70 WILLOW STREET, BROOKLYN HEIGHTS
The Facts: Nine-bedroom townhouse with a garden.
Rent: $40,000 per month.
Agent: Karen Heyman and Alan Heyman, Sotheby’s International Realty.
The basement apartment in which Truman Capote lived during the early years of his writing career figures prominently in his legend. (Much of the film Capote plays out there, as he types away in a spare, sunlit white room—never mind that the actual apartment had rather baroque décor.) He titled his memoir of life on Willow Street A House on the Heights, and it was here that he first read a newspaper item about a gory murder of four in a small Kansas town, which became his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. When an interviewer from The Paris Review visited him at the apartment in 1957, he described Capote’s home as “a big yellow house … recently restored with the taste and elegance that are generally characteristic of [Capote’s] undertakings.” Today, the house is one of the most expensive rentals in Brooklyn, but it has been difficult to market because of a near-endless renovation process, says listing broker Karen Heyman. Now the work’s done, which means some extremely well-heeled Capotephile is about to have his or her prayers answered.