Clinton Avenue contains some of Brooklyn’s finest 19th century architecture, including the Gilded Age mansions that made it the borough’s most fashionable address. A walk down the length of the avenue tells the story of this transformation: from the provincial farming community shaped by a handful of prominent landowners to a “Gold Coast” boulevard of grand Renaissance Revival buildings, and later to the tension between wartime housing needs, development, and the nascent historic preservation movement.

457 Clinton Avenue, a Second Empire villa, built in 1869. Originally owned by Nason B. Collins, a flour merchant, the house has a number of striking architectural features: a three-story tower, mansard roof, and front porch supported by fluted Doric columns.