Chester Court is a gorgeous little cul-de-sac just off Flatbush Avenue in Lefferts Garden. It has been landmarked. Chester Court includes 18 Tudor Revival style houses set in two opposing rows. It was designed and built in 1911-12 by Peter J. Collins (1866- 1934), a prominent Brooklyn architect and developer who was born and raised in Brooklyn and served as the borough’s Superintendent of Buildings. Collins was one of Pratt Institute’s first grads. Collins was inspired by Chester in England. In the summer of 1910, Collins took a trip to England and was smitten by its Tudor architecture, especially prominent in Chester. The city’s famed Tudor style half-timbered houses inspired him to recreate the same here in Brooklyn. Although the Tudor Revival was well established in Brooklyn by this time as a style for freestanding houses, it had not been widely used for row houses. The Chester Court houses are perhaps the first Tudor Revival style row houses in the borough, if not the entire city. Their design was inspired by the renowned timber-framed “black-and-white” or “magpie” buildings of Chester, England, which primarily date from the 16th and 17th centuries, and from the “Black-and-White Revival” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jason Nixon, a former resident of Chester Court told us that he loved “turning the corner from Flatbush Avenue and stepping into the Cotswolds,” which is exactly what Collins intended.
In 1911 these homes sold for an amazing $ 7, 750.00. The facades of Chester Court’s houses feature Flemish-bond red brick on their ground floors and stucco with false half-timbering above, alternating square-headed and round-headed openings at their first stories and angled and straight-sided oriels at their second stories. They remain remarkably well-preserved. All these houses retain their original clay-tile roofs, and many still have their historic wood doors. The wall at the end of Chester Court, which is attributed to Collins, screens out the adjacent B train line and contributes to the sense of the district as a distinctive self-contained enclave. Constructed of red brick matching that of the Chester Court houses, it features Flemish-bond pilasters and recessed decorative panels laid in English bond. Sadly, doing research on the construction of the street, I learned that an original Dutch seventeenth century homestead was demolished to create the street in 1911, long before New York City had any landmark laws. Elements in the house that were salvaged were two hundred and fifty years old. What a tragedy!
