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Aframed photograph of a high-spirited Victorian
couple in a donkey cart on holiday hangs in the
front hall of Cara Silverman’s Prospect Heights
brownstone. The sepia-toned image, found in the
house when Silverman bought it, may well be of
early homeowners. They might be surprised to recognize their
brass doorknob and a bell-pull, which yields a resounding clang,
still in place at the entry of the three-story row house nearly a
century and a half later. But there they still are, augmented with
later additions by another homeowner, a passionate 20th century
brownstoner: a whimsical door handle in the shape of an elephant’s
trunk, a mail slot reading “LETTERS,” and a plaque with
an Art Nouveau goddess.
There was no shortage of original relics remaining inside the
house when Silverman, a multi-disciplinary artist and past-life
regression therapist, first saw the place in late 2016. The 1879
structure, built soon after the opening of Prospect Park when
development of the surrounding neighborhood was booming,
was that rare thing: a remarkably intact vintage Brooklyn row
house almost untouched by the passage of time -- not excessively
grand or ornate, but laden with original details. These included
five marble mantels, a claw foot tub and marble sinks, wood and
plaster moldings, newel posts and stair balusters, tin ceilings,
window shutters and even some gas wall fixtures. A massive cast
iron coal stove, which previous owners used as a heat source,
dominated the lower level.
Unsurprisingly, much of the nineteenth-century detail was in
disrepair. Silverman, who was living in a rented Fort Greene loft
at the time, had just started her home search and wasn’t necessarily
in the market for a lengthy project, but this house called
out to her. “I knew I wanted an old house, a house with history,”
she says. “This was the first one I saw.” It had changed hands
just a few times and was in estate condition, with piles of papers
and a barely working kitchen. She went on to look at about ten
other houses over the next few weeks. “Nothing else felt right. I
kept thinking back to this one and knew it was meant to be. One
was in even worse condition; I didn’t think that was possible.
And there were old houses that had been flipped by sleek developers,
but I just didn’t like the vibe.” Once she’d decided to buy
the Prospect Heights house, naturally, “Everyone thought I was
crazy. But I had a vision,” Silverman says. “I knew exactly what I
was going to do with it.”