Flickr photo by 24gotham
Moonstruck House (19 Cranberry Street) seller/ Heights Hero Edwards Rullman talks to nabe resident/NY Times writer J. Courtney Sullivan in today’s edition:
NY Times: Moon Struck House…: “We got 100 times what we paid for it back in 1961,” said Mr. Rullman, a retired architect whose wife, Francesca, is a former opera singer. The couple now live on Cape Cod.
When the Rullmans bought their Brooklyn Heights home, the neighborhood was a grittier version of the now-pristine and upscale enclave filled with impeccably preserved brownstones.
The area fell into disrepair in the 1940s and ’50s. The construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway eliminated architectural treasures, including the literary group house whose residents included W. H. Auden and Carson McCullers. Single-family homes were turned into boarding houses for sailors who worked in the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“By the close of the war, Brooklyn Heights didn’t have a very good reputation,” Mr. Rullman said. “A lot of us were told that it might not be a safe place to bring our children. But plenty of young families moved in anyway because there was a huge amount of beautiful housing to be had for not much money.”
