The longtime home of Brooklyn’s just-shuttered G. Esposito & Sons Jersey Pork Store has a new owner.
The four-story townhouse that housed the iconic local shop on its ground floor traded hands shortly before its closure last month, according to public records.
The 100-year-old, third-generation mom-and-pop sandwich shop could for decades be found at 357 Court St. (before moving to Carroll Gardens, the beloved butcher had peddled its premium wares from Columbia Street) until, unable to find a new owner worth handing the name onto and unwilling to pressure the family’s next generation into maintaining it, brothers John and George Esposito retired and said goodbye to the business.
They also bid adieu to the building, which had been owned by Espositos since 1976.
The row house — which has residential apartments above the commercial bottom floor — was sold to an LLC for $3.3 million in mid-March.
Madison Estates Sotheby’s International Realty marketed the property.
Although George Esposito compared closing Esposito & Sons to “leaving a second family,” he so loved his countless customers, parting with the real estate was just transactional, he told The Post.
While maintaining the tradition of keeping Carroll Gardens fed on famously good rice balls and eggplant parmesan was an act of passion he proudly performed with soul, the structure from which he did it was merely the place fans could find him.
“[Selling] the building was just a family decision honestly,” he told The Post. “All I know is I am missing my customers already, don’t know what am I going to do without Esposito’s food.”
Many of his clients asked themselves the same question before the store’s final day in business, and at least temporarily answered it by buying trays upon trays (“insane amounts”) of eggplant parmesan and shrink wrap machines so they could make their purchases of “20, 30, 40 pounds of sausage” last longer, The Post previously reported.
When the sausage runs out, they might consider visiting the store’s pig statue mascot, which the firefighters of FDNY Engine 202 adopted and moved to their Richard Street firehouse in Red Hook.
