by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
BROOKLYN NY, July 16 – When a Brooklyn "Gold Mansion" is being sold for a price topping the borough's previous record - Trump's failed Army Secretary pick Vincent Viola's Brooklyn Heights sale for $25.5 million in January 2021 - some persistence is expected, if not successful opposition.
But despite widespread complaints about the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture emptying and selling (out) 53 Prospect Park West, there has been no follow-up since the New York Times' 2021 article, "A Historic Brooklyn Mansion Goes on the Market for $30 Million."
The silence, of course, only helps a sale go through.
Inner City Press, venturing beyond The Bronx and now lower Manhattan out to Park Slope, recently entered and viewed the emptied rooms in the four-story mansion, originally built for Bon Ami cleaning products magnate William H. Childs by architect William Tubby of Pratt Institute fame.
All that remained were some fans in closets, handwritten signs not to use or "put fluids" in the bathtub, and the ghosts and memories of BSEC's and others' events there.
So much history, sold so quietly and reportedly for far less than what was asked?
A check of the City's ACRIS system for the address, 53 Prospect Park West, found only the landmarks designation in 1973, here.
A search of CourtListening for litigation about the address, or BSEC, found nothing. How long will this remain the case?
Inner City Press, having previously exposed the scandal of the Sutton Place mansion in which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres alone lives, tax-free, will stay on the case.
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