Construction update: Michelle Williams’ Victorian Flatbush house

Eye On Real Estate

November 2, 2016 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Actress Michelle Williams, shown in this October 2016 photo, is making progress with the renovation of her Victorian Flatbush house. Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

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Well done, Michelle Williams.

The Victorian Flatbush house that the Academy Award-nominated actress bought last year now has a great-looking historically appropriate façade.

Workers have stripped grim gray asphalt shingles off the landmarked Colonial Revival-style house at 1440 Albemarle Road.

Cedar clapboard has been installed to match historic clapboard that had been found beneath those asphalt shingles. Cedar shingles have been placed on part of the second-floor façade. Both building materials have been painted shades of white.

Williams’ house-restoration plans, which were drawn up by Matiz Architecture & Design, were greenlighted by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission last March. The preservation agency’s approval was required because her home is located within the Prospect Park South Historic District.

The mansion was stunning even before its historically appropriate facelift got underway.

Alexandra Reddish of Mary Kay Gallagher Real Estate, the listing broker for 1440 Albemarle Road when it was sold to Williams, nicknamed it the “Gone with the Wind” house.

It has an aura of antebellum glamor because of its two-story portico flanked with fluted Ionic columns, its genteel porches on the side and back of the house and a dramatic “bridal staircase” inside it.

It was designed in 1905 by Robert Bryson and Charles Pratt.
The Golden Globe-winning actress purchased the property through a trust for $2,500,001, city Finance Department records indicate.

Williams’ latest film is director Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” which is showing at indie movie theaters citywide.