NEW YORK — Actor Edward Norton is starring in a real-life drama about a community effort to save a beloved Bedford-Stuyvesant mansion from the wrecking ball.
Norton has sided with residents and advocates who have appealed to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Committee to stop developers from turning the 120-year-old Willoughby Avene mansion, known as the Jacob Dangler House, into a condominium complex.
“I believe this house, which has served a shifting but significant purpose for over a century, should absolutely be viewed as not just a spiritual and aesthetic connection to the past but as a major city asset,” Norton said in a letter to the commission.
Norton, who has starred in such movies as “The Score” and “American History X,” has a unique connection to the mansion. The location was one of several New York City spots that served as a backdrop for his film “Motherless Brooklyn.”
The commission is currently in the public hearing stage in the landmark designation process. Norton’s letter was read at a hearing Tuesday night.
The Dangler House, at Willoughby and Nostrand avenues, features a French Gothic style that stands out in the neighborhood and highlights the turn-of-the-century residential development of Bedford Stuyvesant.
The mansion was built in 1902 for Jacob Dangler, a successful meat packer and provisions merchant in Brooklyn. After his death, the house was sold, and served for years as a clubhouse for the Grand Chapter Order of the Eastern Star, a masonic organization which while open to both men and women has been almost exclusively made up of African American and African Caribbean women.
But the pandemic kept owners from being able to rent out the space for events, and mounting debt forced them to sell.
“With our financial situation and our rising indebtedness our only recourse is to sell the property,” Celeste Jefferson, a lawyer for the owners told the commission. “Our fear is that if the property is landmarked nobody will want it because they will not be able to do anything with the building.”
Norton’s production company has faced legal trouble connected to “Motherless Brooklyn,” the movie the Dangler House was featured in.
A city firefighter died in a blaze that broke out on the Harlem set during filming.
Lt. Michael Davidson was trapped and ran out of air inside the cluttered basement of the movie set at 773 St. Nicholas Ave. near West 149th Street on March 23, 2018.
Davidson’s family is suing Norton’s production company in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The veteran firefighter’s widow argued Norton’s company is liable for his death because the FDNY had not been informed of alterations made to the building for filming.
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