Ephemeral New York

The first signs of it emerged in the 1830s cityscape: brown porous sandstone began appearing around entrances and as window lintels on New York’s stylish Federal-style brick houses.

By the 1860s, brownstone-clad row houses were everywhere, going up across Manhattan and then Brooklyn (above, a brownstone row in Bedford-Stuyvesant) as fast as the Gilded Age’s upper classes could buy them.

Some rose four stories with grand proportions, including a tall stoop and elaborately carved doorway, such as the brownstone below, built in 1853 at 47 Fifth Avenue and long occupied by the Salmagundi Club. Others stopped at three floors and cut a more slender, less ornate appearance.

But what was it about this iconic house type that made it a symbol of New York City elegance and charm—and is still sought after today?

Before getting into the backstory of the brownstone, it might be helpful to define what one is. New Yorkers often consider any attached row of houses to be brownstones whether the facade is brick, marble, or limestone.

But a brownstone is a specific type of row house constructed between the 1830s and the 1890s cloaked in brown sandstone.

“Originally referred to as ‘brownstone fronts’ in the nineteenth century, the brick buildings acquired their name from the four-to-six-inch-thick stone veneer that covered the front side,” wrote Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn.

This stone, much of it mined from a quarry in Portland, Connecticut, was actually pink when it was cut and shipped to stone yards along the East and Hudson Rivers.

But once placed on the exterior of a brick house and then exposed to the elements, it turned brown, stated Osman. That brown could be a reddish rust, or dark mud, or a brown that made the house appear “chocolate-colored,” as Edith Wharton, who was born in a brownstone at 14 West 23rd Street, disparaged it.

As Wharton’s comment reveals, brownstones have always had their detractors. In an 1840s dispatch, Edgar Allan Poe contemplated the destruction of Manhattan by predicting that “in some 30 years every noble cliff will be a pier, and the whole island will be densely desecrated by buildings of brick, with portentous of brownstone, or brown-stonn, as the Gothamites have it.”

Still, when the stone first appeared as trim on new row houses in today’s downtown neighborhoods—like on the entrance and base of the Isaac Hopper House, above, built in the Greek Revival style at 1838 at 110 Second Avenue—it made a fashionable impression.

It’s unclear where the first true brownstone residences were built. But a 1926 New York Times article that prematurely eulogized brownstones gave the honor to a group of row houses on an unnamed block in Chelsea constructed in the late 1830s.

Soon, brownstone fever hit Gotham. With the city’s population booming in the 1840s and 1850s, brownstone rows made their debuts in other upper middle class neighborhoods, such as Greenwich Village, Madison Square, and Murray Hill.

The elegant look of brownstone was part of the attraction. “Brownstones were an architectural trompe l’oeil designed to give a faux sense of historic glamour,” wrote Osman. “In an era when stone was seen as more monumental than brick or wood, builders used sandstone as a cheap substitute for marble.”

“The facing was carefully designed to give the illusion that the entire building was constructed of stone,” continued Osman. “Builders cut large slabs of stone to minimize any visible seams, giving the townhouse a solid brown and austere look.”

Builders found that brownstone had a practical appeal as well. The industrial revolution made it possible to quarry lots of it and mass produce design motifs that made each uniform row of new brownstones look slightly different than other rows in development.

Brownstones also reflected “the mid-19th-century popularity of Romantic Classicism, which glorified picturesque nature,” states an article on Brownstoner. “Brownstone echoed the dark browns, grays, and greens of the romanticized landscape.”

As the 19th century went on, different design styles supplanted the Greek Revival look of pre-Civil War brownstones. In the 1860s, Italianate architecture flourished, which brought more ornamentation and curvy lines (exemplified in the above West Village brownstone), according to Stefanie Waldek in Architectural Digest.

Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival brownstones began to appear in the 1880s and 1890s. These fanciful, quirky homes often incorporated other types of building material as well as brownstone, like limestone and granite, per Architectural Digest.

Parts of New York City that were not developed until the late 19th century, like today’s Upper West Side (below photo) and Harlem, tend to feature brownstones that reflect these later design styles.

All this brownstone love suddenly came to a halt as the 20th century began.

Brownstones were now derided as gloomy, their interiors hopelessly dark and outdated. The typical brownstone layout had a formal parlor in the front and a more relaxed parlor in the back, then a kitchen and dining room on the lower garden level and bedrooms on the upper floors.

The stone itself wasn’t always in great shape after decades of rain and snow, especially on the many smaller, more narrow brownstones rushed into development by 19th century speculators eager to sell to middle class families (like these below, in Bedford-Stuyvesant).

The New York brownstone, once so prized, was now regarded as a relic. Rows were bulldozed to make way for lighter-colored limestone or marble Beaux-Arts townhouses. In the 1920s, others were razed in favor of handsome luxury apartment buildings. (Below, a row condemned to make way for Tudor City in the 1920s)

Those that didn’t meet the bulldozer were carved up into small apartments, their tall stoops removed and replaced by a street-level front door. Those that escaped demolition often stood alone, random remnants of the era of silk hats and showy equipages. Few mourned their passing.

“The age of the brownstone front draws to a close,” proclaimed the 1926 New York Times article. “In almost every cross street of central Manhattan, from river to river, the dignity of brownstone gives way to shining new structures that rise higher. A hundred families come to live where but two or three have dwelt as the panorama of New York moves on.”

The Times’ obituary for brownstones turned out to be wrong, of course. By the 1960s, a new generation of urban dwellers were eager to take advantage of the space and historical cred of these dwellings.

Trailblazers restored them to single-family use. Historic Districts came into existence, protecting brownstones within their borders from destruction. Wide swaths of Manhattan and Brooklyn owe their revitalization—or gentrification, depending on your point of view—to their newfound popularity.

The brownstone era wasn’t over; it simply entered a new phase of its love story with New Yorkers. Even the Times, in its 1926 eulogy, was wistful about the passing of a house type that was, and once again is, an emblem of the city. (Below, a lovely row in Yorkville)

“The brownstone front was peculiarly and essentially the citadel of the home, the stronghold of an old-fashioned era before New York became such a vast hive,” the Times concluded. “In no other city did the brownstone front achieve greatness. It was respectable, prosperous, frock-coated New York at the best.”

[Ninth photo: unknown]