5 Dec 2008
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/48/31_48_sp_135_joralemon.html
Someone bought the haunted house!
By Sarah Portlock The Brooklyn Paper
One of Brooklyn Heights’s most-famous — and most-haunted — houses has sold for $4.95 million.
The 1830s-era landmarked, Federal-style white clapboard house at 135 Joralemon St. was long known as the local ghost house, thanks to a decade of abandonment and a subsequent fire in 2004 that finished off what neglect had started.
But in 2005, owner Alfred Palmer sold the house for $2.4 million to Howard Haimes, a developer with a background in high-end restorations. Seven months later, the house at the intersection of Sidney Place had a new roof, back porch, plumbing, electrical and heating systems, and a fully renovated kitchen and bathrooms.
The 3,850-square-foot, four-bedroom house now has five fireplaces and most of its historic detailing, including moldings, doors, and some of the original wide plank floors.
“I’ve been wanting to do the restoration ever since I saw the place,” Haimes, who lives on Garden Place, said at the time.
“It’s been a very fulfilling project.”
The renovations were in dire need: by 2003, Time Out New York called it one of the 13 creepiest places in the city. “It’s easy to picture Uncle Fester roaming the attic, testing light bulbs in his mouth — or Jeffrey Dahmer in the basement, dismembering corpses,” the magazine said.
Haimes originally said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sell it, but then listed it for $5.95 million. He dropped the price by a million in February and found his buyer — the house is now in contract, according to the Web site of Brown Harris Stevens, the real-estate firm.
Broker Joan Goldberg said she couldn’t share any information.
“Privacy of the seller and buyer does not permit me to discuss details,” she explained.
The sale price of the house — which is really no bigger than a large penthouse apartment — may seem high in these tight economic times, but recent history has shown that classic buildings and historic brownstones are retaining their value, even as housing prices are plummeting across the region and nation.
As The Brooklyn Paper reported last month, a Brooklyn Heights home sold for $10.8 million in October, the most expensive residential real-estate deal in the neighborhood’s history, despite the fiscal meltdown.
©2008 The Brooklyn Paper
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