Your house with the blue door on Wyckoff Street, in Boerum Hill, got more mail than the next-door neighbors ‘homes. Envelopes heavy with manuscripts came to the ground-floor entrance, accumulating on the dining table by the window, which doubled as a slush stack for the independent poetry press Hanging Loose. Founded in 1966 by a team that consisted of Robert Hershon, who owned your house, journalism never ever had another office, and editors preferred to fulfill a few times a year in the yard, as Hershon later stated in a verse that handles the voice of an asking next-door neighbor:
“what are those
guys doing out back
relaxing the table
table filled with papers
and one guy goes blah blah
and the others all shake their heads
and go ahum …”
The response: sorting the mail and voting on whether to release the very first books of such authors as Eula Biss, Cathy Park Hong, and Ha Jin, to name a few. All told, 240 books and 117 magazines passed by their eyes, numerous proofread in the kitchen, where pages might spread out across the countertops while Hershon’s partner, Donna Brook, a poet, teacher, and editor herself, served mixed nuts and rooibos tea. Checking out poets were welcome to remain in the little bedroom toward the front of your house, on the third floor, which earned the nickname Sherman’s Space for Sherman Alexie, who started visiting in 1992 when he was so young he forgot to bring a coat to New york city in winter season and needed to borrow one from the guy he called his “poetry father.” That ended up being a running gag, as did the California poet Gerald Fleming’s fondness for home repair work. “Unlike all us New york city poets, he took pleasure in fixing things,” remembers Joanna Fuhrman, who lived in Carroll Gardens in the aughts, when she was a frequent visitor at Donna and Bob’s. Dinners might include neighbors Lynn Nottage or Maggie Nelson (who likewise published with Hanging Loose). The doorbell might call with an ask for Bob or to hand back something borrowed. “He was the mayor of the block and everybody would talk to him,” Fuhrman says.
The family was among the very first, if not the very first, on Wyckoff to paint their door blue– which appeared to start a trend.
Picture: Hayley Ellen Day Hershon was a Brooklyn native, born in Bushwick in 1936, and he moved to Wyckoff Street in 1972 with his first wife, the painter Michaeleen Carson. They ‘d been living in a confined house with their two children, Jed and Elizabeth, near the kids’ school at St. Ann’s, where Hershon had actually taught. The three-story brick home had space to spread out, lovely old fireplace mantels, exposed wood beams, and a thick backyard. The inexpensive rate– just $31,000– accounted for the area. “We were all robbed,” remembers Elizabeth, a fact that was celebrated in Fortress of Solitude, by Jed’s childhood buddy Jonathan Lethem, and thrown onto canvas by Elizabeth’s school buddy Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Your home dated to the 1870s and had been burglarized houses, but the family didn’t fuss over it much. The room by the grand main entryway on the parlor level became Hershon’s workplace, and an overflow of books sealed off the door itself– which had actually never been used much anyhow. Décor wasn’t so crucial, either, and furnishings came from regional yard sale. Brook, who Hershon wed a years later, after the kids had left, composed of their “shared hatred/ of anything on the walls however white paint and art.” The art was by their friends or by Elizabeth, a working artist who also painted covers for their books, as her mother had actually done. Her father purchased a few of her paintings and would talk them up with visitors. “I keep in mind how proud he was to display her paintings,” Fuhrman says.
Hershon took his motivation from Wyckoff itself– including a carefully observed ode to a stack of black trash can that “kind many little craters which fill with rainwater and reflect the gray sky, with each short lived bird repeated over and over.” A poem about Atlantic Avenue winks at glass towers of “juliet terraces and ophelia swimming pool and girl macbeth sinks.” And among his most well-known works, “The Driver Said,” is a portrait of gentrification in 21 words:
“boerum hill?it used to be
gowanus
this ain’t no
area
if ya butcher
concerns ya funeral
that’s a
community.”
Image: Hayley Ellen
Day Rate: $ 2.5 million ($ 656 in monthly taxes) Specifications: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms Bonus: Backyard, front yard, basement
Ten-minute strolling radius: Brooklyn Inn, Rucola, Public Records
Noted by: Jessica Quinn and James Fierro, Compass
Elizabeth, who left home when she was 17, came back to take care of Robert when he got older, and then Donna, who had a series of strokes. Jed, who became a local bookseller, had passed away unexpectedly in 2014 at age 50. Robert died in 2021; Donna died last summer. And Elizabeth, an artist like her mother, is now the last one left in the old home. She has filled the wall area with her figurative, riotously colored dreamscapes, as she has actually cleared the racks of her daddy’s books and papers– headed to friends and library archives. When the work is over at the end of the day, she retires to the tiniest bedroom in your house, where original wood beams stripe the ceiling. She could sleep anywhere, of course, however there’s a sense of convenience in the visitor room, used by hundreds of poets. Before it was theirs, she states, “it was my own.”
Elizabeth Hershon’s paintings by the
entryway. Photo: Hayley Ellen Day Donna Brook was responsible for adding blue floors and blue countertops to the kitchen area, where poets would hang out drinking tea as they looked over manuscripts and talked. Image: Hayley Ellen Day
The fireplace mantel in the parlor-level living-room. The household didn’t care much for redecorating and left your house fairly intact. Photo: Hayley Ellen Day
Beams on the ceiling on the third floor are original. Photo: Hayley Ellen 
Day There are two bedrooms on the leading floor, and the one near the front was Elizabeth Hershon’s childhood bedroom. Image: Hayley Ellen Day
Elizabeth Hershon used this space as a studio. At one point, it was thought about a guest bed room for poets. Picture: Hayley Ellen Day
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