{"id":207299,"date":"2026-04-23T15:29:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207299\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T15:29:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:29:46","slug":"a-well-preserved-wood-shingled-house-in-brooklyn-heights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/207299\/","title":{"rendered":"A Well-Preserved Wood-Shingled House in Brooklyn Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n A Donald Judd daybed on the ground floor where walls are taken down to the stone and lath.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

25 Cranberry Street is one of Brooklyn\u2019s most cartoonishly quaint homes \u2014\u00a0a squat, wood-frame house covered in raw-wood shingles that peeks up through two dormer windows at its brick and brownstone neighbors in Brooklyn Heights. It shows up<\/a> on an 1829 map as the home<\/a> of \u201cMrs. Bruce,\u201d but it may be older; the broker now listing it for $4.9 million claims it was built in 1790. Inside, the rooms look as old as the exterior, but in an open, unfussily modern way, with wide, wooden floorboards from old growth trees\u00a0and patchy plaster walls. \u201cI like to think of the young women in their 1840s gowns going up the stairs,\u201d says owner Elisabeth Cunnick, who took pains<\/a> to protect No. 25 from development as a brand-new four-story brick home<\/a> rose on an empty lot next door. \u201cI made a promise to the house that if I held on long enough, there would be enough people able to see the house for the beauty it has and not see a gut renovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

Price: $4.9 million ($1,920 in monthly taxes)<\/p>\n

Specs: 4 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms<\/p>\n

Extras: Sitting room, library, laundry room, dressing room, storage area, backyard with 17-foot-deep porch, gated front yard.<\/p>\n

10-minute walking radius: Brooklyn Promenade, Montague Diner, the Center for Brooklyn History<\/p>\n

Listed by: Joan Goldberg, Brown Harris Stevens\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

If Cunnick sounds like she\u2019s timing the sale of an artwork, it might be because she comes from that world. In 1995, she and her ex, the gallerist Peter Freeman<\/a>, sold a single print (an Andy Warhol of Chairman Mao) to come up with the down payment on the $500,000 house. At the time, she was running A\/D Gallery<\/a>, which specialized<\/a> in selling utilitarian objects made by artists: matte-black bowls<\/a> by James Turrell, lamps<\/a> by Richard Tuttle, and glass vases<\/a> by Jennifer Bartlett. The wares veered toward minimalism: Cunnick was the sole New York dealer of Donald Judd furniture at the time. Her renovation didn\u2019t bring in Duncan Phyfe <\/a>chairs\u00a0and period-appropriate wallpaper, either, but instead pared the home back to its raw materials and simple forms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe mostly just got rid of things,\u201d Cunnick said. The last owners ran Meunier\u2019s<\/a>, a posh<\/a> home-goods store on Montague Street, but their home was \u201call dropped tile ceilings and avocado green,\u201d Cunnick said. With the contractor Robert Taffera<\/a>, she peeled back seven layers of wallpaper to reveal plaster walls and took out new boards to uncover 1820s floors. Beams and brick were left exposed and, in some spots, so was the raw lath. \u201cI thought I might cover some of that, but it\u2019s just so beautiful,\u201d said Cunnick. Her aesthetic, as she told<\/a> The World of Interiors in 2005, was a \u201cthin line between a fine carelessness and squalor.\u201d She made no effort to cover over sections of plaster where cracks were repaired, and traces of white paint still mark the treads of the stripped-down staircase. Additions were minimal; a plasterer added back some indigo pigment in the living area on the parlor level, which opens to a library where a cabinetmaker added built-ins. The hall was painted with raw ocher, which, Cunnick clarifies, isn\u2019t as fancy as it sounds. \u201cIt\u2019s just mud,\u201d she says. \u201cOne of the cheapest things you can buy.\u201d She even kept the last owner\u2019s appliances and their 1950s robin\u2019s-egg-blue tub and sink \u2014 an outlandish move<\/a> in 1995.<\/p>\n

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\n The renovation left traces of the layers that were stripped back.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

The biggest changes came when Cunnick furnished the place, bringing in Noguchi lamps, a Richard Tuttle chair and lamps, and a Judd side table and daybed<\/a>, which served as seating in a dining nook. \u201cThough, honestly, when I had lots of people staying, they slept on that,\u201d said Cunnick. She had shocked the art world by showing Judd beds with mattresses and throws, but she felt strongly that for d\u00e9cor to be understood, it had to be lived with. \u201cI use everything in the house,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s just how I live.\u201d Now, she\u2019d like someone else to do the same: She\u2019s spending more time in Connecticut and compared No. 25 to silver she had inherited, then gifted to a niece. Her broker, Joan Goldberg, told me she\u2019s telling interested brokers, \u201cIf your buyer would consider the aesthetic in this place something they needed to tear out, the seller\u2019s not going to sell it to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n The main entry on the parlor level. A John Cage drawing, made through a process of chance, contrasts with the exactingly carved 17th-century Hadley chest below it.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n To the right of the entryway is the parlor, which looks over Cranberry Street. The side table is by Donald Judd and the lamp is by Isamu Noguchi, but the couch is 18th-century, and the clock on the mantel is from 1818.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n The parlor-level living area connects to a library, where Cunnick added built-ins. She was once a fiction editor for Conjunctions. The table is 18th-century Swedish.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n An upstairs sitting area with a mantelpiece that resembles one found in the Lefferts House.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n The primary bedroom on the second floor looks over the back garden. Cabinets were added to serve as closets.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n One floor down, on the garden level, is a kitchen that opens into the rear garden.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n The back porch stretches into the garden, hugging the brick wall of a neighboring residence.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n A bedroom on the top floor with a skylight and peephole window into a smaller bedroom next door. Plans to add ceiling height and extend the rear, with a terrace, could pass a landmark review, says Joan Goldberg, since the rear of the house is not visible to neighbors.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n A smaller bedroom on the top floor has been in use as an office.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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\n The house stands out in a neighborhood of bricks and brownstones, and Cunnick vowed to stay until a building project next door was done.
\n Photo: Virginia Carey for Brown Harris Stevens\n <\/p>\n

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