Can this house be saved?

The saga of Broken Angel House, the hand-crafted Clinton Hill mansion of bizarre angles and strange art, has taken a somewhat odd, though not altogether unexpected twist.

Christopher Wood, the son of artists, house-crafters and erstwhile owners Arthur and Cynthia Wood, has launched a kickstarter campaign to transform the house into a museum, thus staving off the last stages of foreclosure proceedings, Curbed reports.

All things considered, it's really no surprise that Mr. Wood, a sprightly octogenarian, has taken to crowdsourcing, today's go-to source for creative campaigns and lost causes.

Mr. Wood  and his late wife Cynthia bought the 10,400 square-foot property at city auction in 1979, a "wrecked and ruined" "empty shell of a building," according to the campaign, that the artists set out to transform "into something magical and majestic" with stained glass windows made from broken bottles and concrete angels with brick wings in the rafters.

The result—a weirdly beautiful mansion—was not, unfortunately, built up to code, as the city discovered after a fire destroyed part of the building in 2006. So the couple decided to fund the costly renovations that they needed to make with an ambitious condo-conversion plan—a not altogether terrible idea given that the house was located at the rapidly gentrifying intersection of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy and had recently starred as the backdrop of Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

But the recession hit, plans fell through, Ms. Wood was diagnosed died of cancer, and the house found no buyers when Mr. Wood  put it on the market. Madison Realty Capital, which gave Mr. Wood a $4 million mortgage to carry out the plan, now owns the house, although Mr. Wood has yet to be evicted.

The kickstarter campaign is trying to raise $50,000 with a huge collaborative art project—selling one-inch art spaces on the outside of the house for $20. It would, of course, be only a small step towards preserving the house. But for an artistic borough whose creative side is so often expressed via tote-bag stenciling artists, hipster taxidermists and artisanal picklers,  Broken Angel House seems like a uniquely worthy cause.

kvelsey@observer.com

This old house... (Brooklyn Paper)

Wait a minute! Brooklyn's beloved Broken Angle House's scheduled March 29th auction will be pushed back. Thanks to Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bernadette Bayne, the foreclosure case has been stalled for 30-60 days, the Times reports.

Mr. Wood, the owner, brought up a fraud charge against the lender which prompted the delay, but the outlook remains grim.

Judge Bayne did not give Mr. Wood reason to believe that he will prevail in his 2009 case against the lender, Madison Realty Capital.

“You’ve been coming to me for a good many years,” Judge Bayne told Mr. Wood at one point, appearing frustrated with the plaintiff’s litigious history, which includes the fraud case before her, plus an appeal of the foreclosure and a prior lawsuit against a former development partner.

With or without stalls, the house remains as a conglomerate of art with little (or no) appeal for residential use. The $2.7 million lein on the auction block doesn't help its post-foreclosure life, either.

Still, Mr. Wood insists "there will be no foreclosure" in a tour of his former home with The Brooklyn Paper.

“People are not going to miss the Broken Angel unless they look at it and come back and realize in its place is a Starbucks,” Wood said. “To look at it costs nothing. To go into a Starbucks will cost you fives bucks.

“You will miss it then,” he said, “forever.”

Heady stuff.

mewing@observer.com

A broken angel with a broken heart. (Kilgub/Flickr)

The last few years have been shaky, at best, for the Broken Angel House in Brooklyn.

The beloved private home at 4 Downing Street in Clinton Hill will be on the auction block on March 29th, the Real Deal reports, bringing to a close years of trauma for one of the most distinct buildings in city.

The 10,400 square foot property has been owned by Arthur Wood for thirty years and has served as a neighborhood staple of art and architecture. It further received recognition as a backdrop in Dave Chappelle’s 2005 film, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. In 2006, a fire destroyed some of the its iconic features and drew attention from the Department of Building, which declared the building's living conditions unsuitable.

The artist planned to develop the property as a condominium project, but plans fell through as the recession hit in 2008. His wife was then diagnosed with cancer and died in 2010. Wood threw the house on the market, but there were no bids.

In the midst of Wood's turmoil, the lender, Madison Realty Capital, filed to push the house into foreclosure in 2008. The house bears a lein of $2.7 million and will auctioned with the 1,996 square foot lot next door at 8 Downing Street.