Bird's Nest Cottage
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Samuel Pratt House (Bird's Nest Cottage)
1872. 49 Bellevue Ave.
A few doors past the Reading Room, on the west side of Bellevue, is this small residence, completely covered in decorative motifs and forms. Complex gable shapes, fancy stickwork under the eaves, projecting corner bays, and a wall covering of multicolored slate roof shingles suggests an opportunity for its designer to try out a range of ornamentally picturesque ideas. Some have attributed this building, now unhappily squeezed almost impossibly between later structures, to Richard Morris Hunt, but it may well have been created by its owner, Samuel Pratt.
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