B&Bs Offer Vacations in Park Slope

After retiring from his job on Wall Street, Don Matteson was shopping around to buy a bed and breakfast in Vermont. There was only one small problem: “I just couldn’t pull the trigger,” Matteson said.

“I realized I didn’t actually want to live in Vermont.”

But Matteson was sitting on prime real estate – a brownstone on Prospect Park West, purchased in 1994 with his then-wife and son, back when a brownstone on the park only set you back a million bucks.

In 2008, Matteson turned his brownstone into At Home in Brooklyn, a six-bedroom B&B, where he and and co-owner Marco Crocchianti serve guests all year round. His income from the guests makes enough money for him to pay his mortgage.

“It’s very laid back,” he said. “I want people to feel comfortable and at home here.”

At Home in Brooklyn is one of about half a dozen B&Bs in the area, including The Sofia Inn in Prospect Heights, Celeste Guest House in Gowanus, Park Slope Bed and Breakfast on Sixth Street, and the oldest and most popular, Bed and Breakfast on the Park, on Prospect Park West and Sixth Street.

Bed and Breakfast on the Park was founded by Liana Paolla in 1983. Paolla bought the brownstone in 1981, and after a divorce realized that the only way she could afford to keep it was to turn it into a B&B. This, of course, was back when Brooklyn didn’t have quite the same cache that it does today.  Paolla's B&B has the feel of a European parlor.

“Liona was really ahead of her time,” said Linda Kaffke, who has managed Bed and Breakfast on the Park for seven years, while Paolla spends most of her time in Europe. “When she started this B&B, people were scared of being mugged in the park. Now Brooklyn is cool and hip.”

The B&B serves people from all walks of life, from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the son of Nathan’s Hot Dog's founder to tourists from as far away as Australia.

All of the guests gather around for breakfast that ranges from homemade oatmeal to stuffed french toast and baked pear pancakes. They sit at one table, discussing everything from their families to theatre to politics.

“We’re big Obama people, so that got awkward during election time,” Kaffke said.

Guests who choose a Park Slope B&B come from different walks of life and likewise have different reasons for their visits. Some are neighborhood residents whose homes are being renovated. Many are visiting family in Park Slope, and want more luxurious digs than their children’s apartments can offer.

“The parents are coming to visit the kids and are at a stage of their lives where they don’t want to sleep on a fold-out sofa or air mattress,” Matteson said. “Or the kids have a two-bedroom apartment but now the kids have kids, so now they have to stay somewhere else.”

Others, like Jeff and Liz Trescot, visitors to Bed and Breakfast on the Park from Moravia, New York, wanted to experience a different side of the city.

“We come to Manhattan a lot, but we’ve never stayed in Brooklyn,” Trescot said. “We wanted to do something different.”

The couple read about the B&B online, and had only been to Brooklyn once before, for the “Slice of Brooklyn” pizza tour.

After dinner with friends in Manhattan and seeing Rain on Broadway, they planned to explore Prospect Park,and check out the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

Kaffke suggested that the couple check out The Old Stone House, where they could learn about the Battle of Brooklyn.

“There’s so much history right in the neighborhood,” she explained .