A Successful Buy-and-Hold Strategy on Hoyt Street

What is it about stories about people who scored beautiful houses in Brownstone Brooklyn three decades ago that are at once so irresistible and envy-inducing? Whatever it is, The Times served up another dose this weekend in its Habitats column. In this case, the lucky owners are a charming couple that met at Pratt in the late 1960s before nabbing their 22-foot-wide brownstone on Hoyt Street in Boerum Hill in 1973 for a cool $49,500. Of course, there’s the requisite context of urban grittiness to smudge our rose-colored glasses. Wyckoff Street was an open drug bazaar, with guns and hookers everywhere, said Frank Cusack, one half of the pioneering real estate couple. Decades of block association work and one celebrity couple neighbor later, of course, Hoyt Street is a whole different animal, though Ms. Cusack still conducts her exercise classes for neighborhood ladies in the parlor floor living room. The couple just finished a renovation (a conversion of the garden floor to a rental), the last of many in the 36-year span they’ve occupied the house.
Shrink or Expand to Fit [NY Times]