt Institute and is located in the BAM Cultural District and its Barclays Center, the and Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Bottom Line

One of the city’s nicest residential conversions of a church property, this building also has a prime residential location near the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Barclays Center, and Pratt Institute.

Description

This a very attractive, red-brick church building that has been handsomely converted to 12 different apartments.

Amenities

The development has an attractive rear garden, a fitness center, a bicycle room and storage.

Apartments

Most apartments have stained-glass windows, vaulted ceilings, arched doorways, exposed brick walls and there are some duplexes and triplexes.

Apartment 9 is a three-bedroom, duplex unit with an entry to an entry hall and stairway and the 7-sided, double-height living room with an open kitchen. 

Apartment 8 is a two-bedroom duplex with a 30-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 18-foot-wide living dining room with a large bay window and four steps down to a 28-foot-wide private garden.  An 11-foot-square, pass-through kitchen is next to the living room that has stairs down to a 27-foot-long recreation room.

Apartment 10 is a three-bedroom duplex with an entry through the open kitchen to the living room and stairs up to the upper level.

Apartment 4 is a one-bedroom triplex with a living room with two skylights and an enclosed kitchen on the lower level, a bedroom on another level and a large recreation room on the third.