Park Place Historic District

The Park Place Historic District is comprised of thirteen Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival style row houses. These buildings were completed 1889-90, when this part of Brooklyn was rapidly developing, and were built by carpenter and house-builder Joseph Mason Kirby for two brothers from Philadelphia, Frederick W. and Walter S. Hammett. Kirby is perhaps best known for his construction of the 65-foot-high architectural folly in Margate, New Jersey now called Lucy the Elephant (1881).

The row houses are modest in scale but ornately detailed, featuring three facade designs that alternate to create a charming composition of triangular gabled, round gabled, and flat roofed houses. In total, there are five houses with triangular gables, and each features rusticated sandstone trim, terra cotta moldings at the second floor and at the cornice, bead and reel brickmold in a large scale, and a decorative triangular terra cotta plaque surrounded by decorative bricks at the apex. The flat-roofed houses, which number six in total, feature rusticated door and window surrounds, corbelled pilasters at the second floor, and elaborate bracketed cornices. The two round gabled houses feature both smooth and rusticated surrounds at the door and windows, as well as a molded cornice with a keystone. This district, though diminutive, is an outstanding, and largely intact example of Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival row house architecture. ©2014