70 Willow Street Brooklyn Heights

The strange, yellow Brooklyn Heights mansion all-time known as the home whereTruman Capote wrote 'Breakfast At Tiffany's'has finally been sold for $12 million, after many months of humbling markdowns from its original hefty pricetag.

Located in the heart of old Brooklyn, the new owners will exist winning more than than a literary prize. The house has a rather unusual by total of influential inhabitants and has been used in some curious ways:

1) seventy Willow Street, in the popular Greek revival style of the solar day, was congenital in 1839 by Adrian Van Sinderen, the descendant of original Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam and a fiery Revolutionary War-era reverend from Flatbush, Ulpianus Van Sinderen. Van Sinderen'southward lavish urban villa — it has near a dozen fireplaces — is one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, but not the oldest. In that location are a few neighboring houses that are older, including24 Middagh Street, just a couple blocks away and congenital in 1824.

2) The firm passed to his son Adrian Jr., a prominent New York lawyer, who fell spectacularly from grace when he mishandled the family trust. He died nearly penniless and alone in New Lots, far exterior the sphere of wealth, in 1864. (There's an avenue virtually that eastward Brooklyn neighborhood named for the Van Sinderen family.) His descendants announced to have done better. Another Adrian Van Sinderen has an annual volume-collecting contest named for him at Yale University.

three) The 'manor of Van Sinderen', as it was often chosen and then, was built for a unmarried family, but by the belatedly 1860s, the roomy floors were being split upward for several tenants. From an October 1869 classified ad in the Brooklyn Eagle:"One large, handsomely furnished 2nd floor room for gentleman and married woman or gentlemen willing to room together."***

iv) The primary resident during the late 19th century was the banker William Putnam, improve known as a pregnant trustee for the Brooklyn Museum in its early years. He betrothed to the museum paintings by Rembrandt and Monet, as well as some 'Majestic Copenhagen porcelain' that rivaled that of European rulers, according to the Times.

5) The house was a pivotal location for the women's suffrage move. Scratch that, the anti-women's suffrage motility. The newly married lady of the house, Caroline Putnam, and her sister Lillian joined other local ladies of means in organizing protests against granting women the right to vote or, in the words of their 1894 petition, to protest "the obligations of the ballot upon the women of the state." Mrs. Putnam also hosted French conservation classes and literary salons from her parlor here. [source]

The picture at top shows the house as it looked in 1922. At right, the home in 1936. (Pictures courtesy New York Public Library.)

6) Subsequently Mrs. Putnam died in 1940, the house saturday entirely vacant until 1944, when information technology was donated to the Red Cross. They used the house equally a classroom, teaching craft, Braille to the blind and cooking classes to the wives of returning soldiers from Earth War II.

vii) In 1953, the old house landed in the easily of renown Broadway stage designer Oliver Smith, responsible for the original scenery from great American musicals similar Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls and Due west Side Story. In his lifetime, he was nominated for 25 Tony Awards. With some of his earnings from the musical On The Town , Smith bought 70 Willow Street and lived hither until he died in 1994.

8) From 1955 to 1965, he lent the basement apartment to his friend Truman Capote. The blond Southern writer was just wild about Brooklyn Heights and basically charmed himself into a permanent room on Willow Street. From his essay 'A House on the Heights,' Capote describes, "Nosotros [Smith and Capote] sat on the porch consulting Martinis — I urged him to accept i more than, another. It got to be quite late, he began to see my point; yes, twenty-viii rooms were rather a lot; and aye it seemed simply fair that I should have some of them."

9) Decked out in dark-green wallpaper and odd knickknacks, "an atmosphere of perpetual Christmas," the business firm would prove a place of keen inspiration for Capote. He wrote part of 'Breakfast At Tiffany'due south' here. Mayhap more notably, it was here that he picked upwardly a New York Times are read nigh the brutal slaying of a Kansas family. Capote set about working on what became 'In Cold Blood' the next day.

10) I tin't exit the tale of 70 Willow Street without mentioning one of its about famous luncheon guests — Jackie Kennedy. Capote conveniently left out the fact that the house was Smith'southward, not his. "She laughed nearly it, because all of a sudden in the heart of luncheon she got the idea that it wasn't his," Smith recalled afterwards. "I suppose I acted as if it were mine."

And hither'south some literary bonus points — it's merely downwards the street from the former home of Arthur Miller (155 Willow Street)

***A reader emailed me to say that the addresses for Willow Street were differently numbered earlier 1865 and that this advertizement probably refers to a neighbor of 70 Willow Street. In that case, I'll supplant that fact with ane I should have mentioned in the lede of this article — as reported by Brownstoner, the $12 million final price tag for 70 Willow Street makes it the virtually expensive house purchase in Brooklyn history. Does this hateful that nobody has nevertheless bought my dream apartment in DUMBO?

Source: https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/03/ten-fabulous-facts-about-70-willow.html