Christopher Gray Loves Him Some Albemarle Road
[nggallery id=”22292″ template=galleryview] There’s no news in this one, but Christopher Gray’s appreciation of Albemarle Road in yesterday’s Times—”Albemarle is one of the grandest residential streets in the whole city, even with some dings and dents”—is a nice excuse to put up a photo set of the incredibly beautiful Victorian Flatbush boulevard. Gray talks about…
[nggallery id=”22292″ template=galleryview]
There’s no news in this one, but Christopher Gray’s appreciation of Albemarle Road in yesterday’s Times—”Albemarle is one of the grandest residential streets in the whole city, even with some dings and dents”—is a nice excuse to put up a photo set of the incredibly beautiful Victorian Flatbush boulevard. Gray talks about how Albermarle’s developer, Dean Alvord, built up the road between 1899 to 1910, giving us three blocks of neo-Classical, Queen Anne and Colonial manses. Flatbush Gardener, who took all the photos above, notes that Albermarle’s landscape architect also played a big role in shaping the boulevard’s identity, turning it into a lush mall.
Brooklyn’s Stately Esplanade [NY Times] GMAP
Albemarle Road Featured in the Times [Flatbush Gardener]
All photos by Flatbush Gardener.
As gas gets more expensive and as property taxes in the ‘burbs go up, neighborhoods like this will be worth every penny. Great subway access, five or ten minute walk to Prospect Park, new restaurants opening up…it will only get better.
This article about what we call “the Magic Land” 2 blocks from our [3,000-square-foot, decrepit, nonlandmarked Victorian] house gave me much consolation. It seemed to acknowledge the sheer staggering scale of maintenance and renovation costs for these…(I would say “monstres sacres,” or maybe “betes noirs” but neither would come out well without those little Frenchy accents)…anyway, if these folks in the Magic Land can’t hack it, I feel better that we haven’t been able to apply more than Band-Aids for 20+ years. (At least we never put on siding. Hell, after paying our heat bills, we couldn’t afford that, either!)
Also, for NJ you need to factor in the property taxes, which are often quite insane.
And then unless you live in a house that has a NJ Transit bus stopping at your front lawn, you most likely need a car to get at least to the nearest NJ Transit Bus or Train station. And how much does it cost to insure a car in NJ?
In this section of Victorian Flatbush Brooklyn, a car is a luxury, not a necessity. The subway, bus, Express Bus are all close by.
Why do people keep talking about the suburbs as if they’re cheaper? Recently for the heck of it I looked up properties in the suburbs. In any of the somewhat acceptable towns in CT and NY (NJ is just so not an option) there aren’t any houses for a million I’d bother buying or be happy living in. Even in this downturn when you’re suppsed to be able to pick up bargains in the suburbs, the prices for something decent were still far from cheap. Unless you want to buy some cheapy new-construction beige-carpeted subdivision house which I never would as I’d slit my wrists living in such a place. Tons of those on the market because nobody wants them.
This part of the city has always reminded me of the opening scene in Lady and the Tramp. Looks so much like it. I always wondered if it was fashioned after this neighborhood in the early 1900’s.
….open minded, sophisticated, urbane, non-racist, non-classist people? Don’t let the PATH train doors crush you on the way out.
over a million ???
for that price I am going to Short Hills, NJ.
no private no school tuition and far away from……well, you know……
The Gale house is estimated at 2.35 at Zillow.com and was the topic of a Brownstoner post a while ago:
http://bstoner.wpengine.com/brownstoner/archives/2006/03/1305_albemarle_1.php
The house changed hands several times in the last 20 years, if I remember correctly, last time it sold was exceptionally reasonable – something like $600K…anyone remember?
12:19 here. 12:42 has a point. Also, in answer to your sarcastic remark 12:33, you didn’t have to pry off the floor. You could see through to the underboards in a number of places where it was completely worn down. Hey – I am a big fan of the Victorian Flatbush area and think it is one of the best and most undervalued in Brooklyn. I think it would be a great thing for more of these houses to sell to people who have the money to maintain and/or renovate them. That is why I get sad when I see someone put a house like this on the market at a price that makes it fairly unlikely anyone will ever buy it and fix it up. Not only do they need to find a rich buyer, but a pretty darn naive one to pay this much in this condition. Another one that makes me sad is the Gale house discussed in the NYT article. Just walk by it and you can see it needs major work now due to the neglect it has been shown over the years. I’m sure the owners just can’t afford to do all the work necessary and I felt bad for them until they tried to put it on the market a couple of years ago for over $4M. The price was just ludicrous and no one (obviously) bought it for that amount, so it is now decaying even more and will probably continue to.