92 Prospect Park West: Review and Ratings

Review of 92 Prospect Park West by Carter Horsley

This fine, red-brick, four-story building at 92 Prospect Park West between 4th and 5th Streets was erected in 1908 by the Roundtree Realty Company, the owner-architect.  It has 18 co-operative apartments. 

The address consists of four buildings with shallow curved bays that flank central projecting stairs. 

The building is across from the lovely Litchfield Villa in Prospect Park, which was described by Francis Morrone in a May 19, 2008 article for The New York Sun as "one of the most beautiful houses in America." 

Mr. Morrone noted that "the home became the Brooklyn Park Department headquarters in 1894 and the New York City Parks Department's Brooklyn office four years later," adding that "for the next century, municipal occupancy, with its utilitarian exigencies, ran the house down."  "On the outside, the coup de grace came in the 1930s, when the city removed the house's white stucco façade....The 1950s through the 1970s brought us new extremes in bureaucratic squalor, a true Dark Ages forgetfulness of the most basic amenities of daily life.  It was especially wrenching when the blight - fluorescent lights, linoleum floors, plywood partitions - overtook beautiful buildings such as Litchfield Villa." 

In a 1989 "Streetscapes" column on the villa in The New York Times, Christopher Gray remarked that the building's brick façade that replaced the original stucco is "perhaps...is the grand-daddy of all the exposed brick walls in renovated brownstone apartments, first popular around 1960." 

The red-brick façades look just fine and go very nicely indeed with those on this building. 

There is an F subway station about a third of a mile away.

Bottom Line

A very handsome set of four ornate and elegant low-rise buildings with attractively fenced landscaping and only 18 units across Prospect Park West from the impressive Litchfield Villa, an 1857 mansion designed by Alexander Jackson Davis.

Description

The rusticated first floors and the stair projections are precast stonework, which was also used as lintels, quoins and bandcourses. 

The designation report for the Park Slope Historic District provides the following commentary about the building: 

"A deeply embossed sheetmetal architrave is crowned by a well-proportioned classical roof cornice, carried on console brackets.  The style is generally neo-Classical with some neo-Federal detail, although the central projecting stairwells with their curved sides and rich detail suggest the influence of the French Beaux Arts style.  Since the windows in the stairwell are at the landings, they do not align with those on either side.  The second story landing windows above the doorways have miniature balustrades flanked by Ionic columns, carried on lion's head brackets, which support arched pediments.  The bas relief panels in the pediments above the windows display female figures.  

"The two uppermost stairwell windows share common enframements with panels between them.  These are crowned by low parapets with carved openwork panels.  Projecting iron-framed vestibules with Greek details are connected to the wrought iron fences in front of all the houses.  

"The regular rhythm of the curved bays, punctuated by richly detailed stairwells, produces a uniformly dignified blockfront." 

Amenities

The building has a bicycle room, a laundry, storage and is pet friendly.

Apartments

The GDN apartment is a two-bedroom unit with a four-step entrance to a narrow, 40-foot-long garden and the 18-foot-wide living room that is next to an open kitchen with an island. 

Apartment 4C is a two-bedroom unit with a very long hall that leads to a open kitchen with a breakfast bar and a 17-foot-wide living/dining room. 

Apartment 2B is a two-bedroom unit with a narrow, 21-foot-long entrance gallery that leads past a 7-foot-wide open kitchen with a breakfast bar to an 18-foot-long living/dining room. 

Apartment 4A has an entry foyer across from an open, windowed kitchen next to a liding room and the large bedroom has a gently bowed window.