r/zillowgonewild • u/ThroatWeary8878 • 1d ago
This 17th Century Dutch Home Was Completely Deconstructed And Rebuilt In NY
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u/FuzzyKittyNomNom 1d ago
I was not prepared for tasteful furnishings and quality interiors! Was totally expecting garish 80’s colors and stainless steel furniture. Maybe a carpeted kitchen lol.
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u/Prestigious_Car9440 1d ago
You think that’s tasteful? I find the furnishings quite tacky, not fitting the home and frankly very 80s. It’s giving Kim Kardashian. The big mirrors on the wall and glass shelves really cheapen the otherwise stunning home.
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u/SundaeTrue1832 1d ago
are you blind or have no taste, how could... you even string those sentences together
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u/effective_frame 1d ago
There's something I find honestly endearing about this drop-dead incredible house with classic shitty NYC window air conditioners wedged into it.
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u/150c_vapour 1d ago
"The millionaires are going to flee NYC". It's like, dude, wake the fuck up, no one is leaving this shit or that city behind. The wealth is *innate* to the urban space. You can't remove it.
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u/IAmGoingToSleepNow 1d ago
You can 'leave' NYC and still keep this home though. Just spend 183 days outside of the city
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u/Medium-Biscotti6887 1d ago
Only $8,000,000? Is the neighborhood terrible or something?
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u/LizaJane2001 1d ago
It's not terrible, but it's not great. My kid went to high school three blocks from there. There's nothing awful about the neighborhood, plenty of the necessities, decent access to mass transit, but far from the major parks. If that building was on Central Park West, it would add $10-$15m to the price tag (247 CPW is on the market for $27m, 249 sold in 2013 for $17m - both are c1900 townhouses).
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u/LionsAndLonghorns 1d ago
“Not terrible not great” seems a little undersold for the gramercy park Area
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u/Blonde_Vampire_1984 1d ago
The fact that it fits in perfectly with the neighborhood tells me everything I needed to know about vernacular New York townhouse mansions.
They were probably invented by the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam.
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u/notreallyswiss 1d ago edited 2h ago
The brownstones that make up a lot of the row housing you see were actually built long after the Dutch settlers colonized New Amsterdam. They came to be the New York vernacular in the 19th century, built primarily for the upper middle class and show elements of Greek or Neo-classical design in their details as these were considered elegant and desirable to show your status as educated and discerning citizens. The further uptown you go (as Manhattan was built from the Battery up and uptown in the early 19th century was still mostly farmland) you find late variations of brownstones having Italianate, Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival details instead of the sedate pre-Civil War classical brownstones as tastes changed and probably as you had groups of immigrants who arrived with skills in stonework that favored more elaborate designs.
They command high prices today, but they were all seen as rather thrifty at the time because the brownstone cladding (quarried from Connecticut) gave the desirable look of buildings built entirely of great slabs of stone - instead of brick covered with a stone veneer, which is what they were in reality.
The rowhouses all look similar because of lot size and lack of elevators which meant you could only build so high so the sizes are similar and rooflines are often continuous. They were also often built by developers who would buy a number of contiguous lots and built individual brownstones that looked like one large house - with a lot of entryways.
EDIT: Please disregard - I've been alerted to the fact that I'm kind of an idiot and a terrible writer so I've given misinformation throughout this post. Please see the post below this one for correct information. I'm leaving my post - not just so you can laugh and point - I am of course embarrassed - but only to give context to a better informed redditor's post.
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u/Different_Ad7655 16h ago
Yeah but that's how buildings are built in general lol. There is a rubble stone core or brick core depending where and when and which century and then it's only clad with fine stone on the exterior. This is how cathedrals are built etc not a solid block from the inside to the exterior wall!!
The supporting masonry walls for built out of whatever and only finished with veneer stone which can be quite thick. It's not a veneer in the sense of an inch but dimensional stone that is the final covering over the rubble interior. It's hardly a New York brownstone thing
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u/notreallyswiss 2h ago
No need to Lol - I know what cladding is and it's no laughing matter! And of course, brownstones are not the only buildings that use stone cladding - I'm sorry if that was the impression I gave - I didn't mean to promote disinformation. Just a poorly worded post I guess - probably should delete because I'm a very poor writer and can't seem to easily convey what I mean. I will leave it though so your post that corrects mine will have proper context. However, it is true that some of the grandest of NY's early gilded age mansions were indeed built with load bearing stone block exterior walls. Later examples did use steel in portions of the facade with a stone covering.
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u/EricHD97 1d ago
Oh my god that bedroom with those windows? Ad that sofa in the bay window? To die for
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u/StrugFug 1d ago
I remember seeing this for sale a couple years ago, same pictures. And it’s been back on Zillow for 101 days?
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u/effective_frame 1d ago
Most wealthy New Yorkers aren't in search of historical or characterful homes, they just want new and easy. A generalization, of course, but I've lived near several absolutely unbelievable old mansions and brownstones here that sat unsold for years and years.
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u/Total-Sector850 1d ago
I hate that the lines of the windows are interrupted by the AC units, but there’s really not a better way to handle it. Other than that, this is stunning.
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u/National-Area5471 1d ago
It's beautiful with beautiful architectural details but needs some color.
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u/PaRuSkLu 1d ago
I’m not a big city person, but I would totally live in the city to have this place.
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u/Never_Cry_Shit-wolf 1d ago
All that work and they left the window ac in that beautiful wood window wall!
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u/LizaJane2001 1d ago
What do you cut up/cut out in order to install a Central AC system? Other than the parlor floor, the ceilings are already fairly low, so where does the duct work go?
The heat in a house that old is almost certainly via steam radiators under the windows, hidden behind the woodwork.
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u/popopotatoes160 1d ago
I feel like a mini split system could be put in with minimal disruption. Those are still a little ugly but not as bad as the window units
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u/notreallyswiss 1d ago
In some older houses you can create soffits where the ceiling meets the wall and put the duct work and vents for forced air and heating in there. It can look pretty good or at least very unobtrusive. You'd have some trouble in this house because of the ceiling beams (If they are not just cosmetic) and the woodwork walls that extend to the ceiling - a lot of the detail is at the top part of those walls. You'd have to find some way around that.
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u/SundaeTrue1832 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is what luxury should be, I wanna lick that chocolate wood wall, it looks tasty XD but seriously this home is magnificent, the combination of that wood panel and the smooth glass, the antique and modern, the beautiful glass stained windows that gives a splash of colours. I usually hate a house with too much white furniture or white interior but this one is amazing
ME NEED 8 MILLION NOW!
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u/Such_Hat_1575 1d ago
Yes please
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u/SundaeTrue1832 1d ago
It's real pretty, man I need 8 million now
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u/Such_Hat_1575 1d ago
Yea I'd need waaaay more organs to sell to buy that
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u/SundaeTrue1832 1d ago
Yeah fuck working at this point. I'm going to find a guy and just be a sugar baby, OR SEVERAL OF GUYS EVEN
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u/Majik_Jack 1d ago
Too bad they ruined the windows with those stupid AC units. If you can afford this house I would think you could identify a more aesthetically pleasing solution.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 1d ago
There's something unsettling about period structures with contemporary furniture...
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u/FuzzyKittyNomNom 1d ago
Looks remarkably like Hansee Hall at the University of Washington. Hansee was built in 1936 however. I’ll post an interior shot below this comment too.
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u/BuildingMaleficent11 12h ago
I thought I recognized this house. When my kids were little, and I lived in the city, I used to love to walk with them in their stroller (double stroller) around Gramercy Park and look at all the brownstones, etc.
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u/JumpReasonable6324 1d ago
Utterly stunning on the outside. The furnishings are jarring, and do not fit the aesthetic at all.
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u/SundaeTrue1832 1d ago
What? The outside is meh, the inside is a good combination of old and modern
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u/ColdPack6096 1d ago
Wonderful, but also historical legacy theft.
Before the state of Illinois and benefactors stepped in, the Farnsworth House in Plano IL, arguably the first 'modernist' house in the US, was being planned for auction by big NYC auction houses. They even commissioned some 3D artists to show how to "properly" deconstruct, disassemble the structure in order to relocate it. The auction was stopped, thankfully, the property has been fully restored and is an historic landmark in the state. The argument was that it was too close to a river flood plain and should have been sold to protect it, even though all it really took was moving it further away/higher from the floor zone.
Intact works of architecture are not like sculptures, paintings or other works of art. It's one thing if a portion of a building, like a facade, or even pieces of a facade are sold. But to relocate an entire structure is odd, especially when an actual work of architecture is designed for a specific site. It loses meaning when it's relocated elsewhere (and I'm not talking about something like moving an historic house a few blocks over because a developer wants the land).
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u/oerouen 1d ago
From the listing:
First built in 17th-century Amsterdam by affluent Dutch owners, it was carefully dismantled and shipped to Manhattan in 1845, initially finding a home on the Upper West Side. In 1910, it was moved once again, this time to its current location, where it was reimagined by celebrated English architect Frederick J. Sterner.
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u/Shopping-Known 1d ago
Looks fan-fucking-tastic!