178 Columbia Heights, ca. 1980. This Italianate style frame house, built in 1845, was once the residence of Ferdinand Ward, the "best-hated man in the United States." In 1880, Ward purchased the building for $40,000 after securing investment from former U.S. President General Ulysses Grant, an investor in his Wall Street brokerage firm. He outfitted the house in what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as, Ward, the son of a small town pastor and Protestant missionary, transformed the residence into “one of the most elaborately and expensively furnished houses in Brooklyn.” But it was all to be short-lived: in 1884, Ward's brokerage was revealed to be a massive Ponzi scheme, through which he defrauded many prominent New Yorkers, including the family of the 18th President.

176 Columbia Heights, 1958. This 19th century rowhouse was owned in the 1940s by an executive of the nearby Squibb Pharmaceutical Company named Ferdinand Nitardy. Nitardy had his old rowhouse renovated in a Regency style in 1943 and around the same time was engaged in a battle, along with his neighbors, to stop the construction of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The neighbors lost and the construction of the feature commenced in 1946.