Mark Twain slept here, but now a developer wants 80 more people to move in.
The manse that was home to Dean Sage, the 1800s lumber baron and pal to the Huck Finn author, is one of Brooklyn’s last free-standing mansions sits in the Crown Heights North Historic District.
But the nonprofit Institute for Community Living, which serves the mentally ill and developmentally disabled and has owned the Saint Marks Avenue building since 1998, won city approval to surround the High Victorian Gothic-style structure with a new 5 ½-story building.
Some neighbors are outraged. Derrick Hilbertz, of the St. Marks Independent Block Association, wants a Manhattan Supreme Court judge to reverse the Landmarks Preservation Committee’s April decision.
Hilbertz even alleged that the planned project has “parallels to Rivington House,” referring to the scandal over City Hall lifting a health-care-only deed restriction on the Rivington House nursing home, which was then flipped by a condo developer for millions in profit.
The Landmarks Commission is “flatly ignoring” its own historic district “in order to plop a brand new building into it,” Hilbertz said.
The Institute for Community Living’s new building will include 45 apartments for the mentally ill and another 30 units of affordable housing, but Hilbertz believes the nonprofit’s real goal is to eventually flip the property, which dates to 1870.
The planned structure will eat up the mansion’s historic formal garden, which includes “original herringbone masonry pathways, a stone amphitheater and sundial,” according to court papers.
“Our fear is that they destroy this garden, build a building, then they get a deed change” later on, Hilbertz said.
“To build a much larger modern building to envelope the mansion on two sides and demolish almost all of the garden will obviously and manifestly destroy the special ‘sense of place’ of this location,” Hilbertz claims in court documents.
The Institute has more than a dozen other properties, Hilbertz argues, “none of which are historically protected, all of which would be easier to build on.”
The city said it will review the complaint. The Institute didn’t return a message.