Neighborhoods?
I’m moving to Brooklyn from Philadelphia in a month to attend grad school. What can you tell me about Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Bed Stuy? All are rather easy commutes to school and I have heard good things, but have never been. Could someone give me a rundown on the aforementioned neighborhoods and maybe…
I’m moving to Brooklyn from Philadelphia in a month to attend grad school. What can you tell me about Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and Bed Stuy? All are rather easy commutes to school and I have heard good things, but have never been.
Could someone give me a rundown on the aforementioned neighborhoods and maybe a good place to walk around to get a feel of things?
Nothing will beat Prospect Park as a park. There is a small park (Fulton Park) right at the Utica Ave stop on the A train near me in bed Stuy. You can let a dog run there but it’s very small.
What’s your budget? Y0u can get a one-bedroom in Bed Stuy for $1,100-1,500.
Don’t know that area of West Philly or even Point breeze. you will find Ft greene a lot like E Passyunck & Fishtown.
I live in East Bed Stuy near the Myrtle stop on the J train, and I really like it here. Access to NYC is excellent (literally 20 minutes to Lower east side, including a 10 minute walk) and it’s inexpensive.
Your’e also close to lots of different local amenities when you’re feeling splurgy. Bushwick is close to the north and east (shows), West Bed Stuy is close to the west, the restaurants in Stuy heights are close to the south.
That “park space” is Prospect Park, second only to Central Park in scope and grandeur (and designed by the same landscape architects, who actually thought that Prospect Park was their crowning achievement). If you have a dog, then you should definitely look at the neighborhoods abutting the park: Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Prospect Heights, Park Slope and Windsor Terrace. You actually meet lots of people in NYC when you’re out walking your dog, and there are off-leash hours in Prospect Park where you can let your pup run free (and meet other dog owners).
Otherwise, if you find that you need to move farther out due to price, you’re in luck in terms of your commute, since just about every train line from Brooklyn will easily get you close to the CUNY Grad Center in midtown.
Best of luck!
I’m moving from South Philly (point breeze area) and spent the majority of my time in West Philly (around 50th and Baltimore). I’ve lived elsewhere (fishtown and passyunk east) but I liked West Philly best.
I’m going to school at CUNY’s journalism grad school. It’s in midtown near the New York Times building if that helps with convienent subway lines. I’m looking for a neighborhood with a diverse group of people, cheaper rents and easy access to laid-back nightlife. Nice architecture wouldn’t hurt either.
Oh and I have a dog so that park space near PLG sounds tempting…
If you like parks and botanic gardens, you will LOVE Prospect Lefferts Gardens (PLG). This neighborhood, located just south of Crown Heights and north of Victorian Flatbush is bordered by Prospect Park to the west and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens to the north. There are many great apartment deals to be had throughout the area at prices considerably lower than what you’ll find in most of Prospect Heights (which also borders the Park and Botanic Gardens). In particular, you may want to check out the 2 long blocks of Ocean Avenue that run from Flatbush to Parkside Avenues. There, you will find scores of apartment buildings facing Prospect Park which have become a magnet for a younger crowd that is now moving to PLG (as Bob mentioned). A modest, funky and extremely congenial little social corridor is current developing along Lincoln Road between the Park (Ocean Ave) and Flatbush Avenue (the main commercial strip). Access to numerous subway lines is excellent here; the typical commute from PLG to midtown Manhattan is roughly 30 minutes.
If you are primarily looking at areas like Crown Heights and Bed Stuy, then PLG is pretty much in that same class of affordable, unpretentious, diverse neighborhoods where the emphasis is on the people rather than the material. IMO, all three neighborhoods are great. But since I live here, I’ll admit to a slight PLG bias!
Where in Philly are you come from? I can give you some comparative perspective as I live there too.
check out the subway rides from different neighborhoods. The A train from Bed Stuy , Clinton Hill & Ft Greene will be faster than some others….
Here’s a subway overlay of the streets…
http://www.onnyturf.com/subway/
Obviously I’ll plug Fort Greene. But it may be a bit more expensive for rentals than Prospect Heights. I’m not sure. Transportation is superlative in our neighborhood–nearly all the subway lines pass through.
You can also get to many of those subway lines from the Park Slope/Boerum Hill side of Flatbush Avenue but the rents may be even higher than Fort Greene.
If you can afford Fort Greene, you might like it. It has all sorts of things going on, a nice farmers market, some cute community gardens, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Mark Morris Dance where you can take classes. There’s also a Crunch fitness center if that appeals to you. And let’s not forget the Brooklyn Flea.
I have a feeling that you’ll end up findng a room in a shared apartment, most likely in other parts of Brooklyn, not in Fort Greene. The rents, as I’m sure you’ve discovered, can be wildy higher than in Philadelphia.
Good luck and let us know where you settle in.
I’ll assume you’re not going to Pratt since you didn’t mentioned Clinton Hill. Getting in to Manhattan is a breeze from Fort Greene.
“Friends are suggesting looking at Lefferts Gardens, where exactly is that?”
Just south of Crown Heights–across Empire Blvd.
Here’s a map.
http://www.planetplg.com/images/plg-map.gif
A lot of young people have moved to PLG apartment buildings in the last several years.