Near the end of a block of single-family homes in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park neighborhood, a once-majestic mansion is crumbling.
The four square columns of the Federal-style entrance are rotting. The Venetian windows are cracked and full of holes. The roof is slightly wrinkled and curved on one side like the crooked, uneven brim of a worn baseball cap.
It is a temple to wasteful neglect, a structure that can scare you just by looking at it.
A wall of green boards runs where the property, 1000 Ocean Avenue, meets the sidewalk, but a square opening in the fence reveals the dilapidated house and its front yard, which is littered with trash: a glass bottle, some tools, a reusable grocery bag.
Neighbors say they believe squatters have been living there.
The story of how 1000 Ocean Avenue ended up in this state is somewhat unclear. His future is even bleaker. Neighbors recently flooded a community Facebook page with ideas for restoration, and last year the owner put it up for sale for the unlikely price of $2.6 million.
Any buyer faces a tangle of bureaucratic challenges: The Colonial Revival was declared a landmark in 1981, which limited opportunities for change.
Some neighbors are pessimistic that someone will restore the house any time soon. They disagree about who or what is to blame. But they are united by their awe for the building.
“It’s an absolute tragedy for a house with this history and value to the neighborhood to languish like this,” said Orli LeWinter, 45, who has lived on the block for about 13 years. “People just want it restored and put to good use.”
The house at 1000 Ocean Avenue is one of the rundown houses in Brooklyn. It is also one of the most impressive. Built in 1899, the building is nearly 6,000 square feet in total and features an imposing facade that stands out even in Ditmas Park, a quiet neighborhood of elegant homes with impressive porches and manicured front yards.
Next to 1000 Ocean Avenue is a similar and equally impressive Victorian-era palace, 1010 Ocean Avenue. Both were designed by architect George Palliser at the turn of the 20th century. But 1010 has been preserved; today it houses a doctor’s office and apartments.
For decades, 1000 Ocean Avenue has been crumbling, its tiles peeling away and its roof decaying.
Back in the 1960s, children living in the neighborhood called it “the scary house” and would run when they passed it, remembers Lanis Levy, 68, who grew up on the block and now lives in London. The front steps collapsed and pigeons often flew around the roof.
“As scary as it was for us as kids,” she said, “it always seemed like there must be magic inside.”
Sometimes a man who owned the building would come out, walk a dog and smoke a cigar, Ms. Levy said. “He never really spoke to anyone,” she remembers.
Bernice Schleicher, formerly of Brighton Beach, bought the home in 1975, according to city records.
Ms. Schleicher and her partner, Sam Kekis, who ran an antiques store in Park Slope, got the house at a discounted price, about $25,000, because it had limited electrical and water damage from roof to basement, said Ron Schweiger, the Brooklyn borough historian.
Mr. Schweiger had long been fascinated by the building, having come across a colorized picture of it in its Gilded Age splendor.
As Mr. Schweiger drove past the house one day in the late 1970s or early 80s, he saw a man working outside. It turned out that the man was Mr. Kekis, who invited Mr. Schweiger for a tour. Upon entering, Mr. Schweiger noticed that the walls had holes and the wallpaper was peeling.
The interior of the house, although weathered, was still breathtaking in its size and detail, Mr. Schweiger recalled. However, the facade separated from the house, and Mr. Kekis installed wooden beams angled from the front yard to support the front of the building.
Ms. Schleicher and Mr. Kekis had set up a makeshift bedroom and kitchen upstairs, Mr. Schweiger recalled.
“I think their goal was to restore the house,” Mr. Schweiger said. “I don’t know what happened.”
What is clear is that the house continued to fall apart. Ms. Schleicher was eventually confined to the single room, causing the rest of the building – the large dining room, the library, the drawing rooms – to fall into disrepair.
But the couple’s attachment to the home seemed to grow even as his condition worsened. At one point, Mr. Kekis rejected a proposal that the city would turn the house into a museum. He refused to allow city officials entry.
Mr. Kekis, a tinsmith with a bushy mustache and few friends, wanted to do all the work on his house himself and rarely allowed visitors in, recalled Susan Goodstein, Ms. Schleicher’s sister. “They never had the time, the wherewithal or the money to actually fix it,” Ms. Goodstein, 79, said.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Kekis died of bone cancer and Ms. Schleicher moved to sell the home, giving up her “pride and joy” in the process, said Gemma Sokoletsky, a real estate agent and family friend who listed the home in 2021. Not long after selling the house, Ms. Schleicher died of complications from Covid.
A neighbor, 44-year-old Tyler Larson, recalled touring the building with a group that had discussed pooling funds to restore it. But the group was also driven by curiosity about the “haunted house” on the corner, Mr. Larson said.
And so they set off.
“We were blown away by the things we saw,” Mr. Larson said of the tour, recalling with wonder how a woman was bedridden in the only usable room on the second floor.
There was dust everywhere.
There were stacks of antiques throughout the house. A room on the third floor was full of old dolls. Another room was full of items related to taxidermy. The kitchen no longer had a ceiling and revealed a view of the collapsing roof. Behind it was a cemetery full of rusted vintage cars.
“It really is absolutely beautiful if you could get away from all the scary things you see everywhere,” Mr. Larson said of the house. “All of the woodwork and layout of the home, as well as the remaining stained glass windows, were more beautiful than any comparable home in the area.”
The tour offered Mr. Larson a glimpse into a home that some in the neighborhood had long believed was vacant. “We thought it was abandoned,” said Matthew Reichard, 38, who has lived on the block for about 14 years.
Ultimately, the building was purchased by Asif Jhangir in 2021 for approximately $1.3 million. But Mr. Jhangir was apparently unaware of the red tape he would face if he tried to remodel the house given its heritage status, said Laura Rozos of Compass, the broker handling the current listing. Now Mr. Jhangir is giving up, hoping someone else could take on a massive restoration project.
Over the years, the house has also been subject to hazard violations by the city’s building department, a series that continued after it was purchased by Mr. Jhangir, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Today, according to city records, there are at least 26 active violations or citations against the building, as well as a stack of paperwork citing the building as having “excessive debris,” “exposed and damaged structural elements” and “consistent deficiencies.” According to the Department of Buildings, the penalties total more than $100,000.
The renovation work conflicts with the house’s classification as part of the Ditmas Park Historic District. Under the Koch-era designation, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission must approve all exterior work on the building, as well as any interior work that affects the exterior or requires approval from the building department.
In extremely rare cases, it is possible to demolish listed buildings that are in particularly poor condition. Destruction of such a building requires special circumstances and approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The commission said it will work with any buyer of 1000 Ocean Avenue to resolve the violations and issue permits for restoration work.
David Maggiotto, a spokesman for the Department of Buildings, said city inspectors found no structural damage to the house that would require an urgent order of demolition, a condition that allows the destruction of a listed building.
Renovation project experts estimated that restoring the home would cost between $3 million and $5 million. Eli Moyal, founder of residential renovation company Chapter, said such a project would likely take at least two years to complete and that finding a team with the experience to restore the building’s vintage interior could be challenging.
Andrew Whinery, 39, who has lived on the block for about two years, said he sees 1000 Ocean Avenue as an “extremely impressive” structure and that he would like to see someone restore it to its former glory.
Still, Mr. Whinery doubted anyone would come up with the money. And he said he feared city regulations would hinder the use of the property for, well, anything else.
“It seems to me far better for someone to use it for something, regardless of whether the architectural style is retained,” Mr Whinery said. “It seems a little crazy to me that it continues to be in the state it is in.”
Others in the neighborhood said they would be dismayed if the building was demolished.
“It deserves to be preserved,” said Chris Masters, 44, who has lived on the block for about a decade.
Mr Larson, who viewed the house several years ago, said the current condition was unacceptable and potentially dangerous to anyone squatting inside. He fears that the building could collapse one day.
But given the size of the building, he argued, the house is a prime example of why the city uses landmarks in the first place.
“I think it’s salvageable now,” Mr. Larson said of the house at 1000 Ocean Avenue. “I don’t think the idea of ’let’s just let this collapse’ is a better alternative than trying to save it. The problem is: who’s going to do that?”