375 Vanderbilt Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11238

Bring your architect, interior designer and your cars,(yes there's parking for multiple!) and build your dream house & sanctuary in this beautiful & historic 19th century Neo Grec brick Fort Greene Carriage House. The interior is a sprawling 3400sf with a 1500sf garden and what is even more exciting: you can essentially double your living space to 7000SF with the available FAR buildable square footage.

Carriage Houses are typically built for the mansion through the block to the other Avenue and that is true for 375 Vanderbilt Avenue. Clinton Avenue at the time was becoming the Mansion Row of the area and this Carriage House was designed as a pair of two story brick Carriage houses,(373 and 375 Vanderbilt), for the corresponding mansions on Clinton Avenue, 372 Clinton and 374 Clinton Ave. Those mansions exist today as a pair of heavily altered Neo Grec houses. The Clinton Avenue houses were designed in 1878 by Robert Dixon for Maurice S. Kerrigan and built by Thomas Fagan, who was active throughout the Clinton Hill area. Maurice Kerrigan who lived at 372, owned a leather factory that produced leather for shoes and book bindings.

A few years after the above Clinton Avenue mansions were completed, the two Carriage Houses were built as two separate addresses, (373 and 375), in 1893 in a modified Romanesque Revival Style including a horse walkway to the front buildings. They were probably done by the same builder and designer for the Clinton Avenue mansions, Dixon and Fagan. They built an elliptically-arched entrance plus a curb cut for each. The door detail was designed with distinctive Drip Moldings and a keystone. On the second floor, the design is a raised corbeled cornice and pediment.

These two Carriage Houses were combined sometime in the 1930s eliminating "373? and the address became "375 Vanderbilt Ave". The right side facade was changed to accommodate a store front when it became a candy store. Sometime in the 1960s the right side storefront was bricked over, leaving narrow facade windows.

There are only a few of these double Carriage Houses in the neighborhood and this is the first time in 50 plus years that that 375 Vanderbilt Avenue is available for sale. The building has been owned by a local painter who attended the infamous Art Students League of New York. The interior reads as a French Atelier: Her studio is stunning with twelve foot plus ceilings and lots of tall arched windows. The high ceilings are lined with the original wood wainscoting and an elegant French-style circular stair which ascends the twelve feet to the 2nd floor.

The building is massive, measuring 45 x 40FT with a garage, and two curb cuts, (parking spaces) on Vanderbilt Ave. It is a two family building, used as a three unit building. The lot is 50x 70FT and the garden is 1500SF. The current set up is a garage and apartment on the first floor and two large three bedroom apartments on the 2nd floor. There is additional buildable square footage and FAR of 3600Sf. Real estate taxes are incredibly low at $2900 Annually.

Another unusual feature is that there are windows on three sides, east and west and the third exposure is due to an alleyway on the north side of the building.

The alley is a five foot wide horse walk way that extended from Vanderbilt to Clinton Ave. These days it doesn't go though the block as the mansion and Carriage Houses tax lots were separated.

There is a lot of original architectural detail in the house such as the original arched windows throughout, and skylights. The first image is an architectural rendering showing a restored facade with two arched Carriage House doors and historically correct windows as a starting point for a prospective buyer. There are additional architectural renderings available illustrating how one might to use the FAR through adding a third floor as well as adding a two story solarium on the garden side of the house. There is a construction