Clinton Hill's namesake avenue was once known as the Gold Coast of Brooklyn. Oil tycoons and baking powder magnates built lavish mansions here in the late 1800s. Charles Pratt, who kicked off the architectural gold rush, founded the Pratt Institute just a few blocks from his home. Clinton Hill was also home to Mollie Fancher, AKA “The Brooklyn Enigma,” who was famous for spending 50 years in bed. The Enigma was said to see through walls, read books by touching them, and survive on minuscule amounts of food. During one seven-month period, she reportedly consumed only “four teaspoons of milk, two teaspoons of wine, one small banana, and one cracker.” In 1967, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe moved into an apartment on the second floor of a townhouse on 160 Hall Street with walls smeared with blood and psychotic scribbling, an oven crammed with discarded syringes, and a refrigerator overrun with mold. They paid $80 a month. Today, that same townhouse rents for $8,000 a month—used syringes not included. Clinton Hill was also where Biggie Smalls, one of the greatest rappers of all time, grew up. He was raised in a “one-room shack” by his mom at 226 St. James Place.

The 19th century saw Fort Greene develop from farmland held by a few families to a residential neighborhood, populated by a mix of Brooklyn’s working, merchant, and upper classes. Today, much of the neighborhood has been well preserved, including several blocks of brownstone and rowhouse architecture, churches, parkland, and civic institutions dating to the 19th century. Even in areas transformed by postwar urban renewal and commercial development traces of an earlier era remain.

200 Lafayette Avenue (Vanderbilt Avenue facade), 1957. The (now) bright yellow wood-frame house is arguably the most photographed house in Clinton Hill. Purchased in 1903 by the Skinner family, the home was still in their care in 2010 and likely still today.

The Joseph Steele house, built around 1850 — likely as an extension of the smaller wing on its east side — is a wooden building in the Greek Revival style. During the 1850s, this part of Brooklyn still had some farmland and open space; the cupola atop its roof would have provided a sweeping downhill view of more-urban Brooklyn Heights, Wallabout Bay, and the land in between.

The house at 200 Lafayette Avenue is what the landmarks commission calls “the largest and best remaining example, of a wooden suburban mansion in the transitional Greek Revival/Italianate style now standing in any of the five boroughs of New York City.” Throughout its 179-year history, the house has only had three owners. The Skinner family, who currently own the home, have owned it since 1903.

From mansions to tenements, when it comes to housing, New York has it all. This New York Public Library collection examines housing in New York since the mid-19th century, with a particular focus on vernacular and wood-frame structures across the five boroughs.