A lot of the architectural beauty of Brooklyn comes from its rowhouses, the standard, narrow, residences that were constructed to house an expanding middle class more than a century ago. Row houses are the dominant building type in most the City’s historic districts, like the Lefferts Manor historic district, which I will discuss today. I lived in this historic district at 212 Lincoln Road for many years. It was part of an elegant set of row houses built in 1910 in the Renaissance Revival style by prolific Swedish-born architect Axel Hedman. Hedman was born in Sweden in 1861 and emigrated to America in 1880. He became an American citizen in 1901 and lived in Brooklyn until his death in 1943. He did most of his building between 1890 and 1912. He was heavily influenced by the White Cities Movement, which was part of the World’s Colombian Exhibition of 1893, in Chicago. Hedman, by the end of his career, had built a huge number of homes, perhaps more than any other of Brooklyn architect ever did. He built flats and apartment buildings, and civic buildings, but his specialty was row houses like those on Lincoln Road or Maple Street. Hedman designed literarily hundreds of row houses in Crown Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill, Park Slope, Sunset Park, and Lefferts Manor. The Neo Renaissance buildings Hedman constructed are characterized by a cohesive harmony. Popular in Brooklyn from around 1890 to 1920, it is an adaptation of Italian and French Renaissance styles for urban row houses and apartment buildings. Unlike the ornate, heavy Beaux-Arts style, the Neo-Renaissance look in Brooklyn is more reserved and “scholarly” in its use of classical elements. Neo-Renaissance buildings commonly have light-colored facades of limestone, light brick, or buff-colored brick combined with terra-cotta. Facades of Neo Renaissance row houses are highly symmetrical with balanced proportions, emphasizing harmony and rhythm through repeated elements. They feature classical lines and round shapes.
This will give you a good feel for what the interior of one of these houses is like.