(Photo: Juris Mardwig Courtesy of Corcoran)

280 WASHINGTON AVENUE, CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN
The Facts: Eleven-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot house.
Asking Price: $3.3 million.
Agent: Jerry Minsky, the Corcoran Group.

(Photo: Courtesy of Pfizer)

It’s jumped on and off the market since 2005, with many different brokers, and the asking price keeps shifting, but the house that borax built still has no takers. Charles Pfizer, the German chemist turned philanthropist who founded the behemoth pharmaceutical company that bears his name, lived here. (Chas. Pfizer & Co. made camphor and cream of tartar as well as borax, and its first home run was a medicine to fend off parasites; today, it’s all about the Lipitor.) Built around 1874, the house has had only three owners since Pfizer died at his Newport estate in 1906. Given the house’s pedigree and size, that price is almost modest: It has eight fireplaces, and you don’t see gold-leafed Corinthian columns like those every day. “It’s huge!” says the always ebullient Jerry Minsky, who has the exclusive. “If it were in Manhattan, it would’ve been turned into a consulate.”

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• Table of Contents: May 7, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!