Boerum Hill: In a Nutshell
The New York Times profiled Boerum Hill this weekend (timed, perhaps, to coincide with yesterday’s Atlantic Antic), focusing on the neighborhood’s boutiques and its transformation from shady (“rooming houses, drugs, and prostitution” in the 1970s and ’80s) to chic. On the real estate front, prices in the neighborhood are dropping as they are everywhere else,…
The New York Times profiled Boerum Hill this weekend (timed, perhaps, to coincide with yesterday’s Atlantic Antic), focusing on the neighborhood’s boutiques and its transformation from shady (“rooming houses, drugs, and prostitution” in the 1970s and ’80s) to chic. On the real estate front, prices in the neighborhood are dropping as they are everywhere else, but still, nothing’s cheap in Boerum Hill: townhouses selling for over $1.5 million, condos and co-ops between $600,000 and $1 million, and rentals starting at $1,300 for a studio. New construction in the area includes Green on Dean and the Nu Hotel on Smith, as well as several planned or unfinished projects on the periphery of the area. Beyond the housing market and the area’s commercial offerings, the profile gives a nod to yesterday’s Atlantic Antic and it profiles Boerum Hill’s schools with their test scores of varying levels. Did the writer miss anything?
Subway Lines Galore, But Who’s Leaving? [NY Times]
Atlantic Antic photo by Jim in Times Square
thanks for the info about appliance place on 5th. I knew there were couple there but figure driven out of there by now also.
I love Boreum Hill. A lot. Really enjoy how urban the neighborhood feels, and Atlantic Avenue is awesome.
But it’s still got issues. Someone was murdered last week on Wyckoff between Bond and Nevins. And I walk that block a lot.
pete, there’s a place on 5th ave and degraw (around there) that repairs appliances. The outside is yellow.
also there might not have been Hannah Montana but ABBA was going strong.
“Sadly unless a neighborhood is nothing BUT wine shops, yuppie bars, organic supermarkets, designer baby clothing stores, it is considered crapola and unliveable.”
Gotta say, some words of wisdom there, Rob.
I used to work on State between Hoyt and Bond back then, and it was not the cesspool the writer makes it out to be – big surprise. Petebklyn is right, they always make the past, or the bad parts far worse than they actually were, in order to make the present look far better in comparison. Boerum Hill was another working class neighborhood, like most of brownstone Brooklyn, in the 70’s and 80’s. It had its good streets and bad streets, and was always a mixture of incomes and ethnicities. If people remember, back then, most of prime Park Slope and even Brooklyn Heights were in similar condition. Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill, and Red Hook, along with Boerum Hill, were all considered the same South Brooklyn working class neighborhood.
can I say that every business on SMith was legit? no. But I really can’t say that now.
What I do miss, is that I now have no place to repair, service appliances, or buy refurbished appliances. And deliver 30 minutes later. Just saying these articles love to paint a much darker picture than reality….not that you can say anything is untrue but the jist of it really not how I saw/experienced it.
quote:
From what I read from you, you wouldn’t last 5 minutes in either 1970’s Brooklyn or 2009 Detroit.
there was no hannah montana in the 70s so i wouldn’t make such sweeping generalizations on what i could or could not survive.
*rob*
Robs ranting is getting tired. There are plenty of areas in this very city that are still shitty and dangerous and even more places around the country that are even shittier.
If you want to leave NYC all together, Philly is only a short drive away and you can hang out with crack heads and hookers till yr dick falls off. You can even by a shitty little row house for 80k.
Pete — I was told this by someone in the local business group at the time; and there were/are a lot of storefronts. I enjoyed the men playing dominos on the corner of Smith and Pacific; they kept an eye out. Further up Smith it was a bit dicier back then.
maybe didn’t mention 261 because much of the zone for the school is not Boerum Hill.