Discrepancies in Architectural Guides
What the ‘official’ architectural guides recognize or ignore can be curious. The AIA Guide to New York City takes note of 87 Remsen Street as an “exotic Queen Anne mansion with a melange of brownstone and terra cotta detailing.”
However, Clay Lancaster’s Old Brooklyn Heights, which helped make the case for declaring the Heights a historic district, omits reference to that 1889 structure while including plainer neighbors on either side. Neither the AIA Guide nor Lancaster makes mention of 124 Remsen Street, one of the widest and most imposing brownstones in the district, whose ostentation extends to a column-flanked lower-level entrance below the grand stoop. 
It is interesting that the AIA Guide also omits reference to 75 Livingston Street, the clear queen of the new downtown skyscraper historic district, as well as to the district’s every other building with the exception of the 1901 Temple Bar Building at 44 Court Street.