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The New York Times

Living In: Boerum Hill, Brooklyn: Urban Energy, Brownstone Charm

By: John Freeman Gill
Published: 3/15/2015Source: The New York Times

 

Boerum Hill, a comfortable, brick-and-brownstone neighborhood just south of Downtown Brooklyn, has long been a popular hunting ground for Brooklyn buyers looking to bag one of the area’s coveted 19th-century townhouses. In 2005, less than an hour after a section of a ceiling collapsed onto a child’s bed during an open house at a Bergen Street townhouse, offers began rolling in, setting off a bidding war that concluded with a $1.68 million sale (the asking price was $1.595 million).

Today, that purchase price seems quaintly low, and with so few neighborhood houses coming to market, developers have hit on a simple solution: They’re building new ones, a trend that would have been unthinkable back in the dilapidated Boerum Hill of the 1980s.

“The phenomenon of people buying brand-new townhouses has been a really big thing in Boerum Hill,” said Leslie Marshall, an associate broker for the Corcoran Group. “A lot of buyers don’t have the stomach for a gut renovation, which so many of the houses that come on the market need, so new construction is really appealing.”

For some, the “turnkey” condition of newly built townhouses is as much a draw as the neighborhood. In 2007, Louise Whittet, at the time a teacher whose family was “busting out” of its apartment in TriBeCa, she said, was introduced to Boerum Hill when former neighbors invited them to their new home, one of 14 just-completed, modern-style townhouses on State Street.

“My husband calls it the most expensive brunch we’ve ever had,” Ms. Whittet said. “We go into their house, and the kitchen’s beautifully done, and there’s huge amounts of space. When you come from 1,600 square feet in Manhattan and see 3,000 square feet, it’s mind-boggling.”

A few months and $2.75 million later, Ms. Whittet and her family had moved into their own new home on the row, a five-story, five-bedroom house with a double-height dining space adjoining a backyard.

The clincher for Ms. Whittet and her husband, Andy Scruton, who works in finance, was the neighborhood’s proximity to Manhattan, only a 10- or 15-minute subway ride away. But once ensconced, they came to love the area for its own sake.

“It’s urban but residential, like parts of London,” said Ms. Whittet, who is British. “It offers the energy of an urban environment but with tree-lined streets and lots of space.”

    

 

 

 

Some of that space — vacant or underdeveloped lots throughout the neighborhood — is rapidly being filled in. Last year nine more new townhouses down the block from Ms. Whittet were sold for prices ranging from $3.2 million to $4.3 million. Farther down State, east of Hoyt Street, a row of seven one- and two-family townhouses is going up. At 319-325 Pacific Street, four four-story red brick houses are also rising, with elevators and garages behind handsome carriage-house-style doors.

As holes in the once gaptoothed streetscape are filled in, Ms. Whittet said Boerum Hill seemed very much at the center of things. “It feels we’re at a nexus, where everything meets and branches out again,” she said. “I walk the dog every day in Fort Greene, BAM is a nine-minute walk, and I can walk to the water in 15 minutes if I want to look at Manhattan.”

What You’ll Find

Boerum Hill is an easygoing, predominantly low-rise community of about 18,000 residents east of Cobble Hill. Its boundaries, as defined by its civic association, are Court Street to the west, Fourth Avenue to the east, Schermerhorn Street to the north, and Warren and Wyckoff Streets to the south.

The residential heart of the neighborhood is its small historic district, which takes in parts of Pacific, Dean, Bergen and Wyckoff Streets. Here one finds uncommonly long, cohesive rows of Greek Revival and Italianate houses built mostly between the 1840s and the early 1870s. Adding to the area’s appealing visual jostle are church buildings and carriage houses converted to homes, walk-up rentals of brick or brownstone, and even the odd frame house. Interspersed throughout are charming ground-floor businesses like the atmospheric Italian restaurant Rucola and the aptly named Little Sweet Cafe.

The stretch of Atlantic Avenue around the Brooklyn Detention Complex, for decades a hodgepodge of gas stations and parking lots decried by local groups as a “gap” in need of filling, is at last undergoing major development, with commercial and mixed-use buildings on the way. For better or worse, most of the area’s rough edges have been buffed away. Long gone from the commercial strip of Smith Street are the beer-drinking domino players and the dry cleaner with the puffy black-and-white chicken pecking about in the window. Nonetheless, despite the incursion of commercial chains, Smith still has a distinctive sense of place, with small storefronts generally lending an indie vibe to the strip’s thriving restaurant row.

“The mythology of the neighborhood is that you could walk to your own business, support the local schools, own a 40-seat restaurant or a dress shop,” said Howard Kolins, the president of the Boerum Hill Association. “Some people still do that, and that’s what everyone likes.”

What You’ll Pay

Boerum Hill is small, which helps keep inventory low and drives up prices. Only 24 townhouses sold last year, at a median price of $2,996,500, a 15 percent jump from 2013, according to sales data provided by Corcoran. In the last six months, two-bedroom condos averaged $956 per square foot, said Shari Sperling, an associate broker at Halstead Property, while two-bedroom co-ops fetched an average of $1,012 per square foot. At the Boerum, a 210-foot-tall condo planned at 265 State Street, sold units have averaged just over $1,300 per square foot.

Rental prices vary widely. At the upper end, a three-bedroom penthouse duplex on Dean Street is on the market for $7,250 per month, whereas a one-bedroom apartment above a storefront on Atlantic rents for around $2,500.

A search on StreetEasy.com earlier this month found 32 residential properties for sale and 62 for rent.

What to Do

Concerts and sporting events at Barclays Center are within walking distance, as is the vibrant green expanse of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Atlantic Avenue between Third and Fourth Avenues is home to many Islamic and Middle Eastern shops. Farther west, sleek design stores and boutiques like Steven Alan and Atelier Cologne have set up shop, undeterred by the rumbling traffic. October brings the Festival des Soupes, a “soup crawl” in which many of Smith Street’s restaurants serve up tasting cups of house-made fare.

The Schools

At Public School 261 on Pacific Street, which serves prekindergarten through fifth grade, 40 percent met state standards on the state English test last year, and 45 percent met standards on the math test, versus 30 and 39 citywide. The Brooklyn Heights Montessori School, its name notwithstanding, is on Court Street in Boerum Hill; it teaches prekindergarten through eighth grade. Three well-regarded private schools are within walking distance: the Saint Ann’s School and the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, and the Brooklyn Friends School in Downtown Brooklyn.

The Commute

The area is served by an alphabet soup of subway lines: To the northeast, nine trains stop at Atlantic Avenue — Barclays Center, including the B, Q, D, N and R. The 2, 3, 4 and 5 serve that station as well as Borough Hall, a couple of blocks north of Schermerhorn Street. The A and G stop full time at Hoyt-Schermerhorn, the C part time. The F and G trains come into the Bergen Street station.

The History

A fashionable district in the 19th century, the neighborhood had become down-at-heel by the 1960s. In a successful effort to attract middle-class buyers to the area, which some called North Gowanus, pioneering brownstone renovators renamed the area Boerum Hill, after a family that farmed local land in Colonial times.

Copyright © 2015 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Alan Chin/The New York Times. 

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