60-42 Catalpa Avenue

Ridgewood | built 1909

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.

1909
Stier and Berger build an orange-brick two-family house with egg-and-dart trim at its basement windows
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Around 1909 Paul Stier built 60-42 Catalpa Avenue to designs by Louis Berger & Company, filed as new building 1379-1909. The Renaissance Revival house is faced in orange iron-spot brick with brownstone and limestone trim, and egg-and-dart moldings frame its basement windows beneath a full-height rounded bay. Later changes include metal stoop railings, a metal awning over the entrance, and a new door frame fitted with a sidelight, transom, light fixture and camera.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1909
Stier's builders work fast through open arches in the party walls of rows like this one
Paul Stier and Louis Berger could finish houses quickly because they reused a few basic floor plans and facade designs, varying only the surface materials. In their rows, interior relieving arches in the brick walls between houses seem to have been left open while construction went on, so workers and materials could pass from house to house without going in and out by each stoop. Most of these houses were about 20 feet wide, holding a five-room flat downstairs and six-room flats above, each with its own kitchen and bathroom.
“…the brick party walls between separate buildings within each row had interior relieving arches that appear to have been left open during construction…”
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

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