In praise of the decaying, wood-columned 1840s holdout obscured behind a board in Brooklyn Heights

First there were four houses in this pretty colonnade row, with matching dentilled cornices, long slender windows, and thick columns in front of the facades that suggested grandeur—though the columns were made of wood, not marble. They were likely built in the 1840s when Greek Revival, colonnade-style houses were in vogue in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Easily accessible to the ferries that plowed the East River to Manhattan, the single-family dwellings at 42-48 Willow Place in Brooklyn Heights were probably occupied by middle-class residents who worked in New York but sought the slower pace in the enclave known as Willowtown. As a decade passed and Brooklyn Heights’ reputation as a fine bedroom community of lovely brownstone row houses rose, 42-48 Willow Place seemed to fall into disrepair. An 1853 Brooklyn Evening Star article described the houses as “in the most filthy condition imaginable and requiring immediate attention.” Despite that alarming report, the late 19th and early 20th…