Montrose Morris-Designed Buidling Asks $6.25 Million

Here’s an opportunity to own a circa 1890 building designed by Montrose Morris, the lauded architect whose Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival buildings are among the jewels of brownstone Brooklyn. This one’s located at 109 South 9th Street and is a Queen Anne, freestanding, 24-foot-wide four-story brick building with 8,300 square feet of space.

 

Suzanne Spellen wrote it up as a building of the day a couple years ago, noting that the structure features “many of the stylistic elements that define [Morris’] early work.” These include the building’s use of brick over a stone base, its use of large windows highlighted by trim, its mix of rectangular and arched windows, its use of colonnettes and decorative terra cotta, and its oversized, bracketed cornice.

 

There’s a floor plan, showing eight units within, with two on most floors, and one in the rear of the windowed basement. The whole place needs to be gutted, though, according to the listing, so we’re looking at a blank slate, pretty much.

The building may have originally consisted of four floor-through apartments. Presumably it will be delivered empty, although the listing doesn’t specify.

 

The one unit pictured in the photos — the topmost — is quite fetching, with its high ceilings, wide-plank floors, exposed brick and wood accents. Elsewhere “many original details remain,” according to the listing, from Core broker Patrick Lilly.

 

The property is zoned for both residential and commercial uses, so there are a range of possibilities here.

 

The building’s asking $6.25 million, appreciably more than the $15,000 cost estimated in February 1887, when the building was in the planning stages. What would you do with the place?