278 Alexander Avenue

Mott Haven | built 1865

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1865
No. 278 is completed as part of a uniform Second Empire-tinged row of ten houses
No. 278 belongs to a row of ten three-story brick houses finished on Alexander Avenue between 1863 and 1865. Drawn in a local vernacular touched by the French Second Empire, they were planned as one block front rather than as separate houses, sharing a single cornice line and matching cast-iron yard fences, gates, stoop railings and newel posts.
“…built in the local vernacular with French Second Empire influence and were designed as a block front…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1900
A storefront shaped like a bay window replaces the parlor windows of No. 278
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Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the two first-floor windows of No. 278 were taken out and replaced with a storefront made to look like a bay window, with slender colonnettes, gold lettering and a heavy cornice. When the Landmarks Preservation Commission described the house in 1969, it judged the change both practical and dignified.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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