26 April 2009

Spooky-Wooky Bed-Stuy House's History Revealed


The New York Times possibly-soon-to-be-extinct City Section has a good story today about an 1860s wood-frame house with a mansard roof in Bedford-Stuyvesant that has a very strange and varied history.

You have to read the article to believe all the stuff that went down in this house. I can't decide what my favorite chapter of its history is: Its days as the residence of Hugo Toller, the party-giving, society swell scion of Eugene Tollner, co-founder of Gage & Tollner (there were pool tables on the third floor); or as the center of superfly 1970s R&B bashes frequented by the cream of the soul scene.

There's also a spooky tunnel that runs under the house that no one can explain.

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