Biggie Smalls’ Fort Greene home lists for $1.7M

Brooklyn two-bedroom gut-renovated by owner Caroline Duncan

Notorious B.I.G. and 159 Carlton Avenue (Getty, Compass)
Notorious B.I.G. and 159 Carlton Avenue (Getty, Compass)

The Brooklyn home where rap legend Notorious B.I.G. lived has hit the market asking $1.7 million.

Christopher Wallace bought the two-bedroom residence at 159 Carlton Avenue in 1994, the same year he released his celebrated debut album “Ready to Die,” according to the New York Post. He was killed three years later in a drive-by shooting while visiting Los Angeles, a victim of the rap industry’s senseless East Coast–West Coast feud.

The house’s current owner is costume designer Caroline Duncan, who bought it in 2011 and gut-renovated the property.

159 Carlton Avenue (Compass)

159 Carlton Avenue (Compass)

The renovation added a library room with built-in bookshelves and walk-through closets.

Duncan knocked down several walls on the main floor, which she said “had been carved into a series of puzzling small rooms,” to open up the space.

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She finished the basement and put up several walls to create a bathroom, closet, laundry room, office and bedroom.

Other highlights include a large arched window, 12-foot ceilings in some rooms, and a new kitchen.
The three-story brick building dates from the late 1800s and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It’s known as Feuchtwanger Stable.

Wallace, born in 1972, grew up in an apartment in neighboring Clinton Hill that he once called a “one-room shack.” The roughly 1,000-square-foot unit has since been renovated and hit the market as a rental in 2019, asking $4,000 a month.

The basketball court at nearby Crispus Attucks Playground was named after Wallace in 2017. Two years later, the block home to his childhood apartment was co-named Christopher ‘Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace Way.

[NYP] — Dennis Lynch