John Rankin House
440 Clinton Street | also 184 Carroll Street | Carroll Gardens | built 1840
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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.
- 1840
Merchant John Rankin builds a Greek Revival house with views of the Buttermilk Channel and Governors Island
John Rankin, a merchant, built the house at 440 Clinton Street in 1840, when fields surrounded it and the street grid had not yet been built up in earnest. From the house he could see the Buttermilk Channel, Governors Island and, farther off, Manhattan.
Source: Forgotten New York
- 1840
The house is a plain, boxy Greek Revival design, a country cousin of two Manhattan mansions
Architectural historians see the house's plain, boxy form as typical of two similar mansions, the Brevoort House and the Samuel Ward House in Manhattan, which were built a few years earlier and no longer stand. The Rankin House is considered the more severe country cousin. It has a slightly projecting center bay with pilasters at the sides and a long central hall with a mahogany stair and paneled wainscot. The architect is unknown.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 1970
The Landmarks Commission designates the house as one of the finest Greek Revival residences in the city
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the 440 Clinton Street House on July 14, 1970, after a hearing in December 1966. The owner had told the commission he favored designation. Its report found the exterior little altered in more than a century and a quarter. By then an undertaking establishment occupied the house and the upper floors were residential.
- 2013
The Guido family, Brooklyn funeral directors since 1883, run their business from the Rankin House
As of 2013 the house had long housed the Frank G. Guido Funeral Home. The funeral home's website says Frank Guido's great-grandfather was Brooklyn's first Italian undertaker, starting in 1883, and the family will bring out his 1888 Studebaker horse-drawn hearse on request. The Guidos added a garage and chapel at the rear and moved their living quarters to the top floor, but changed little else.
Source: brownstoner.com
- 2018
Owner Frank Guido and his daughter describe ghosts walking the halls
In 2018 Forgotten NY noted that the Frank Guido Funeral Home had occupied the house for the last few decades. It pointed readers to a Brooklyn Eagle piece in which owner Frank Guido and his daughter described seeing ghosts walk the halls of the house.
Source: Forgotten New York
Further reading
- John Rankin House (Brooklyn)Wikipedia
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