Ta-Nehisi Coates Finds a Home…in Brooklyn

Baltimore-born writer and MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction for Between theWorld and Me and is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Magazine, has bought a landmarked brownstone at 207 Lincoln Road in Brooklyn’sProspect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood for the asking price of $2.1 million,according to The New York Post. The three-story row house has original hardwood floors, pocket doors, tin ceilings, original fireplace mantels and “wedding cake” moldings, according to the listing broker, The Corcoran Group.

Coates, who is 40 and considered one of the country’s leading writers on African-American issues, bought the house using a limited liability corporation that he named Ellen and William CraftExcursions. According to the Post, Ellen and William Craft were African-Americans from Georgia who escaped slavery in 1848 by disguising themselves as a white male (Ellen’s role) and his slave (William) and traveling in plain sight toPhiladelphia. They wrote about their escape in a book, “Running A ThousandMiles for Freedom.” Naming an LLC after the couple sounds like just the sort of thing Coates would do.