Marine Park’s oldest house needs crutches!
Strong winds knocked over a supporting column on the landmark Hendrick I. Lott House’s last week, and wooden braces are now holding up the 18th-Century Dutch Colonial’s traditional “spring eave” porch while workers make repairs. The bicentenarian buttress had a good run, but it was no match for a blustery, late-February storm, a neighbor said.
“One of the them blew right off,” said column-like-he-sees-’em tipster Robert Lobenstein. “I think after 200 years, it was about time.”
City contractors were already restoring the house before the winds struck, and they’ll fix the fallen column after re-decking the porch, a department spokeswoman said.
The landmark, built by its namesake in 1800, is one of 14 remaining Dutch Colonial farmhouses in Brooklyn. And it has the “rare distinction” of having never been moved — though its yard used to be one-third the size of Prospect Park, a 1989 landmarks commission report states. Now E. 36th Street homestead is one-third of a block, but that is plenty of room to farm land that the agrarian Lott family once tilled two centuries ago, said Lobenstein.
“Members of the community come in and help and still do gardening,” he said. “They planted tomatoes last year. This year, I expect they will have one hell of a garden — there’s plenty of room.”
