Townhouses represent a unique housing option in New York City, the rare private home. They exist in all five boroughs, but some of the best examples in New York City are in Brooklyn. The Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood has the largest inventory of intact Brownstones in the city, along with neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Crown Heights, which all have Landmarked Historic Districts, They represent a unique housing option in modern New York City—the rare private home. The term townhouse comes from across the pond in London, describing a place that a person of above average means kept “in town”, while their primary residence was in the country. It is used today to describe a wide array of row-houses, but no longer just as second homes for the wealthy.

Brooklyn townhomes can often date back to the Civil War era or earlier and are frequently called Brownstones when surfaced with the familiar reddish-brown finish that resembles the soft sandstone of the same name which they were originally clad with. This very soft Brownstone quarried in upstate New York, and transported by barge down the Hudson to Brooklyn’s waterfront, turned out not to be such a great building material. It was prone to spalling and relatively rapid deterioration. Many today are replaced with tinted stuccos, while others may be faced with limestone or simple brick. Although rare, some wood frame buildings still exist, and modern architectural expressions of the townhouse are being built where zoning and their scale makes sense.