[em]New York[/em] Mag: Brooklyn Real Estate Gets Better Every Year

So last year, the movie stars Connelly and Bettany rubbed two pennies together and bought a big Brooklyn townhouse with “a nice backyard and a place for the bicycles”–not far from where Connelly, a Saint Ann’s grad, grew up in Brooklyn Heights….
Connelly’s story seemed to be over–but, per horror formula, real-estate terror lurched back into her life. Connelly’s dream home soon had “two massive floods that completely trashed the whole kitchen,” she says, eyes flashing wide, fingernails flying. “Water coming out of the light fixtures. Pipes burst. Twice! They dispatched the Fire Department.”

The house that Paul Bettany shares with his wife, Jennifer Connelly, their 2-year-old son, Stellan, and Connelly’s 8-year-old boy, Kai (from her previous relationship with photographer David Dougan), is one of the most beautiful in all of Park Slope. Nestled on a shady corner opposite Prospect Park, it is distinguished without being ostentatious. Its Ionic columns and great arched windows seem typical rather than showy. The garden–the disrepair of which was once, Park Slope blogger Louise Crawford tells me, a cause of consternation for some neighbors–is now a well-maintained torrent of tulips in varying shades of oxblood, peach, and white…”