Tasteful Friends - 19 Cranberry Street, Brooklyn N.Y. (aka the Moonstruck House) Listed For $13 Million

Photos! Lots of lovely photos!

Sold back in 2008 for $4 million USD. Couple who bought it back in early 1960's paid almost nothing for the property.

Insane price. Who has this kind of money?

There's Matt Damon for a start.

Really charming neighborhood

Absolutely stunning house, some of the furniture is a bit average, but you arent buying that.

One of the bedrooms is a bit of a letdown but easily fixed

R3 That's what I think too . But more people in this world can afford a 13 million dollar home than you might realize. I learned that when I moved to Orange County, CA a few years back and have seen mega million dollar properties move constantly in the real estate listings. Most are second homes that are used only occasionally.

No one outside of Eastern Europeans, Middle Eastern, Asian and South American persons with suspect sources income pay all cash for these properties. They will make a hefty down payment, and rest will be financed. Hence the popularity of condos, townhouses, and mansions. All are types of private homes that can be purchased with lesser financial scrutiny than say a white glove co-op on UES of Manhattan.

I thought there were hoards of people who cannot afford their mortgages and Home Equaity Loans. What is going on?

R9

That's the poor and other unfortunate souls. Upper middle class, wealthy and whoever else is in "one percent" largely have come through covid-19 panic unscathed financially. Financial markets had a great 2020, and those who own assets they intended to hold long term (like homes) aren't bothered much if at all if prices tank for one or even two years.

Now if you're someone who stretched to buy a home and suddenly are facing drop in income, then you've got problems if things go on for too long.

I love the house, and agree with R6. But is $13 million a little much for that? I just think about what I could get elsewhere for that price.

"I thought there were hoards of people who cannot afford their mortgages and Home Equity Loans. What is going on?"

They're rich as Roosevelt. They're just cheap.

Read comments from Gothamist coverage of story for what locals are saying.

Do you love him, Loretta?

I think it's pretty charming - love all the fireplaces in pretty much every room. Though the one bathroom with the shower in the middle of the room was a little odd; i've never seen that before but obviously a retro-fit because they used to only have a clawfoot tub. i loved the distressed look of the kitchen floor. The only outdoor space pic they had was a little puzzling - was it a driveway?

That house on Cranberry street was perfect as a setting for Italian family because it had a large kitchen. If you know Italian families nearly everything happens in the kitchen, it's just where everyone ends up . So much goes on over a kitchen table.... Card games, cake/cookies/patisseries and coffee, fantastic meals...

LInk to Moonstruck fan site showing pictures of interior when 19 Cranberry was up for sale back in 2008. House then IIRC was divided up into apartments, so the young family who bought it must have paid plenty to convert it back into private residence.

R15

Yes, there was a driveway in back of this home. I know area well and if you Google 19 Cranberry street and pan around to back/side on Willow street you'll see the curb cut for driveway and much of what looks like "gate".

House sits a corner of Cranberry and Willow streets so access to rear yard is easy enough by having a driveway and gate. Back in day when house was built this likely served as service entrance for deliveries.

Notice while house next door has rubbish bins out front, 19 Cranberry does not, am guessing family took their trash "out back".

Here's link to article back in 2008 when house was last sold. You can see the back area more clearly though picture is small.

It beautiful, except for the price tag...

R15

Those "fireplaces" were actually very sophisticated coal burning heating systems, well for 19th and early 20th century anyway. You can find them still in older homes all over Brooklyn and Manhattan.

You have a coal fire in "parlor" fireplace on a lower floor, and the heat rises up to warm not just room in question but those in line above. Obviously however this only worked where there were fireplaces in a row. Other rooms not so connected would have to have their own fires.

More heat still would have come from a huge coal fired range in kitchen.

These homes had central heating via boilers in basement (steam or hot water) but with solid fuel once you get a good fire going, you don't put it out. And with a coal burning boiler once lit it's "on" until fire goes out. In New York City you don't need that kind of heat all year long. So for shoulder seasons people used those fireplaces and kitchen range to heat house instead of firing up the boiler.

Picture of house in 1940 taken by city of New York for tax purposes.

Those wood floors are to die for!

Beautiful house and nicely restored. It's grand without being very grand (the scale of the rooms and ceiling heights, for example), but with some beautiful flourishes like the very fine Greek Revival fluted pilaters in the double parlors.) And the house is nicely compact, two rooms deep early, so it escapes the curse of a deeper house with odd little corner windows trying to illuminate a room.

The more beautiful streets of Brooklyn Heights are very beautiful and it's something of an ideal house. Much nicer than many more expensive properties in the city.

I dont know about the meat cage shower of glass, but I suppose you could fil. Your own money grab game show there. Otherwise, I like it like it is architecturally.

The plumbing...all copper, right?

The house is too small and cramped. Not luxurious living.

Wonder why those two big windows on side of house are bricked over.

R24

Of course!

Copper costs money, it cost money because it saves money!

R25

Get a load of Mrs. Vanderbilt....

So where do you live? Versailles?

[quote]Wonder why those two big windows on side of house are bricked over.

R26, the windows were built like that, "blind windows" to give a look of being "finished" on the mostly blank wall. They achieve a sort of symmetry in the window openings on the side wall, the blind center windows balancing the two proper windows at front and back. Look at the floor plan and you'll see the blind windows fall where the fireplaces and chimneys are located making proper windows incompatible. It's a decorative element to make the side elevation.look more complete and important.

R29

Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit. The things you learn on DL...

I really like it.

Not particularly my style, however I could easily adapt to it and love the home.

This is The Mrs. Astor. Even my modest townhouse, the one before my chateau, was many times larger than this. This is a pleasant house for a successful middle-class family, which is why it was a good set for "Moonstruck" which I've been told is some kind of "picture show" or popular entertainment. There are townhouses like this all over many cities in the USA. Due to location and the current real estate market, it is priced as a luxury commodity yet it does not offer refined living.

Permit me to point out my dear Mrs. Astor, 19 Cranberry street still stands. Meanwhile your pile of bricks long since was smashed and carted off to a landfill.

They only used the outside for the movie. Interiors were elsewhere. Funny how huge it looks in the movie where it was shot at a low angle looking up and on the corner. John Mahoney even mentions "It's a mansion" to where Olympia answers "It's a house".

In the current set-up there isn't even a dining room.

All that and you still have to pay 2500 a month for taxes. What?!

[quote]All that and you still have to pay 2500 a month for taxes. What?!

Well, it's a mansion.

[quote]In the current set-up there isn't even a dining room.

Who cares about the current set-up? You're not buying the sellers' furniture, their choices of how rooms should be used, their toothbrushes and half used tubes of toothpaste in the bathrooms...

A dining room is a space plus dining furniture. Put it in the top floor if you want. Make every room a dining room if you want.

Stop poking the fatties, R39; they’ll do it.

Here we go, another comment from the "no dining room queens" of DL.

No R36, current occupants got rid of dining room which was on parlor floor (see floor plans in R17), which became a music room complete with grand piano opposite living room divided by pocket doors.

Don't know about elsewhere, but for NYC where a family purchases these row houses, small mansions or whatever you want to call them, despite lofty price tags many tend to live a rather middle class lifestyle. Dining rooms are fading out and have been for years. More and more people prefer open kitchen areas with seating (as 19 Cranberry has with its basement kitchen area) , as opposed to formal dining rooms.

Find it wonderful that the small tree seemingly just planted in that 1940's photo is still there in front of house now mature.

Staggeringly gorgeous. [The price is ugly as hell...] But the home is exquisite.

Link from above link gives a wonderful view of Cranberry Street back in 2008.

To those who've never been to Brooklyn Heights next time in city urge you to head across Brooklyn Bridge (can bike or walk if desired), and take a walking tour. It really is a beautiful and charming area. One of the few in Brooklyn back in day people from Manhattan didn't consider the boondocks. Well not much anyway...

Sad thing is the working to middle class Irish, Italians and others who long made Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and other areas of northwest Brooklyn what it was have largely been chased out by gentrification. Like West Village and Greenwich Village hordes began invading these rich brownstone/townhouse areas of Brooklyn for the housing stock. Also like aforementioned areas changes even doomed local hospital Long Island College Hospital which closed not long after Saint Vincent's. Like the latter there was then and more now plenty of money in area, but just like Village people wouldn't go near LICH, preferring to trek into Manhattan for healthcare instead.

I lived on Cranberry Street, back in the day! It is a lovely little neighborhood.

R44: For me, that is luxury: to step outside your door and see nothing ugly. Your Google Maps link shows perfectly, from the center of the intersection, viewed in four directions, it's all good. More than good.

I had managed never to visit to Brooklyn except a couple times to the museum when, in the subway in the Village, I ran into an odd guy I'd fucked a year before in another city where I lived. He dared me to come to Brooklyn with him, saying that having seen my house I would love his, promising it was worthwhile, not just the fuck, and so I did. He lived in Willow Street, very near Truman Capote's old place, in the top two floors of a brownstone; there was another apartment in the basement, I think, and his landlord had the rest. His was only nominally an apartment, still very much a single family house with a couple of modest adjustments. He had a small afterthought of a kitchen tucked into one corner of what had been a large rear bedroom with a view over what seemed a huge rear garden, just lawn and mature trees and birds signing in the morning. Much of the fairly spare furniture was the landlord's, interesting stuff the age of the house but some a good bit of it older, Federal period. It was a beautiful introduction to Brooklyn Heights, very near to the house in Cranberry Street.

Other than some of the more frou frou wallpapers I love everything about it. But it's a house for young people. At my age I could never endure all those stairs every day.

There’s an art to carrying big furniture up and down that kind of stairway. In another universe, I’d receive a lifetime achievement award for hauling shit “worth more than YOUR life” between floors.

Wow, one of the few homes I've seen where I don't really object to anything. I even like most of the furniture. Love the kitchen.

I am blown away! Absolutely gorgeous and perfectly in keeping with a beautiful brownstone, without being too Victorian. The owners had respect for the history and details...not ripping everything out and taking down walls, to modernize it. Beautiful job in decorating, too. I love it! Tasteful Friends have been showing some real gems lately. Thanks OP.

Cher should buy this for Chaz or Elijah.

I don't know where they live, but I guarantee it's not a $13 million house.

R42...A tree grows in Brooklyn..

I guess in my DL Eldergay world view, when I blow 13 million on a house I want a DINING ROOM and proper servants quarters and facilities. If this were a townhouse in Mayfair, one would tunnel down and out and create double the space.

R53

Again what is wrong with some of you people?

House as staged currently is *NOT* what you are buying. You get the box and that's all. Dining room area is still there on parlor floor, knock yourselves out.

Dumbwaiters likely were part of house when originally built, but long since covered over as don't see any indication. All you bitches moaning about lack of a dining room had better be prepared to run up and down flights of stairs in aid of getting hot food on table, or have funds for staff.

One thing many families do when converting these row houses into private residences is either move kitchen to first/parlor floor, or leave it at ground floor where it becomes basically center of family life.

That trend started early in 20th century and wore on as middle class housewives and others had to adapt to living without the small army of servants that even small town houses or mansions required.

It's all very well for Mrs. Vanderbilt to sit upstairs in bed or dining room and have things fetched up to her, but for the average middle class household getting meals (hot or otherwise) to dining room or worse bedrooms on upper floors meant constantly running up and down several flights of stairs.

As discussed in other DL thread about mansions, apartment homes for the wealthy caught on in part because the grandest of them offered units with as much or more square footage as row house, but all on one level. Those full or half floor apartments meant kitchens/service areas were far enough away from private family or public rooms, but still provided easier access than going up and down stairs.

Though a fiction and filmed on a set, Life With Father was rather faithful to NYC brownstone/townhouse life for middle classes in middle to late 1800's (time 19 Cranberry street was built).

If nothing else had Nicolas Cage stopped acting after Moonstruck he'd still be famous. FWIU from various acting coaches/teachers and others in profession more guys have done that "Wolf Without A Foot" scene for auditions or whatever, few to none match Nicolas Cage

P.S.

For my money Ronny's railroad apartment above his bakery is perfect. Big, airy, lots of windows and sunlight. Nice size kitchen area with enough space for decent table and chairs.

Know at least ten people living in Manhattan and Brooklyn that have same bathroom tiles and painted wall treatment. All have black tile borders with either white or blue tiles below. Walls are painted anything from standard NYC apartment white to various other colors.

Sorry, wrong link.

Carry on..

Call me when a nice unit opens up on Pineapple.

My favorite house in Pineapple street is #13....

R59

You're few years too late, could have had 65 Pineapple street for only $6 million.

R54: It's almost as if some of our fancier, more refined and demanding posters have never bought a house or have no idea how buying property works, like Sr. Pantalones de Lujo R53, with his "were one to buy a townhouse in Mayfair, one would tunnel down and create double the space."

They have dirt in Brooklyn, too. But evidently he's prepared to spend ten years gathering permits and excavating and engineering and dealing with lawsuits of neighbors whose houses collapsed...but does't comprehend the idea that the furniture he sees now will be gone by the time the papers are exchanged and he can put his dining room and complement of "proper servants" where he wants.

Old man, you give those dogs another piece of my food and I'm gonna kick you 'til you're dead!

The floor plan is quite rigid but other than that it's nice.

Looking again, it's a gorgeous house and fairly perfect.

Of course NYC has larger, grander houses (some of them, like the 1910 Beaux Arts style Emily Vanderbilt Sloan White house at 854 Fifth Ave. a better bargain per square foot than this one.) But the Brooklyn House is both luxurious and livable. Unlike the Upper East Side mansions, it's not so architecturally demanding that only it needs an art collection worth much more than the house; it doesn't require that the furniture be of palatial scale and provenance and quality; and it's not so huge and ambitious an enterprise (in size and social ambition) to require a floor or two taken up with a hive of assistants and employees looking after the place and you. Apples and oranges.

The Brooklyn house reminds me of the Merchants House Museum in the East Village, but three years later (1832.) Even if the museum house is larger, the proportions and style and feel of the place are very much the same, as seen in the front door (quoined and more elaborately articulated in the house museum), but look at the iron work. The similarity didn't go unnoticed because in the recent restoration the wonderful wrought iron newel posts in the form of urns were copied from the house museum. The mansard roof in Brooklyn was a later addition of course, but somehow fits well, a happy alteration.

Crazy as the price is for me, it's still a fairly perfect house and a different experience than what $10-15M buys elsewhere in the city. There are townhouses of the early-/mid-19thC in the West Village, very late 19thC and early 20thC houses in the UES/UWS similar in cost and square footage, and some larger townhouses in Brooklyn restored to late 19thC appearance, yet the location or the larger size doesn't tip the scales for me. They've all been overly renovated to the same generic look and features, and somehow fall well short of the appeal of the Cranberry Street house.

[quote]Looking again, it's a gorgeous house and fairly perfect.[quote] I agree. Also, testing in how to quote here.

Beautiful.

I like the Moonstruck house much better. It still shows Victorian, but is toned down a bit. That home is stunning.

If you lived there it is just a quick walk to food and shopping on Fulton Street. Mandee, 7-11, Aldo.

Frankly, I'd buy this house in a second, if only it had a formal dining room. I simply can't pay $17 million for a house with no formal dining room.

[quote]Call me when a nice unit opens up on Pineapple.

Will do.

*Update*

Sold for about $11 million.

I must say I do love this house, but the stairs are an issue. Also, what is this with one bathroom on the top floor with three bedrooms? I see chamber pots happening for the midnight callings.