page_title: Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
section_title: Housing
hierarchical_section_title: Dyker Heights, Brooklyn / Housing
caption_attribution_description: English: Richard Perry Chittenden, Assistant of the Corporation Counsel, purchased this Shingle Style house for $15,000 in August of 1899. It was designed by Constantine Schubert. In the summer of 1999 the Chittenden House, which was virtually unchanged since 1899, met its painful demise. - From the collections of the Dyker Heights Historical Society. user:cjz208, of the Dyker Heights Historical Society, is the copyright holder of this work, and has published or hereby publishes it under the following license:
context_page_description: Dyker Heights is a predominantly residential neighborhood in the southwest corner of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. It is on a hill between Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Borough Park, and Gravesend Bay. The neighborhood is bounded by 7th and 14th Avenues, 65th Street, and the Belt Parkway on the west, east, north, and south, respectively.
  Dyker Heights originated as a speculative luxury housing development in October 1895 when Walter Loveridge Johnson developed a portion of woodland into a suburban community. It maintained its status as a wealthy neighborhood through the 20th century. During the height of his development, the boundaries were primarily between Tenth and Thirteenth Avenues and from 79th Street to 86th Street. The finest homes of the development were situated along the top of the 110-foot hill, at about Eleventh Avenue and 82nd Street.
  Dyker Heights has a suburban character with detached and semi-detached one-and two-family homes, many of which have driveways and private yards, which are uncommon in parts of New York City. The neighborhood contains tree-lined streets, and there are very few apartment buildings.
context_section_description: Dyker Heights' housing stock consists mostly of stately, single-family detached and semi-detached bungalows.
  In December 1899, the Brooklyn Eagle wrote a very detailed description of the homes in Dyker Heights:
  The typical Dyker Heights residences have five rooms each on the first and second floors and four rooms on the third. Upon entrance, the inmate or visitor is ushered into a hall twelve feet wide which runs back to the butler's pantry. To the right of this hall is the parlor and library and to the left the reception and dining rooms. The rear space is taken up by the kitchen, butler's pantry and washrooms with tiled floors. Birdseye maple is used in the finishing of the parlor and quartered oak in that of the library, one with mantles of the same wood in fancy tile finish. A large fireplace with ornamental andirons completes the mural decoration. The ceilings are ten feet high on the first floor, while nine feet is the elevation of the second and eight feet that of the third floor. Usually the dining room is fifteen feet square and finished off in quartered sycamore. Like the hall, the reception room is done off in quartered oak, but is circular in form and has a diameter of ten feet. In the kitchen is a glazed fireplace, while below stairs, speaking from a first floor level, are the cellar and laundry, with a depth of eight feet, and an asphalt double concrete floor.
  Of the five rooms on the second floor, one is a sitting room and the remainder sleeping apartments, all of which are finished in quartered oak and sycamore. A large bathroom with tiled floors takes up the remaining space of the second story. Rising to the third floor we find plain cypress as the invariable finish of the apartments, which comprise two servants’ rooms, a card or sitting room and a billiard parlor wainscoted on the sides and provided with seats for the players and onlookers. It may be noted further that the reception room and dining room are also wainscoted six feet high.
  Of the approximately 150 homes initially built by Johnson, about half remain; while the others have been razed and replaced by large Mediterranean villas, condos, as well as semi and fully attached homes. Very few of the newer homes fit into the historic context of Dyker Heights, and in contrast to Brooklyn's contemporaneous Ditmas Park and Prospect Park South developments, many of the original surviving homes have been extensively renovated and remodeled.
caption: The demolition of the Chittensen House (left, in 1998) and the homes which replaced it (right, in 2006)
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