$15,000,000 for a Promenade View, Boarded Up and Abandoned for Decades

By Michael Gonik

Weird and wild things are happening in the ever-coveted, certifiably untouchable Brooklyn Heights housing market, where some of the city’s oldest homes reliably go for an ungodly eight figures. Many are stunningly well-preserved or recalibrated entirely by presitigious architects and bleeding-edge designers, especially along that strip of Columbia Heights, where backyards open up to a promenade with about as spectacular a view of Lower Manhattan as you can find in New York.

There is, however, an apparent exception to the rule at 194 Columbia Heights, a six-story “black hole” of a mansion that’s been vacant and seemingly abandoned since time immemorial. The listing for the house describes it as “a distiguished Italianate brownstone,” punching up the $15,000,000 price tag with a top-line Mark Twain quote and appeals to exercing “complete creative freedom.” The accompanying photo of the building’s face is a clear rendering, which is probably for the best, given the current scaffolding out front and the still-visible boards in the windows.

If you’re wondering how or why 194 was somehow forgotten, a Curbed report sheds some light on the peculiar (for the neighborhood) circumstances around its sad status. In short, the owner, a psychiatrist named Austin Moore, purchased the house from the previous key-holder for $140,000 (or an inflation-adjusted $1.25 million by today’s standards) in 1969, but appears not to have actually lived in it since as early as 1983, according to city foreclosure documents from 1986 (though neighbors report the house had been abandoned far earlier). In the years since, the property has sat empty, racking up complaints, violations, and fines from city agencies, while Moore chipped away at his property tax payments.

All of that brings us to the currrent state of the home, dormant for decades and listed for an astounding sum, but not without some surprises still sitting in and between its six floors of (rare) 25-foot-wide walls, only observable once it was being prepped for sale a few weeks ago. There are two Italian marble fireplaces per floor, Victorian-era wallpaper, super-deep windowsills, as many as nine bedrooms (though it’s listed with eight), and a (potentially Tiffany’s) stained-glass window with an image of the Statue of Liberty with its arm pointed towards its actual location in the harbor.

Whoever lands this thing will get it all—save for the window—as well as the opportunity to configure it according to their own specifications. But it will come a cost that greatly exceeds its listing price. Vicki Negron, the Corcoran agent representing the property, estimates the renovations would cost somewhere between $6 million to $10 million for a single-family setup. That doesn’t seem to have tempered interest in the home, though. There have already “threats of offers,” as Negron put it.