BIG DEAL; $8.5 Million Brownstone Deal Raises the
Bar in Brooklyn
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published:
February 6, 2005, Sunday
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THE
Manhattanization of Brooklyn took a great leap past the point of no return
recently when a brownstone on the promenade in
The deal for
the home at 212 Columbia Heights has quickened the pulses of owners in the
neighborhood, and already another brownstone, at 8 Montague Terrace, has gone
on the market for $12 million (although it is divided into several apartments);
a brick town house at 82 Remsen Street is being offered for $10 million.
The previous
top sale for a
Christopher
Thomas, an executive vice president at Brown Harris Stevens and the company's
Brooklyn sales director, said the
''This is a
number consistent with Manhattan Upper East or
The brownstone
at 212
''It's a
spectacular house,'' said their broker, Merele Williams-Adkins of the Corcoran
Group. ''Incredible high ceilings, extraordinary detail. The views are
unbelievable.''
The 25-foot
-wide, five-story brownstone, which is between Pierrepont and Clark Streets,
needs a new kitchen and other renovations. It is owned by Calvert Douglas Crary
and Kinga P. Crary, who paid $55,000 when they bought it in 1972, according to
a deed filed with the city. A broker for the Crarys, Yolanda Johnson Vogelzang
at the Corcoran Group, did not return calls.
The ''A.I.A.
Guide to
The
even-numbered houses on
The seven-floor
Among the homes
at the top of the Heights market, one of the more interesting is 82 Remsen,
which is owned by the sculptor Neil Estern. It is 37 1/2 feet wide and sits on
a 150-foot lot with a carriage house at the back end, on Grace Court Alley. Its
real estate broker, Kevin J. Carberry, said the four-story main house, which
was built in 1837, contains about 10,000 square feet, divided between two
apartments. Among other works, Mr. Estern is known for his bronze sculpture of
the seated President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Roosevelt Memorial in
A Home With a View
Leni May and
her husband, Peter W. May, who has made a fortune buying and selling companies
like Snapple, moved late last year from a duplex apartment with lots of space
and not much of a view, at 895 Park Avenue, to a much smaller apartment with a
wonderful view in the San Remo, on Central Park West.
The couple had
lived happily for some two decades on the
The idea, she
recalled, was an unsettling one for someone with roots as deep as theirs on the
other side of the park and she didn't take it too seriously, figuring that her
husband would soon forget about it.
But it turned
out that she was the one who couldn't get the view off her mind. After a walk
across the park, they were back in their
''Do what?''
asked her husband.
Move to the
A few days
later, the Mays called their friends and arranged to buy the apartment. Mrs.
May would not say how much they paid.
Bonnie Chajet,
a senior vice president at Warburg Realty, who had been contracted to sell the
unit, said it was being offered for $6.9 million.
A complete
renovation of the apartment was finished late last year and the Mays, who are
both 62, moved in.
Mr. May is the
president of the Triarc Companies, which bought Snapple from Quaker Oats for
$300 million in 1997 and sold it three years later to Cadbury Schweppes for
$1.45 billion.
In the end,
Mrs. May has adjusted swimmingly to her new environment. ''It's like we're
almost newlyweds again,'' she said. ''It's new and it's an adventure. We've
lived in the city forever. We started out at
As their move
approached, the Mays put their
That apartment
was sold in the first week of January, to Arthur B. Newman, 61, a senior
managing director of the Blackstone Group, and his wife, Eileen.
While the Mays
traded space for views, the Newmans did the opposite. They will be moving, once
renovations are done, from a smaller co-op apartment with
Published: 02 - 06 - 2005 , Late Edition - Final
, Section 11 , Column 4 , Page 2