After selling for $12.5 million in 2022, the Brooklyn Heights dwelling perhaps best known as the “Moonstruck” house is back on the market. The most recent buyer of 19 Cranberry St. was an LLC, with the New York Post reporting at the time that comedian Amy Schumer and her husband, chef Chris Fischer, were the buyers.
The 19th century house within the Brooklyn Heights Historic District has a few hundred years of history behind its walls, but the fact that its exterior played a supporting role in the 1987 film has remained the bit of trivia that sticks. It was portrayed as the home of the multi-generational Castorini family, and the surrounding area figured prominently in the movie along with stars Cher, Nicholas Cage, and Olypmia Dukakis. For film buffs, the interior won’t look familiar, as those scenes were filmed elsewhere.
For real estate buffs, the interior will look familiar as many of the previous listing photos are the same. A parlor and some bedrooms have been restaged since 2021, but otherwise the photos are identical.
An exterior restoration project on the 26-foot-wide brick house, set on the prominent corner of Cranberry and Willow streets, was already completed before it last sold. The LPC approved reno included work on the mansard roof, the brownstone stoop, and the ironwork fence. That mansard roof, complete with cresting, is a later 19th century addition to the circa 1830s house, bringing a Second Empire touch to the original Federal-style house.
While the fictional Castorini family may be the one many associate with the property, some of the real owners who lived there over the building’s 180-plus years have some equally dramatic stories. The most extreme might be the 1880s scandal and drawn-out lawsuit over the house’s ownership after Dr. Herman Richardt was accused of having “complete control and mastery” over the mind of owner Catharine A. Valentine, resulting, her family alleged, in her handing over the deed to 19 Cranberry Street. The case was followed extensively in the press as competing interests fought for the property and the guardianship of her son, who was removed from her care over claims of an “illicit relationship.”
In more positive recent history, in 1961 the house was purchased by Edward and Francesca Rullman. An architect, Edward Rullman was chairman of the Brooklyn Heights Association’s Design Advisory Council and was active in the movement to designate the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. His decision to sell the house in 2008 after years of restoring it and more than 50 others in the neighborhood made the New York Times, with Mr. Rullman telling the paper, “We got 100 times what we paid for it back in 1961.”
The subsequent buyers undertook the major exterior and renovation mentioned in the listing. In addition to the exterior restoration, the work included a new steel infrastructure and the addition of a gym and wine cellar in a excavated cellar.
The single-family dwelling has the kitchen on the garden level, double parlors above, and two floors of bedroom space. Laundry is in the cellar.
On the parlor level are pocket doors between the double parlors, crown moldings, and two dark marble mantels with working fireplaces. Downstairs, the kitchen has a warm, aged look with vintage wood cabinets salvaged from an Ohio mansion to go along with exposed beams, a wood-burning stove, wide-plank floorboards, and a banquette. There’s also a garden-facing wood-lined library with built-in bookshelves and a wood-burning stove.
Above the parlor floor is a bedroom suite with study, dressing room, and bath. The latter continues the vintage look with marble floors, a freestanding glass shower, and separate soaking tub. Three more bedrooms and another full bath — this one covered in penny tile and with a walk-in shower and marble corner sink — make up the top floor. The house also has a laundry room and central air, according to the listing.
There is a driveway on the Willow Street side entrance to the property, and the floor plan shows a car parking space takes up less than a third of the backyard. That rear yard, formerly paved, now has artificial grass.
Modlin Group and Corcoran have a co-exclusive on the property and it is listed at $14 million.
This story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site Brownstoner.
