The Black Hole on Columbia Heights

Photo-Illustration: Curbed

Columbia Heights is likely one of the most famous streets in Brooklyn Heights — once home to Walt Whitman and Norman Mailer, now Matt Damon, Jennifer Connelly, and Michelle Williams. The Civil War–era rowhouses on the avenue look out over the promenade, with views extending from the East River all the way to the Statue of Liberty. Each is nicer than the next, with period-specific details, immaculate built-in bookcases, and perfectly lit art visible from the street. Then you get to 194.

The massive four-story brownstone is the sickly shade of green mold, except in the places the façade has chipped off completely. Tattered blinds are drawn in the windows, some of which are broken or boarded up. The front door is padlocked, its Italianate finishes scuffed and rotting. Gas-lamp sconces dangle from their wires. On one recent morning, trash littered the steps leading down to the garden-level entrance, and a red Nike shoebox sat abandoned in a stone planter. Peering inside, I could see piles of what looked like old furniture and debris.

This kind of thing would stand out in many parts of the city, but here? The house next door sold for $12 million in 2018. The incongruity of an abandoned eyesore in one of Brooklyn’s most desirable Zip Codes has become a point of obsession in the neighborhood — for more than 40 years. “It’s been like that since I came here,” says Andrew Porter, a writer who has lived in the same rent-controlled apartment nearby since 1968 and has been speculating over the condition of 194 Columbia Heights for nearly two decades as a frequent poster on the Brooklyn Heights Blog, which is itself fixated on the house (the site’s Open Thread Wednesdays are basically a clearinghouse for recent gossip). The neighborhood association has long been frustrated with the situation. The mailman has theories. No. 194 is the ultimate street-level mystery: In the most real-estate-obsessed city in the world, in one of its prime locations, with some of the fussiest residents, it seems incomprehensible that anyone would let a house like this rot. And for this long.

194 Columbia Heights from the street. Photo: Bridget Read

The back of 194. Photo: Bridget Read

Let’s start with the owner of 194 Columbia Heights: a man named Austin Moore, a psychiatrist who for years practiced out of an office on Henry Street and bought the historic house, built in 1860, from the previous owner in 1969 for $140,000. (Moore, now in his 90s, may still live at the address where he once kept an office, at least according to tax records.) His trouble with the house started early: By 1986, Moore was already facing the threat of foreclosure by the city due to unpaid property taxes but was able to cover enough of the balance to stave it off. Documents about the foreclosure proceeding note that the building had been vacant since 1983, though neighborhood watchers like Porter say it was closed up long before that. In the decades that followed, records from the Department of Housing Preservation and the Department of Buildings show 32 complaints and 17 violations, from open and broken windows to a failure to comply with changes to its certificate of occupancy. The house started to decay.

None of which escaped the notice of the ever-fastidious Brooklyn Heights Association (its current president is an architectural historian). At a meeting in 2009, 194 Columbia Heights came up along with a handful of other troublesome properties. Moore, along with other owners, needed to be pushed to “take the appropriate actions toward their preservation, whether that is engaging in restoration themselves or selling to someone who will.” That was also the year a windstorm brought pieces of the roof down and Moore — long silent in the face of local attention — gave his first and only public comment to the press about his house. He would “probably surprise everybody by doing some improvements this spring,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle. Little about the house changed, but workers did apparently fix the roof, per spies on the Brooklyn Heights Blog.

All the while, Moore’s unpaid property taxes continued to pile up. He owed another $40,000 in 2009 and now owes nearly $250,000. Which is part of the intrigue: Why keep up such a money pit when selling would be so lucrative? When I asked around the neighborhood (and the mailman, a doorman, and a landscaper), they all had heard the same rumor: Moore was keeping the house in order to spite an ex-wife. Intriguing, but never confirmed. I reached out to Moore’s son, who had no comment. A woman whose name was also listed on property records never responded to my inquiries.

As for what will happen next? In a neighborhood like Brooklyn Heights, there are two main engines of redress for a house that’s fallen into disrepair: intervention from the various city agencies that have jurisdiction over housing and vocal, sustained outrage from neighbors. (Often, it’s both.) Both have so far failed in the case of 194. “I think the whole thing’s about to come down,” another property manager of a nearby apartment building told me, who claims that a rat infestation from the house has impacted his buildings and tenants. But the Department of Buildings seems to disagree: Though the agency can make an emergency declaration to demolish a building if it’s deemed a hazard, a spokesperson told me that the department sent inspectors to 194 in February and found the house properly sealed to the public, which at the very least means that doors and windows on the first level were properly locked. The house also wasn’t at any risk of collapse or fire. Ultimately, it came down to cold, hard property rights. “On private property, its very difficult for a city agency to step in physically,” Andrew Rudansky, the spokesman for the Department of Buildings, said.

As for the Department of Finance, it could typically force a house like 194 into a tax lien sale, which usually results in foreclosure. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, a spokesperson confirmed that Moore was on a payment plan, though, they said, the house “may be subject to a lien sale in 2025.”

Finally, because 194 is in a landmarked district, the Landmarks Preservation Commission could deem the property at risk of “demolition by neglect” — but it too has so far not chosen to act. A Landmarks spokesperson said that Moore has been issued summonses for failing to comply with landmark rules as recently as June, but has apparently made adequate fixes to the home’s roof and cornices that placated the department, which “continues to work closely with the owner to make additional necessary repairs, including an upcoming on-site visit,” per a statement.

Younger, the property manager who said Moore once had a tenant, is the only person I spoke to who actually knows the man. “He calls me from time to time,” Younger told me, “to ask about vendors to do the things the city makes him do, to keep the city off his back.” Occasionally, Moore says he is ready to sell the place. But it never happens. As for why he thinks Moore has kept the house despite everything — the windfall that surely awaits if he does, an end to all that paperwork, and letting someone put some use to the space — Younger says he’s not sure. “He has only ever been cordial with me,” he said. “In our lives, we all have blank spots, and I guess this is his.”