Note: This lot of objects is currently located at the Brooklyn Museum facility in Newark, NJ.  To schedule an on-site preview of these items, please contact Brunk Auctions to make arrangements with the Brooklyn Museum. For additional photos, please contact support@brunkauctions.com. If you require a complete inventory of the items in this lot, we recommend you make arrangements with the Brooklyn Museum to view and assess the items in person.

formerly located at 112 East 21st Street, Brooklyn, New York, circa 1836, elements from the hall and south parlor, six doors: five mahogany interior doors and one entrance door; nine pine door frames; eight pine window frames, six with internal shutters, fourteen wood exterior window shutters, two wood columns, eight wood pilasters, wood trims and moldings, twenty-five step wood staircase, marble figural fireplace mantel with metal fireplace insert, numerous boxes of reproduction plasters of decorative borders and a ceiling roundel, approximate dimensions, 11 ft.  5 in. high x 37 ft. wide x 60 ft. 6 in. long: please note that any furniture or decorative objects in these period photographs are not included in this lot

Provenance: Property from the Brooklyn Museum

Historical Note:

Matthew Clarkson Jr. descended from a long-established New York family. His father, Revolutionary War hero General Matthew Clarkson (1758-1825), was the first President of the Bank of New York. Clarkson Jr. earned his fortune in the cotton trade and acquired the land on which he constructed his house through his wife’s family.

Matthew Clarkson Jr. House and Interiors

When Clarkson Jr. built a monumental three-story Greek Revival house in the grand style of the moment, he demonstrated sophisticated cultural awareness befitting a prominent and prosperous citizen. Situated on verdant landscaped grounds, the house resembled a Grecian temple with front and rear porticos and was long considered “the most showy place in Flatbush,” standing out from the surrounding shingled Dutch-style residences.

The central entrance on the ground floor opened into a hall with a spiral staircase at the rear. On either side of the hall, rooms with windows at the front, back and along the sides of the house were accessed via four symmetrically opposing doors. The house remained in the Clarkson family until 1889. In 1940, the Flatbush Y.M.C.A.  donated the interior woodwork from the hall and south parlor to the Brooklyn Museum after a fire damaged a majority of the building.

The architectural woodwork on offer, of which select elements have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Newark Museum, sustained minimal damage and includes: massive mahogany doors measuring more than 8 feet high; pine door frames with pediments, some applied with carved foliate and berry wreaths; fluted columns more than 11 feet high; pilasters with Corinthian capitals; monumental window frames with interior and exterior shutters; trim and moldings; a spiral staircase; and a marble mantel with caryatids.

Reference: Brooklyn Museum Object File, Matthew Clarkson Jr. House

in varying states of preservation, please see photos