Sunset Park: On The Rise

To your question about Real Estate companies. The East Side of Sunset Park (from 6th to 9th Aves) are controlled by mostly Chinese companies with Chinese native speaking agents and signs in Chinese (and sometimes English, but not always) in the windows. If you're renting, you can deal with buildings' management companies (of all nationalities), but buying over there, often means going through a Chinese real estate agency. I rented for a few years on 7th Ave and 56th and looked at several places... the agent was a sweet, but agressively Christian native-born Chinese woman. She didn't speak much English and was clearly dismayed that the woman I would be living with wasn't my wife.

There are some Orthodox Jewish managed buildings along ninth and even between eighth and ninth. If you're the type who's willing to touch a woman while she's menstruating, don't even bother applying to any of those.

The main thing to realize is that a lot of Sunset Park's real estate is not handled in the "modern" ways. I guarantee that three out of four people selling homes in Sunset Park have never heard of brownstoner and couldn't tell you that blog is short for weblog. Instead of Craigslist or newer boutique companies, you see a lot of houses being sold by Century 21. A lot. Now Corcoran is in there with nice stock, but a little overpriced.

One other thing, you guys mention that townhouses start at 800,000 in Sunset Park. That's true for brownstones and limestones, but wood frame two families (brick on the first floor, wood on the top two, covered by vinyl siding) start in the low $600's. They're just as old (dating back to the 1890's)as the brownstones/limestones and there is nice detailing and woodwork inside, but a slightly less grand than a brownstone (there's still all kinds of wainscotting, arches, frenchdoors, mantels, brick fireplaces etc). They're generally a few feet less deep than the brownstones/limestones, but the tradeoff is the backyard is a little bigger. They're generally the same configuration: owner duplex over a cellar with a backyard and a two bedroom railroad rental unit on the third. Some two bedrooms have been converted to three bedrooms.

The biggest secret about Sunset Park is that its just as fast to Manhattan as it is from Park Slope. From 36th Street to Broadway Lafayette is three stops and eighteen minutes. About a half hour to Rockefeller Center. No one seems to realize that. That's a huge deal. The D goes from 36th to Pacific to Grand. Two stops to Manhattan.

As to the boundaries, that seems to have become a bit of a dead horse, but I'll comment on my perspective one last time (since I was asked):

I moved to Sunset Park from Prospect Heights at the age of nine and have been living there on and off since 1981. It was always understood and accepted (by me, my family, many of whom have lived there since the early 1960's, and my neighbors)that the borders were the Prospect Expressway to the north and the BQE's eastern curve over to the south. Sometime within the last decade, as the Slope continued its southward march, brokers and developers started referring to the northern part of Sunset Park as Greenwood Heights. I (and my family and neighbors) always felt that this was a fairly cynical (and transparent) way to play upon the nascent racism and fears of incoming white homeowners and renters, to assure them that they wouldn't be buying a home in a neighborhood teaming with brown immigrant masses.

Its worth noting that they didn't, by any means invent the name. Greenwood Heights as the name of a place predates the Battle of Brooklyn (1776). It was a high point in the woods that covered the area. Presently, its, as one would imagine, a large patch of high ground in the cemetery. The only people who really live in Greenwood Heights are all dead. That said, there's no doubt that the character from Prospect Ave to 36th street is different than the southern stretch from 36th to the high sixties. So is it a separate neighborhood?

Maybe it is.

When the Irish, Poles, Scandanavians etc migrated out of the southern section of Sunset Park after WWII, to be replaced by Latins (mostly Puerto Ricans at the time, later Dominicans, later Mexicans and South/Central Americans), the white europeans stayed in the Northern section. I (and everyone around me) grew up as a resident of Sunset Park with the understanding that Park Slope's North-south boundaries were Flatbush to the Prospect Expressway (the south slope, north slope differentiation, beginning at 9th street always existed, but both were considered part of the same neighborhood); Sunset Park's were the Prospect expressway to where the BQE curves inward and Bay Ridge from there to Fort Hamilton. It was always highway to highway. I would also point out that the first poster describes Sunset Park as being between Park Slope and Bay Ridge, which implies the boundaries are the ones I listed...

Anyway, my personal issue has never been the name Greenwood Heights, its the motives and way it came about (and yes, the fact that the people who predominantly use it are newcomers to Brooklyn or the neighborhood; so the people resizing and rezoning my neighborhood since childhood, aren't even from the neighborhood- can't you see how irksome that presumption can be perceived as?).

Whatever...just added all that because you asked me about the borders. In person, the few people I've met who refer to Northern Sunset Park as Greenwood Heights are cool and into uncovering and preserving the neighborhood's past, as well as caretaking the future: taking on developers and saving the view (for now) of the Minerva Statue on Battle Hill, facing the Statue of Liberty. However they also admit that none of their old school neighbors refer to it as Greenwood Heights...or Sunset Park, for that matter, so go figure. A friend I went to high school with (a native Brooklynite) bought a house a few years ago on 17th street. His backyard faces the highway and he's just on the south side of the "border." He freely admits that he would never say he lived in Sunset Park because his house would be worth less money. This is what I'm talking about.

Posted by: Sunset Parker at December 4, 2006 2:46 PM

No, in fact, this is the understatement of the year: "People who rate domeciles on how "grand" they are not welcome Brooklyn."

Posted by: Sunset Parker at December 5, 2006 1:45 PM