(The lower photo above is from a visit to the neighborhood in 2012 when there were fewer leaves on the trees.)

Here's the architectural historian Christopher Gray's take on this structure:

The most unusual of these dwellings [on Albemarle Road in Prospect Park South] is the one built in 1905 for George E. Gale at 1305 Albemarle, at the northeast corner of Argyle Road, in white clapboard with a colossal two-story Ionic portico. Designed by an architect known only as H. B. Moore, the Gale house has a striking assortment of windows, among them roof dormers with a kind of webbed sash, topped by ebullient broken pediments. On the second floor, there are spider-web-type windows with Gothic-style sashes, and on the rear are leaded glass windows.

Mr. Moore ran copper cresting in the form of anthemion leaves around the top of a bay window on the side of the house, and he put low, curved eyebrow dormers on either side of the third-floor gable. The Gale house is worth a special trip.

Designed in 1905, this huge Colonial Revival concoction has been covered in asphalt siding for decades. The cast-iron street sign standing at the corner of the lot dates back to the original development of Prospect Park South.

UPDATE: The actress Michelle Williams has purchased this house (interior photos) and intends to fix it up. The Historic Districts Council says of her architect's plans: "The very reasonable and sensitive interventions proposed here, coupled with the removal of the unfortunate asphalt siding, moves this house in the right direction. HDC would like to commend and thank the applicant for this thoughtful proposal."

This Japanese-style residence, built in 1902-03, is the "most exotic and certainly the best-known house in Prospect Park South", according to the neighborhood's 1979 historic district designation report. It was designed by John J. Petit, who employed three Japanese artisans to imbue the place with a "genuine oriental quality". You can see more photos of the house here, including many shots of the interior details, which a 1903 ad described as "a faithful reflection of the dainty Japanese art from which America is learning so much."

This house, designed in 1901 by Carroll H. Pratt — the architect, not the laugh track pioneer — is one of the many stately dwellings lining the streets of Prospect Park South. The neighborhood originated as a turn-of-the-20th-century suburban community whose developer, Dean Alvord, sought to "illustrate how much of rural beauty can be incorporated within the rectangular limits of the conventional city block." Alvord had the area's numbered streets renamed to sound more aristocratic — East 11th through 16th Streets became Stratford, Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, Marlborough, and Buckingham Roads, respectively — and he required potential buyers to provide references "so as to protect the families of lot purchasers against undesirable social and moral influences."

AT NO TIME!

(Photographed on an unofficial stroll through Crown Heights.)

This bench sits outside St. Clement of Ohrid, the first (and, as far as I can tell, still the only) Macedonian Orthodox Church in the five boroughs.

This place is true to its name. I saw eight Corvettes in the shop.

Hey, looks like I've taken a photo here before!

Among the abundant manholes of Soundview Pointe/Estates, there are quite a few covers that were made for the sanitary sewer system in Mahwah, New Jersey — at least eight, all dated 2007*. Were they purchased from Mahwah at a surplus auction? Was Mahwah unable to use them because of some defect? Did someone steal them? Given that the Soundview developers were the kind of people who see a contaminated landfill as a profitable place to build town houses, I wouldn't rule out any unconventional manhole-cover acquisition tactics on their part. I called the Mahwah Department of Public Works to see if anyone there could offer any insight, but the guy I spoke to found this all just as strange as I do.

* Soundview was under construction in 2007, as evidenced by these aerial images from 2006 and 2008.