Subway Lines Galore, but Who's Leaving?

AFTER 37 years in their house on Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, Norman and Roselyn Kopit decided last summer that it was finally time for a change of scene.

 

Their children had moved out, and work had just finished on their living-room ceiling, so the time seemed right. They had bought the house for $43,000; when their broker now priced it at $2.495 million, they smiled.

 

After the sale, they could have gone somewhere far from the sleepy, tree-canopied streets of their old neighborhood.

 

Instead they relocated five blocks away. On State Street, an easy distance from all their friends and favorite restaurants, they found a roomy duplex condominium with a kitchen bigger than their old one.

 

Leaving the area that they had helped bring back from the dead was never really considered.

 

"Why would I want to move?" asked Ms. Kopit, 65, who used to manage the office at BusinessWeek magazine. "I've invested a lot into this neighborhood."

 

Their investment, part of the countless hours of community effort to transform Boerum Hill from a place of rooming houses, drugs and prostitution to an elegant, family-friendly enclave, has paid off.

 

The Kopits' block of Dean Street was the one described in "The Fortress of Solitude," Jonathan Lethem's novel about the area in the 1970s, which described ruined row houses sheltering creepy boarders, and a pervasive feeling of decay.

 

That Boerum Hill is long gone; today it is clean slate sidewalks, self-conscious cafes and neighbors who do more than merely say hello.

 

"I love the fact that people just drop in," said Stephen Antonson, an artist who lives with his wife, Kathleen Hackett, and their two young boys in a house on Pacific Street.

 

"When you have a life where people just come over and knock on your door, there's something about that I really, really like."

 

The improvements continue. On almost any block in Boerum Hill, you can find a stoop railing being replaced, a garden being dug up, a crew hauling in a new Viking range.

 

And at the edges of the neighborhood, where zoning allows, developers have put up buildings not always in sync with the local town house vibe.

 

The neighborhood's boisterous thoroughfare is Atlantic Avenue; it carries a significant amount of traffic and is home to the Brooklyn House of Detention, whose future has been known to generate cacophonous debate. (Bail bondsmen still do business in the area.)

 

But save for that noisy artery, the renovation noises and the conversation of neighbors, the streets are largely quiet - a cool calm that has lately attracted a variety of independent boutiques and restaurants.

 

In the past, the Kopits would have packed the family into the car and driven to Manhattan to find stuff to do.

 

"Now, we don't have to drive anywhere to find interesting places," Ms. Kopit said. "We just start walking."

 

WHAT YOU'LL FIND

 

Even by brownstone Brooklyn standards, Boerum Hill is small. It has roughly 20,000 people, according to a 2005 neighborhood association study. The exact street boundaries can be a subject of local disagreement, but the surrounding areas are Cobble Hill, downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope and Gowanus.

 

Nor is it uniformly full of brownstones. Many blocks have unbroken walls of tall red-brick houses with the occasional outlier, like the artist Susan Gardner's bejeweled facade on Wyckoff Street. In 1973, a small historic district was created; some would like to see it expand.

 

As for the sometimes fast-paced Atlantic Avenue, it has become an unlikely haven for independent shops and boutiques. Hip retailers have helped create a quirky shopping district, like Jonathan Adler, the home store; Blue Marble, the Hudson Valley ice creamery; and Omala, an active-wear dealer that recently advertised an item called "Zen pants." Between Third and Fourth Avenues, Atlantic is home to Middle Eastern commerce, at Fertile Crescent Middle Eastern Groceries and Makkah Islamic Books and Clothing.

 

There is shopping elsewhere, too. Boerum Hill claims a trendy stretch of Smith Street as its own, and small cafes and stores are dotted throughout the neighborhood's interior, like the restaurant Building on Bond and the Brooklyn Circus boutique. On Fourth Avenue, bars like Cherry Tree and Pacific Standard have sprung up. There are also two Vietnamese sandwich shops.

 

Just outside the neighborhood are new developments - or at least they are promised, on handsome banners. Dean Street alone has at least five construction projects finished or under way. On State Street, a long row of unadorned new town houses has been occupied for a few years now; a project of six more called Ensemble, at prices reportedly ranging from $3.5 million to $4 million, is being considered. Taller projects have arrived north of Atlantic Avenue as well. On Smith, opposite the House of Detention, the Nu Hotel has opened within a new residential tower, with nightly rates starting above $300.

 

WHAT YOU'LL PAY

 

Those new condominiums don't come cheap, but they are still inexpensive compared with similar properties in Manhattan. At the "eco-luxury" building Green on Dean, for example, two-bedroom two-bath units with private balconies and 1,150 square feet of space range from $695,000 to $799,000.

 

The meat and potatoes of Boerum Hill real estate will always be town houses, and while they are still selling, prices have come down.

 

"Whatever you could sell for $2.3 million at least two years ago, you'd be lucky to get $1.9 million for now," said Allen Barcelon, a broker at Boerum Hill Realty. At the same time, down payment requirements have gone up, Mr. Barcelon said; 20 to 25 percent is now the norm, versus 10 percent in the boom years. Making purchases these days definitely has its challenges.

 

But houses are still changing hands. Sue Wolfe and James Crow, brokers at the Corcoran Group, have sold several town houses this year and have another in contract. A one-family house on Dean Street, which hadn't had any improvements in 20 years and which sold as part of an estate, went for $1.725 million. A two-family house on Wyckoff Street that had been renovated and used by one family sold for $1.5 million.

 

Co-ops are not plentiful, but can still be found carved out of town houses or occasionally in apartment buildings. In the elevator building at 422 State Street, for example, Mr. Crow and Ms. Wolfe have listed a two-bedroom co-op with one and a half baths for $599,000.

 

Rental prices here have dipped as of late, but transactions still move quickly, Mr. Barcelon said; studios average $1,300 a month, one-bedrooms $1,900, and two-bedrooms $2,300.

 

WHAT TO DO

 

The 35th annual Atlantic Antic, a sort of supersize street fair, takes place Sunday along Atlantic, with 10 stages of free music, lots of food, pony rides, belly dancing and other amusements.

 

As for more permanent distractions beyond shopping and dining, there are two movie theaters just outside the area in Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights. Prospect and Fort Greene Parks are a short walk (or bike ride) away.

 

THE SCHOOLS

 

Of the 478 students at Public School 38 on Pacific Street, 67 percent of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders met city English standards last year; 86 percent were proficient in math. At the Math and Science Exploratory School, a middle school on Dean Street, scores have improved in recent years, with 97 percent of all students meeting standards on math tests and 90 percent in English.

 

SAT averages last year at the Brooklyn High School of the Arts, also on Dean Street, were 439 in reading, 438 in math and 435 in writing. Citywide averages were 435, 459 and 432.

 

THE COMMUTE

 

Given its size, Boerum Hill is spoiled with choices of public transit into Manhattan. Ten subway lines stop at the Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street station at the eastern end of the neighborhood; and six come into the Borough Hall/Court Street station, a few blocks north of State Street. The F and G trains stop at the Bergen Street station, providing another travel option into Midtown (or, via the G, into Queens).

 

THE HISTORY

 

There once was an actual hill called Boerum, used strategically during the Revolutionary War, but it was razed. As Brooklyn grew up, the neighborhood was part of an amalgam simply called South Brooklyn. The population grew after the Atlantic Avenue train tunnel was built in 1844. The area was developed by Charles Hoyt and Russell Nevins; two streets now bear their names. With the Brooklyn Bridge and trolleys came even more newcomers, many of them immigrants.

 

After World War II, disrepair and squalor seeped in, only to be shaken off by renovation-happy brownstoners - who persevere to this day.

 

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Copyright c 2009 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission.  Photos should be credited as follows: Andrea Mohin / The New York Times