The foyer, where the wood paneling extends to a built-in settee.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

When the gallerist Lillian Heidenberg moved into her Park Slope brownstone, in 2018, she covered up a wood-burning fireplace — heresy, in some circles. In her defense, there are still 11 others. “I didn’t miss the one,” she says.

The 1887 home is less than a block from the park and is known as the Remington House for its first owner, a lawyer.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

838 Carroll Street is one of the grandest mansions in a neighborhood known for them with 11 bedrooms and seven bathrooms across a 32-foot-wide footprint. That’s double the width of the 16-footers that house the merely rich nearby and a full six feet wider than the neighborhood’s most ogled mansion, which is, one might point out, slightly further from the park than No. 838. The house’s 1887, Romanesque-revival design includes a four-story tower; a bay window with parapet; a dormer; and a double-door entrance flanked by tiny dwarf columns. The foyer is just as impressive with chevron parquet floors, wood-paneled walls, coffered ceilings, and a twisting grand staircase. Look closer, and you’ll find more ornamentation: a lion’s paw, carved into a built-in settee; staircase finials that each spiral in a slightly different way, like beach shells.

“They did an amazing job,” Heidenberg says of the last owners, an LLC with an apparent taste for grandeur that bought the place for $3.8 million in 2014. The anonymous buyer(s) then spent two years on a renovation that cleaned and modernized the house before listing again in 2016. At the time, Heidenberg had been living at 770 Park Avenue, the Rosario Candela–designed white-glove co-op just blocks from the Frick. She had fantasized about brownstone living but didn’t know much about Brooklyn. Then the listing popped up online, and she was intrigued. “Really, I fell in love with the architecture,” she says. “I also like real estate.” Heidenberg had long ago closed up her retail gallery space on 57th Street with a preference for selling privately out of her homes in New York, Florida, and the Hamptons. And she found that the work — contemporary, sometimes edgy and dark — looks particularly good against old-world moldings. “I like the combination of old and new. And because the space is so simple and elegant and the ceilings are tall, there’s a lot of wall space.”

There sure is. The top floor could fit four bedrooms easily, but one is now a laundry. The second floor could, too, but two have been combined into a family room. And the third floor is a palatial primary suite, where the enormous, 15-foot-wide bathroom has its own wood-burning fireplace, a vintage-looking tub set audaciously in the center of the room, and a double-size marble-walled steam shower big enough to wash a small horse. The suite also included an office and a room that had been marked “sitting area” when Heidenberg bought the house. “I already had plenty of places to sit,” she says. So she turned it into an extension of her walk-in closet. The fireplace she covered was in the kitchen, where she added storage. And the largest change she made is almost entirely hidden behind the original doors and hardware of the service staircase that it replaced. “I never use the elevator,” Heidenberg says of the upgrade. “But I think it’s very important for people to bring up packages.”

The oversize bathroom of the primary suite with a wood-burning fireplace (right).
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Price: $18.5 million ($5,689 monthly taxes)

Specs: 11 beds, 7 bathrooms

Extras: Garden, elevator, 10 fireplaces

10-minute walking radius: Grand Army Plaza, Community Bookstore, Sushi Katsuei

Listed by: Aran Scott, Douglas Elliman

Heidenberg hosted art tours of the house and cocktail parties for 100 guests, some of whom bought the work hanging on the walls. She added a wall, to turn a guest suite on the garden level into a rental with two bedrooms and two bathrooms that last leased in 2024, after asking for $6,700 per month. As for actually living here, she found it surprisingly easy. “It’s a very human-scale house,” she says. It was also perfect for a new addition: her first dog, which she named Bijoux. “I just love French things,” she says. But they ended up spending more time in Florida and Heidenberg wondered if the mansion was “maybe too big for me, all by myself.”

She listed No. 838 last week for $18.5 million, making it the most expensive asking price for a single-family home in the borough right now. Her broker, Aran Scott, points out that it’s “one-of-one,” with much finer detail than a puny five-bedroom mansion on 1st Street that sold last year for $13.9 million. Heidenberg bought No. 838 for $8.58 million after an initial asking of $15 million left it languishing for two years. A cautionary tale? No, says Scott, who points out that back then, there was no elevator — a must, for certain buyers. Plus, the sticker price isn’t outrageous to him at all — “Not on a price-per-square-foot basis.”

Additional reporting by Rachel Corbett. 

Visitors throw open the front door to see chevron parquet floors, coffered ceilings, wainscoting, and a staircase with hand-carved finials in various swirling shapes.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

It’s a view that was designed to wow and now includes a glimpse of a kitchen island.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The front parlor, directly off the foyer.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

On the left is a recent portrait by Alex Katz. On the right is an abstraction by Jules Olitski from 1975.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The parlor connects to a formal dining room with a bay window over the garden.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The 1940s Murano glass Venetian chandeliers moved here from Heidenberg’s last New York apartment at 770 Park Avenue.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

A Jim Dine painting from his Robe series on the left and an Eric Fischl on the right. They’re both for sale through Heidenberg’s gallery, though she also lives with the art.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Off the dining room is a kitchen, where a breakfast nook has become one of Heidenberg’s favorite spots in the house. “It’s cozy to sit in the nook and have a coffee and look outside to the trees,” she says.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

A white door in the kitchen (left) would have once led to a narrow staircase used by servants and nannies.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Heidenberg installed an elevator in that stairwell shortly after buying in 2018.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Stairs lead up to the second floor with two bedrooms and a sitting area.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The largest room on the second floor was used as a den.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Heidenberg used two bedrooms on the second floor to display art to clients.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The bedroom in front of the house at this level has a bay window. From the outside, it looks like it might have a balcony with a tiny parapet.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

One level up, the third floor is entirely devoted to a single primary suite. The bathroom with the stand-alone tub is to the left.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Heidenberg used a room here as her office. A Warhol print from 1982 hangs over a mantel with sculptures by Naoki Koide.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

Heidenberg turned a sitting room on this floor into a walk-in closet. “I already had plenty of places to sit,” she says.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

A stained-glass skylight hangs over the original staircase.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

The largest guest room on the top floor includes a semi-circular sitting area, carved into the four-story tower.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

One of three guest rooms on the top floor. There’s also a laundry.
Photo: Aran Scott/Scott Robles Team/Douglas Elliman

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