House of the Day: 145 Van Dyke Street
Houses in Red Hook don’t come on the market that often because, well, there just aren’t that many of them. They tend to be a little quirky, often in a good way. Take today’s HOTD at 145 Van Dyke Street. To start with, the house is set back 40 feet or so from the street,…
Houses in Red Hook don’t come on the market that often because, well, there just aren’t that many of them. They tend to be a little quirky, often in a good way. Take today’s HOTD at 145 Van Dyke Street. To start with, the house is set back 40 feet or so from the street, with a sizeable garage in front of it. The interiors have a certain charm to them as well — pulling off the modern/traditional straddle. The dark beams set against the crisp white ceilings and walls feel out of the pages of a magazine shoot. The whole house isn’t quite as stylized, though: the bathroom looks perfectly ordinary. Another bonus: The owners of this house are among the few people who could walk to Fairway. As for the $1,195,000 asking price, we have to admit to not having strong feelings about. What do you think?
145 Van Dyke Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
hahhahah BALTIMORE?!?! of course you can get anything there, it sucks there. when you have a million to buy in redhook, you probably also have a dope old Saab or a new Chevy Tahoe and can drive two seconds to all the best parts of ‘brooklyn’ when you want fancy eats or architecture. duh. this house has tons of potential and will be worth over 2M in less than 10yrs, easy. not bad for 100k down.
I wonder how many Red Hook lovers are native NYCers. I guess anyplace in NYC is better than being back home for them.
damn, i’m still laughing over AQ’s sales pitch for *baltimore*. at least in new york your car stays around long enough to actually take it to one of the MYRIAD care repair (etc!) shops that populate red hook.
baltimore is definitely a blast from the past… except the past is the late ’80’s crack epidemic and it never left charm city. nice place to visit sure, but live there? it’s a rough town with a depressed economy. and how do the salaries compare to new york, even though your theoretical “dollar” goes further in inner city real estate?
maybe donatella will take his/her 1.195 MILLION DOLLARS and buy up a block of prime prime bawlmer real estate – just like in monopoly!
red hook is a seriously terrible place, far far worse than bucolic baltimore and pastoral philadelphia, filled with garages, public housing and bumpy deserted streets. there is no subway (and therefore no way to get there) and the lack of brownstones will offend your delicate sensibilities. STAY AWAY!
It is amusing what a tizzy this site goes into when ever something is written about Red Hook. There is clearly not much in Red Hook for your typical brownstoner, but I am amazed by how much everyone loves to tell their version of a what a dump red Hook is. Donatello, for example, has posted the exact same planet of the apes paragraph every time a new Red Hook thread begins.
I guess it is the same knee-jerk reaction that makes the bully beat up the kid who is different than everyone else. If it is different, it is threatening, particularly when it also has an inexplicable allure.
But what could be more threatening than if this place you find so repellent actually becomes the “it” neighborhood?
There is always lots of squabbling on brownstoner between members of different neighborhoods pumping their own hoods and bad mouthing others in the hopes that this might somehow help their real estate investment give a good return or simply because they want to believe that the neighborhood they chose to live is the best. But nothing seems to inspire the poetic hatred that Red Hook does, such as Donatello’s “planet of the apes” analogy, or the one of combustiblegirl being like Yo Samity Sam screaming “I love coconuts,” which I believe was written by Mr. Brownstoner last time a Red Hook discussion came up.
It seems like there is an article about Red Hook every other weekend in the New York Times. These RH articles also keep popping up in the most unlikely little magazines and newspapers around the country. There is a buzz about Red Hook. Everyone knows that. Nobody knows exactly which direction the neighborhood is going but the amount of money that the city is going to pour into Red Hook over the next ten years is frightening indeed.
It doesn’t matter….we’re all doomed! Al Gore says NY (and especially Red Hook , I guess) will be under water in a few years. Pay $1.2 mil, tear it down, rebuild on stilts.
Hey Cumbustiblegirl, you write so eloquently about red hook and are always in the ready to defend the neighborhood. I live in the northern end of the hook…love it…and will never leave. You sound like your in touch with all of its facets. Would you be interested in being a resource for a reporter friend of mine? samandjoeshow@earthlink.net
I wouldn’t care if it was in Fargo, that Bltimore house linked by AQ at 4:33 is impressive.
There is something about Red Hook which is magical and has a Planet of the Apes appeal — a broken down world everyone seemed to forgot or at least that is the appearance. I feel like I am visiting the moon — the garages and the ratty old buildings and the detritus of an aborted shipping industry and the backdoor view of the harbor, which is cool, the boats the totally forlorn isolated wierdness of it. I can see how the neighborhood bonding could be great.
I love going to Fairway and the water is wonderful but I would never pay money to live there — no way, darlin’. Maybe if I started a small trade business or workshop, I might get rent space there but to spend 1.195 MILLION, yes million dollars earned in the real world to live in a Mad Max set. I don’t think so. You see, that is the difference in being young and fancy free and renting and dreamy “we don’t need no stinkin’ subway” and actually having been around enough to pay that kind of money. Red Hook was a place which was a thriving ordinary neighborhood at one time before the city decided to rezone the area for a shipyard building area, which never quite worked and then the BQE came in to finish the job of isolating Red Hook and leaving it a confused disconnected mish mash. It’s cool but I’d never buy anything there.
uh, Baltimore is pretty much a sh*thole, but whatever.