For The New Owners:

Our Story of 307 Stratford Road

We discovered Ditmas Park year ago when we got lost trying to find a party at Ira and Tracey's apartment in Kensington. We were on the wrong side of McDonald Avenue looking for Albemarle Road, and we were amazed by what we saw. At the time, I made a mental note to remember the beautiful neighborhood in which we found ourselves.

As a new mother, I was experiencing a rather sudden nesting instinct and very much wanted to have a house of our own. We were renting in Boerum Hill at the time. I began looking at ads for houses in the Times each Sunday-long before there was the Internet for searches. One Sunday, we got a Brooklyn edition of the paper, (rather than the Manhattan edition,) and the real estate listings were numerous and included many open houses in the area. I began attending with Elsa in my arms, and became known to local realtors as 'the lady with the baby.'

That summer, there were six listings of interest to us, all in the $200 to 300K range. I fell in love with a dreadful home in terrible shape on Westminster Road that our engineer nixed immediately. During our Maine vacation afterwards, Jonathan I reflected on our other options. We decided that a house with a double parlor would best suit our needs for a music room and a living room. We realized that the house we should buy was 307.

Amazingly, when we returned to the city, the house with the double parlor was still available and now FSBO. We visited again, made an offer that was accepted, somehow qualified for a mortgage and closed just before Thanksgiving in 1993. Elsa had just turned one.

To our friends and family, the house seemed huge-6 bedrooms! But I knew that by comparison, ours was a tiny Ditmas Park house. The rooms were small and there were only 1 1/2 bathrooms. But I thought it was perfect for us. I remember asking myself, "Who are we? Rockefellers? This house is plenty big." I often find that we tend to believe in 'less being quite enough'.

After we closed, I was anxious to invite my mother's group over to see the house. They oohed and ahhed and told me to put gates on the stairs right away to protect Elsa from falling. Instead, I taught Elsa how to climb up and down the stairs safely. I modeled turning towards the stairs on my knees, and crawling down step by step. She learned right away and never had a problem!

At the time, there wasn't much happening commercially on Cortelyou Road. We were thrilled when Cinqo de Mayo opened and we finally had a restaurant that we could walk to-and a good one, too! We spent most of our time and did all of our shopping in Park Slope, but I didn't mind because I always had a parking space when I got home, in my driveway! 

Slowly we noticed that the old ladies with stockings and shopping carts in our neighborhood were being replaced by younger families with strollers. The first new mom I met was Kasia, and her baby Justin. My mentor neighbor was Marilyn, mother of Hannah and Molly, who set me up with Doreen for childcare, nursery schools and later, art classes in her home! We soon met Soap Opera Alice, who was really on a soap opera, mother of Anna and Julia, and whom everyone's husband was swooning over. Nancy and Bob were our Brady-bunch family who combined their kids from previous marriages and then adopted three more! They kindly shared their daughter Amelia with us and she became a sister to Elsa. Wendy, next door, had older girls, Kelly and Lindsay. Doris, too, had older children, Kiwi and Jennifer. Soon, there was also Sara and Mike with Allegra and Marco, Julie Sullivan and her brood of four,  who was replaced when she moved by Marcia, Stephen, Graham and Jamie. We also got Mary and Tony with Harris and Adrian and eventually, Ira and Tracey, the folks from Kensington, joined us in Ditmas Park and had Gus and Nattie. We added Jeremy to our family, a Ditmas Park bred, in July 1995. But the best for the neighborhood was the addition of Coco and Bruce and their three daughters, Vanessa, Vivian and Vera, and the advent of a weekly front-porch Happy Hour and much later, First Acoustics, a music concert series, right across the street! Coco brought everyone she knows together: neighbors, friends, Unitarians, family and talented (some famous) musicians!

Our back yard was the perfect setting for birthday parties. Both of our children have summer birthdays and they each had parties at home for many years. I have saved the handmade invitations I sent out each year in their baby books. Halloween is an especially fun time in the neighborhood. Lots of folks come from other neighborhoods to trick or treat. One year, Jonathan gave out candy with no costume on, just a headband designed to look like he had a knife stuck through his skull. It was so funny! When Elsa was 13, she worked as a mother's helper. One Easter, she planned an Easter party for all of the little kids she knew. She lead lots of activities and gave out prizes and gifts and conducted an egg hunt in our back yard. She did this all by herself!

One of my favorite aspects of our new house was its proximity to Prospect Park. We spend many a Saturday at the Parade Grounds watching and refereeing soccer games. We also rode the loop on our bikes quite often. Later, we became regulars at the dog run in the Nethermead. One year, Elsa received horseback riding lessons for Christmas and rode a few times at Kensington Stables.

Finding suitable schools for our kids was an issue and we neighbors moved in all different directions. Marilyn sent her kids to a gifted program in Canarsie. Marcia's kids were grandfathered in at PS 321. Some families joined the mini school at our zoned PS 139. Others opted for PS 217 with a variance. I wanted a more progressive school and chose PS 261 in District 15 for Elsa. Later, our whole family moved to Brooklyn New School. Many families in our neighborhood eventually joined the BNS family as well.

Jonathan and I drove to BNS each day, but when our kids began attending other schools, they became Q train experts. I remember racing to the Church Avenue station many mornings with Elsa, trying to catch the 7:04 that would get her to Beacon High School by 8:00am.  Before the MTA had cell phone service, on their ways home from the city, our kids would 'call from the bridge' to arrange for pick up at Beverley Road so they didn't have to walk home after dark. Jeremy had more than one unpleasant incident coming home from the train, so we tried to make ourselves available to pick them up when ever they were coming home late.

One interesting fact about 307 is that for many years, the house was  not connected to the main sewer line. Our plumbing emptied out into a pit under the front yard! (We always wondered why there was a sink hole in the middle of the lawn!) When we became aware of this, we had to have a line to the city's sewer pipe installed. This cost $10K that we did not have. Thankfully my mother was able to help us out.

When we bought 307, it was blue and covered with asbestos shingles. The porch windows were trimmed with white window boxes with read hearts glued on. Inside were plastic red flowers. The front door was painted red as well.  We promptly had it stripped. The day after we closed, Jonathan arrived with a crew of painters before the seller, Gussie, and her family had left. It was so awkward! The painters began stripping Gussie's living room wall paper right in front of her. She and a neighbor were horrified and yelled at the painters to stop. Jonathan explained that he had hired these men and that he was paying them by the hour. Gussie and her friend moved outside. Thankfully, I was not there to witness that.

In 2006, we replaced the roof and decided to cover the house with vinyl siding to avoid having to paint every year or two. We chose beige siding, but I often wonder if I should have chosen grey to blend in better with the houses on either side of us. The roofers added a layer of insulation under the siding which we hoped would make the house more energy efficient. After we got the siding, Jonathan spent a few days every summer washing his house with soapy brushes and a power spray on the hose. The house looked freshly painted each fall.

Years later, the new pipe to the main line was compromised by tree roots and had to be replaced. Again, our lawn was torn up and we decided to replace the grass with a perennial garden to support the environment as many friends and neighbors were doing. Jonathan spent weeks carefully and slowly digging up the remaining roots from the grass, literally inch by inch, and breaking up clumps of soil. When all of the soil was lose, we designed the garden and planted flowering bushes that would bloom all year long. Many neighbors assumed that Tracey, the neighborhood gardener, designed our lawn. I always proudly explained that Jonathan, too, is a great garden designer!

When I asked Jonathan about his favorite 307 story, he recalled the day long ago when Elsa came to him and said, "Daddy, my metal straw went down the drain." He had to disconnect the drain from the kitchen sink to retrieve the straw, which took considerable doing.

I remember another day, just after we bought the house, that Jonathan says changed his life. We were having a problem with the faucet in the kitchen and Jonathan called a plumber who came, unscrewed the screen, rinsed it out, replaced it and charged him $100 for 5 minutes of work. That was the last time Jonathan called a repairman.

Elsa recalled another story. Once, a neighbor, Willa, was all dressed up to attend a wedding. She was crossing the street and Elsa, Kayla (Amelia's young daughter) and I were watching from an open 3rd floor window. We thought Willa looked beautiful, so we hollered out the window and told her that her dress was lovely. I then muttered to Elsa that I did not especially like Willa's shoes. Kayla then hollered out, "But Jenny hates your shoes!"

When Jeremy was a teenager, he learned how to sneak out of the house after Jonathan and I had gone to sleep. I had bells on the front and back doors, but Jeremy could silently climb out of his bedroom window, onto the roof of the kitchen, and then shimmy his way down to the deck railings. He and a naughty friend would be out and about the neighborhood, doing naughty things like egging houses. One night, Jeremy was returned to us in a patrol car at 4am. That was quite a shock! Had I known, I would have had bells on the windows, too.

In the back yard, there is a mulberry tree next to Wendy's fence. I planted this tree years ago because as a third grade teacher at BNS, we taught an Ancient China curriculum in the fall each year. As part of the study, we raised silk worms. Silk worms only eat mulberry leaves, and finding leaves in Brooklyn in the fall is tricky. We teachers often found ourselves trespassing onto private properties all over Brooklyn to pick mulberry leaves from people's trees for the worms in school. So I ordered a mulberry tree from a nursery for our yard. It was years before the tree produced enough leaves to feed the worms, and by that time, I was no longer teaching third grade. Recently the third grade abandoned the Ancient China study and no longer raises silkworms. Now our tree has plenty of leaves.

We planted many trees on the property. I consider the trees to be my legacy. In front of the garage, there are two cedar trees that were barely the height of the chain link fence when they were put in. The flowering cherry tree along the same fence was also a baby that grew fast. It grew so fast that our next door neighbor on the Cortelyou side, Mac, was concerned that the tree was allowing squirrels to enter his eaves. One day while we were at work, he had the limbs on his side chopped off, leaving it lopsided, and, in my opinion, ruined. Distraught, I went to the police, but there was nothing they would do for me. Sadly, that ended our friendship. I hope you have a better relationship! Fortunately, nature is strong and the tree bounced back. You will enjoy beautiful pink blossoms from this tree, early each spring.

I am most proud of the flowering dogwood in the front yard. It was the very first tree I planted. For years I waited for it to grow taller than the porch, as Dot and Vinnie's is at the corner of Stratford and Slocum. The dogwood grew slowly because the gardener who planted it, an old Italian man from Bensonhurst, left the iron cage around the root ball when he placed it in the soil. Apparently, this was the practice, to slow the growth while increasing the number of blossoms each spring. The tree does have many blossoms each year and, recently, the tree top branch poked out above the porch!

There was also a huge tree in the yard behind us that became weak and unhealthy. With each storm, limbs fell, endangering us and other neighbors. The owner of the property was elusive and unresponsive, and it was not until Jonathan threatened her on the phone that she finally had the tree cut down. Our previously shady back yard suddenly became sunny and exposed the yellow house behind it. It might be a good idea to plant some fast growing trees along the back fence line, now that they can get sun, to obscure that house.

Stratford Road is a street that has had more than its share of drama. In addition to torrid love affairs amongst the trash cans, subsequent divorces, runaway children and gender transitions, there have been two murders. Yes! The first was the famous John Giuca case. The son of our beloved babysitter, Doreen, was convicted of felony-murder in the death of a CT college student named Mark Fisher. The case was all over the news and dragged on for years, through the tumultuous trail. It was hard for all of us to believe that our babysitter's sweet son would grow up and be involved in something so awful and serious! Doreen insists that John is innocent, of course, and many neighbors agree with her. The second murder happened at the corner of Stratford and Beverley in the white house-a tragic case of domestic violence. The house has since been sold and the new owner has fixed it up extensively. I often wonder what happened to the two children who lost their mother, and whose father is imprisoned.

We have famous people in the neighborhood. Michelle Williams lives on Albemarle Road. Some Hollywood folks bought the house at Rugby and Albemarle and do a huge Halloween shin-dig. Many, many houses are used for TV and movie sets. Coco's house was used to film parts of The Squid and the Whale and I spent hours seated on my porch watching for stars to enter and exit the house. Mary's house was used for a month for a Queen Latifa movie. Alice teases that her house makes more in the business than she does since she was killed off of her soap opera. Our house has never been selected for a site so I just toss the flyers in the recycling, but you may get lucky!

Our family has many, many fond memories that we will cherish of our experiences at 307. When we decided to relocate, our children begged us to keep the house for them and for their future families. But we did not fancy the idea of being long-distance landlords. Plus, we believe that it is fitting that a new, young family enjoy the house to create new memories and stories of its own. Elsa and Jeremy will find new communities of friends of their own, just as we did when we found Stratford Road. 

Elsa, Jeremy, Jonathan and I wish you every happiness! We hope you are healthy, warm and comfortable in your new home.