250 Crown

A black-and-gold flag and the letters KNX give a visitor the first clue that 250 Crown Street is no museum piece. Behind the contemporary insignia stands a much older urban survivor: a brick Greek Revival townhouse dating to about 1845. The house is modest beside the commercial and entertainment buildings of present-day Crown Street, yet that contrast is precisely what makes it important. The National Register survey describes 250 Crown as the last surviving trace of the earlier residential neighborhood on this side of the block; today its continued residential and student-social use makes the building less a frozen artifact than a structure repeatedly adapted to new communities.(1)