Brooklyn Heights wood-frame, once Truman Capote’s muse, still on the market a year later for $2M less

The  wood-frame house at 13 Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights was previously noted by 6sqft for having inspired Truman Capote’s words about the neighborhood in 1959: “Cheerfully austere, as elegant and other-era as formal calling cards, these houses bespeak an age of able servants and solid fireside ease; of horses in musical harness,” wrote the author, referencing the 1830 Federal-era home around the corner from his own. The house, owned by the same couple for 26 years, hit the market in January of 2017 for $10.5 million. After a new price chop, the home’s second in just over a year, the grey-shingled muse is asking $8.4 million.

The house, 50 feet wide with 4,000 square feet of interior space and seven bedrooms, is one of the oldest structures in Brooklyn. All four floors feature a classic center hall, and it boasts a double-width garden and an attached garage.

The parlor and dining room both have large, south-facing windows and original period mantels. In the living room, full-height windows overlook the garden, and a wood-burning fireplace anchors the interior.

The kitchen has been modernized and features a lovely bay window surrounding a breakfast nook. One floor down you’ll find a large den/rec room, a guest bedroom, full bath, laundry room and wine closet.

There are five bedrooms on the upper levels, plus a study and dressing room.

Capote’s essay written for Holiday magazine, as the Wall Street Journal notes, has become a “rallying cry for generations of Brooklyn gentrifiers.” Beginning with, “I live in Brooklyn. By choice,” the borough-boosting piece was reprinted as a book called “A House on the Heights,” and it provides a history of the neighborhood, the story of why he chose to live there and descriptions of his favorite places. About the Pineapple Street house the author writes:

I’m not much acquainted with the proper history of the Heights. However, I believe (but please don’t trust me), that the oldest house, the house still extant and functioning, belongs to our back-yard neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Broughton. A silvery gray, single-wood Colonial shielded by trees robustly leafed, it was built in 1790, the home of a sea captain.

He  also writes of his home at 70 Willow Street, where he wrote “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood.” That home is the most expensive home ever sold in Brooklyn to date; it sold for $12 million in 2012.

The photo pictured on the book cover above shows Capote on a rear porch on Willow Street with 13 Pineapple Street in the background. Photographer David Attie took this and many other photos, which were never published, of the author for the original Holiday magazine piece.

The current homeowners put the house on the market with plans to relocate to the nearby Brooklyn Bridge Park development Pierhouse.

[Listing: 13 Pineapple Street by Rhea L. Cohen and Jill Seligson Braver of Brown Harris Stevens]

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Photos courtesy of Brown Harris Stevens

Photo of Truman Capote via Wiki Commons