House of the Day: 272 Halsey Street
This four-story brownstone at 272 Halsey in Bedford Stuyvesant caught our eye because it’s been in the same family for seven decades. Other than a newish kitchen, the house looks like unusually intact, with some killer woodwork and fireplaces. The fact that it’s a one-family may be a drawback—most prospective buyers are going to need…
This four-story brownstone at 272 Halsey in Bedford Stuyvesant caught our eye because it’s been in the same family for seven decades. Other than a newish kitchen, the house looks like unusually intact, with some killer woodwork and fireplaces. The fact that it’s a one-family may be a drawback—most prospective buyers are going to need help paying the mortgage given the asking price of $1,175,000, which seems on the high side to us. In addition to the house’s lineage, the listing is noteworthy for the fact that it may be the first time we’ve seen proximity to Food Town and Applebee’s listed as an amenity on a million-dollar property.
272 Halsey Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
Noticed alot of Nebraska type looking folks in the area around the house this evening. I was going to direct them to Hancock around Marcy and Tompkins to see the real houses in the area but I didn’t want to scare them, you know how those Omaha types are.
AJ, I guess that it was also a broker plot/consipracy to name part of Bed-Stuy “Stuyvesant Heights” in the early 1970s too? Right?
Keep your shirt on, buddy. The entire area will always be Bed-Stuy. It’s just that there will now be two historic districts in Bed-Stuy rather than one: Bedford Heights and Stuyvesant Heights.
I don’t see a crime here or any conspiracy. BOO!
aj, you sound like a fool. no sense in aruging with an idiot. you can name flatbush whatever you like but it will only stick if it makes sense and the name has some genesis in history. if you can part of the the BS nabe stuyvesant heights then you can certainly name part of it bedford heights. if you can’t follow the logic and reason behind this then your just dumb and not worth the time of day. good night.
Antoine, Columbus never discovered anything, and according to the United Nations there were two million people on the island we speak of. Antoine, Columbus was a mass murderer, thief and a rapist and you are correct he wasn’t and isn’t the only one. By the way what killed those people was not disease it was violence savage violence. Please don’t protect that or try to mitigate its impact. Leopold of Belgium also reduced the population of the Congo from 20 million to about 10 million while robbing that country. You are not responsible for these atrocities so don’t be so defensive.
that explains the usage of “bedford heights”…but i just think its part of a broker’s plot to actually distance the neighborhood from bed-stuy…maybe we should rename flatbush “midwood heights” so that any architecture over there can be preserved too!
I totally agree with you 8:22 I think that Stuyvesant Heights Landmark district should be extended and that Bedford Heights should have landmarked yesterday. As an amateur architectural historian It really puzzles me why Hancock, Halsey and Jefferson are not landmark blocks. Now there are some blocks that I think are just ugly and I would like to see developers with GOOD ARCHITECTS come in much like St. Nick and Amsterdam uptown near Morningside. It very strange to walk down a tree line street and the next block feels like you’re in Nevada with no green insight.
As far as the names I think it is good to use Bedford Heights and Stuyvesant Heights it makes these special areas distinct. Before 1977 North Crown Heights up to Eastern Parkway was Bedford Stuyvesant. I have a letter dated April 1947 from my grandaunt that lived on Halsey and Marcy and she used Bedford Heights NY for her address. These names are not new. These are original retro names that people are starting to use to get away from the many times thought of the negative name Bed-Stuy. The drug years in the 80s really hurt that name.
AJ, historically the area that we call Bedford-Stuyvesant today was comprised of two villages: the Village of Bedford and the Village of Stuyvesant (also called Stuyvesant Village). Overtime the common reference to these two villages morphed in one to create NYC’s largest neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant. In the early 1970’s the LPC designated landmark status to the area surrounding Stuyvesant Avenue and called it “The Stuyvesant Heights Historic District”, in part reference to the areas former nomenclature of Stuyvesant Village. At the time, some area preservationist advocated for the additional naming and landmarking of the exclusive brownstone area east of Bedford Avenue as the “The Bedford Heights Historic District”, also in part reference to the area’s past history. However, this effort failed (for reasons unbeknownst to me) and the issue was never seriously considered again. Today, there appears to be a groundswell of wide support for landmarking this area of true architectural merit. The current reference of the prime brownstone area west of Stuyvesant Heights to the Clinton Hill border as Bedford Heights is a byproduct of two things: (1) the growing acknowledgement of the areas history; and (2) the growing fear that if left unprotected, the historical and architectural significance of this area will be threatened.
IMHO, expanding the current Stuyvesant Heights Historic District further north to Madison and landmarking the brownstone area just west of it “Bedford Heights” would go a long way in preserving some of the best examples of turn of the century architecture in this city.
the people on the beautiful bed stuy blocks have beautybeautybeauty, tree lined streets and the A train and a growing list of amenities–truly fabulous new neighborhood spots.
the people in not as beautiful yet still brownstone blocks of bed stuy north have proximity to already gentrified neighborhoods. this is why folks will pay a mil. they can’t be in williamsburg or clinton hill/fg. this is the next neighborhood over so improvement is inevitable. this is an enviable position to be in–squeezed by williamsburg and ch/fg. (even w/ all of the obvious LACK.) hello?
some of you should take a look at who lives there RIGHT NOW. asian & white pratt students. elderly black women w/ their shopping carts during the week or elegant church hats on sundays. young white moms strolling their kids. afro-chic college educated couples. come and check it out. it’s actually exciting.
to 8:35,
On the subject of Christopher Columbus the “first gentrifier”. Let’s get the facts straight. Hispianola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic) had nowhere near 2 million inhabitants in the 15th century during Columbus’ voyage of discovery, according to the June National Geographic: the entire eastern seaboard of North America didn’t have 2 million inhabitants. That’s not to discount the fact that early Europeans brought many endemic diseases with them and did indeed cause death, but let’s not overstate the numbers.
Secondly, if we are going to indict Christopher Columbus for “gentrifying” the neighborhood, let’s indict all of mankind Black, White, Asian for the legacy of conquest and bloodshed that is recorded history (and even unrecorded as scientists believe that homo sapiens promptly made our closest relatives Neanderthal EXTINCT when we moved out of Africa and into Europe.)
Let’s not discredit the Mongolian hoardes, or Egyptians, or Nubians or Persians or Mayans for their own brutality and genocidal migrations. Save the selective “white centric” indignation for a more gullable crowd.