This five-story Brooklyn townhouse offers four outdoor spaces, including a rooftop terrace with wide-angle views of Manhattan and the harbor.
For many New Yorkers, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade is the absolute best spot in the city. Here, with Brooklyn at your back and you’ve-got-to-be-kidding views of Lower Manhattan in your face, you get the best of both boroughs. This utterly charming and fantastically renovated townhouse at 16 Remsen Street is just steps from the Promenade and its many charms. And those in the know say that this block of Remsen is the very best in all of Brooklyn Heights.
Originally built in 1845, the six-bedroom, five-bath home features a whopping 6,500 square feet of interior space spread across five floors and a finished basement. And the 26-foot-wide home offers four outdoor spaces, including a rooftop terrace and a landscaped backyard.
These old-time New York townhouses are justly prized for their parlor floors (one level up from the street), and this one does not disappoint. From the double front door, you step into a gracious entry hall with a central staircase and doors that open to the formal living and dining rooms. Both rooms offer fireplaces, richly detailed crowned moldings and mantels, built-in bookcases, gleaming hardwood floors and nearly floor-to-ceiling windows. A balcony at the back of the parlor floor features stairs that lead down to the backyard brick patio. Pull back the sliding glass doors, and you can step right into the ground-floor eat-in kitchen/family room. The chef’s kitchen, which features a large island clad in white Carrara marble and a wall of windows facing out to the patio, happily does double duty as a family hangout space. A light and bright library on this level sits at the front of the house.
The private primary bedroom suite, which features dual dressing rooms, a balcony and a cozy sitting room/library with a gas fireplace, takes up the entire third floor. Up we go to the fourth floor and its three bedrooms. And then to the fifth floor, which offers a large media room with a wet bar, another terrace, a stained glass skylight, a full bathroom and a flexible space that could be a bedroom or an away-from-it-all home office. In fact, the whole house offers loads of flexibility. That ground-floor library would be a perfect guest bedroom for visiting elders. And the sitting room in the primary suite could easily be a home gym, a yoga room, or an artist’s studio.
Luxurious amenities abound here. What’s not to like about a 2,500-bottle wine cellar with its own tasting room? Ditto the two laundry rooms, the smart-home technology and the abundant closet and storage space throughout.
And let’s not forget about that very private rooftop terrace. Turn toward the west and you’ll get those same amazing city and harbor views that we told you about from the Promenade. But here it’s just you and your mate and an evening cocktail.