The grandest mid-nineteenth-century house still standing in Southern Brooklyn, the Bennet-Farrell-Feldmann House is a rare and exceptionally intact Greek Revival style villa in New York City. Built for Joseph S. Bennet around 1847, and moved to its present location around 1913, it remains within the grounds of Bennet’s original estate. A five-baywide, two-and-one-half-story frame building, the house is sheathed in its original clapboards and features characteristic Greek Revival details such as columned front and rear porches, two-story comer pilasters, denticulated cornices, molded window surrounds, and a low attic story articulated as a crowning entablature. The house has passed through the hands of several owners. The colorful Farrell family, which occupied the house from 1890 to 1912, included James P. Farrell, a successful businessman and Tammany Hall politician, his daughter, Georgina, an early woman graduate of Pratt Institute, and son, Jack, a manager-promoter for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
STATUS Designated Individual Landmark
The Neighborhood
Bay Ridge
Bay Ridge’s strong sense of individuality derives from the many historic layers of its built environment. Four centuries of development have resulted in great architectural diversity: farmhouses, mansions, main street storefronts, row houses, apartment buildings, religious institutions, schools, and theaters. Bay Ridge's development exploded at...
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