OLD PRATT MANSION A RUIN
CALLED SERIOUS FIRE PERIL FACES BARRICADE BY CITY 20 April 1931 Brooklyn Standard Union Aldermen May Order Fence to Protect Adjoining Property The skeleton of Willoughby avenue's old PRATT mansion, the building extending from Clinton to Waverly avenues, which a generation or less ago was considered on of Brooklyn's residential attractions, is facing the prospect of being barricaded behind an official fence. When the Aldermen of the Prospect District's Local Board meet this afternoon at Borough Hall, according to information which became available today, they will consider whether or not a fence of the type sometimes used to enclose vacant lots will have to be erected on the property. A petition, calling for the erection of a fence, is on the local board's meeting calendar. If the petition is adopted by the Aldermen, the residents of Clinton avenue and the immediate vicinity, including a number of social registerites, may find their view of the one-time home of Herbert Lee PRATT, the Standard Oil financier, relieved, in part of least, by a fence that is a six-foot affair or one, perhaps, or larger dimensions. MAY ORDER HIGH FENCE The official regulations, governing fences that Aldermen order erected, are said to permit of a degree of latitude that runs to fences twenty feet or so in height and made of metal. The expense involved would have to be borne, it is said, by the owners of the property. While officials at Borough Hall were uncertain as to the action the Aldermen would take, records on filed in the Bureau of Buildings disclosed that today's petition shaped up as the latest of a series of vicissitudes through which the one valuable property has passed. An official notice of violation placed on the building by the bureau holds that the building, which has long been unoccupied, is in an unsafe and dangerous condition. When the property was built by Mr. PRATT in the days before the penthouse and the kitchenette era, it is said to have cost him $200,000. In 1916 it was valued by the city for assessment purposes at $167,500. Today, according to the figures of the Department of Taxes and Assessments, it is down to $70,000. At the time of its construction the interior of the building was reported to be of costly trim. Hardware finishing, much of it gold-plated and costing about $35,000, was reported to have gone into the building. an organ in the music room was reported to have cost $30,000. The art gallery included works of the old masters. WAS SOLD IN 1916 When Mr. PRATT moved to Manhattan he deposed of the property and two years later, in 1916, it was purchased by Commodore J. Stuart BLACKTON of the old Vitagraph Company from the Ridgewood Park Realty Company in a transaction which was said to have involved $750,000. The property was subsequently sold again. In recent years the building had been unoccupied. Less than a month ago, records on file in the Bureau of Buildings show, a notice was served that the bureau had imposed the violation on the building. The notice was served on a Manhattan lawyer who is listed as representing the owners. The violation imposed by the Bureau of Buildings asserted the building was in an "unsafe and dangerous condition." The Building Bureau's report asserted the building was unoccupied; that doors and windows were open and unprotected "and easily accessible to malicious, undesirable and unauthorized persons;" that all the stair balusters were broken down or removed; that all elevator shaft doors were removed; that an open hatchway in the attic was unguarded; that an iron marquise over the main entrance was corroded, loosened and liable to fall; that several sections of the slated roof had been removed; the plaster ceilings and cornices had been loosened and had fallen, partly because of exposure to rain and storm and that a brick retaining wall with a heavy stone coping on the east side of premises was liable to fall. IS CALLED FIRE HAZARD All this, the bureau's report charges, constituted a fire hazard and an unsafe condition. Edwin W. KLEINERT, the acting superintendent of buildings, served notice, as a result, that unless the bureau received an immediate answer he would direct the institution of court proceedings to have the structure declared dangerous and unsafe and to compel repairs, the expense of which would become a lien on the building. An inspection of the property disclosed today that scores of windows in the building had been shattered. The whole appearance of the building is one of considerable ruin. An iron fence and a low stone wall front the Willoughby avenue side of the property and extend around to the Clinton and Waverly avenue sides. There are hedges on Clinton and Waverly avenues, but the rear of the property is not enclosed. It is used as an improvised playground by children in the neighborhood. The condition of the property is in marked contrast to the appearance of other parcels, mainly on Clinton avenue, where private dwellings and apartment houses are located. Transcriber: Lois O'Malley RETURN to PEOPLE MAIN RETURN to BROOKLYN MAIN