Brooklyn Heights: A historic waterfront community minutes from Manhattan

Deborah Hallen first visited Brooklyn Heights as a member of an amateur chamber music group. She moved there a year later. A year later, after a performance on Staten Island, she met Paul O. Zelinsky, a children’s book illustrator who, it turned out, also lived in Brooklyn Heights, in his art studio.

“I fell in love at first sight,” Ms. Hallen, 79, said of the man she soon married.

That was in the seventies. She and Mr. Zelinsky, 70, are now grandparents, but they still live and work in this historic waterfront community, home to many artists and writers. “Rents used to be affordable,” she says. “Everyone was everyone’s friend.”

Mrs. Hallen went on to work as a science teacher at PS 8, the local public school on Hicks Street, where she is now retired. She is president of Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library, which raises money for programs at the beautiful new library on Cadman Plaza West. In addition to many book events, the library hosts groups for knitting, chess and other activities. Ms. Hallen also serves on Community Board 2’s Youth, Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, an appointed position. Mr. Zelinsky, who won the Caldecott Medal in 1998 and has sold millions of copies of his most popular book, “Wheels on the Bus,” is part of a circle of illustrators who meet regularly in the neighborhood.

In 1998, the couple and their two daughters left their one-bedroom rental home and moved into a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op apartment with views of the harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge, a fireplace and a rooftop deck. They paid $320,000. “It’s now worth over a million dollars,” Ms. Hallen said. “We don’t feel like leaving. It is beautiful and peaceful here.”

She enjoys walking the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the harbor, walking across the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge, or taking the subway into Manhattan. “It’s half an hour to a Broadway show,” she said.

Brooklyn Heights has long been known as “New York’s first suburb,” says Gerard Splendore, an associate broker at Coldwell Banker Warberg, who has lived in three places in Brooklyn Heights. He remembers “sitting next to Norman Mailer in a Chinese restaurant in the 1980s,” when the writer lived and worked nearby.

“Brooklyn Heights has an amazing housing stock with post-war and pre-war buildings and incredible mansions,” Mr. Splendore said. And the newly renovated Brooklyn Bridge Park, he added, “is a tremendous addition to the waterfront area, with soccer, swimming, basketball, restaurants and kayaking.”

Residents in that area include Doc Dean, 38, director of Citibank’s corporate investment banking division. He and his wife, Amie Dean, 44, a retired fashion industry executive, were among the first to move into the Quay condominium in 2020, paying about $3 million for a three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment. The couple now has a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son.

“We wanted to be close to my work, and the neighborhood is great,” Mr. Dean said. His commute involves riding the ferry from Pier 6, just steps from his apartment, to Lower Manhattan for “a few minutes,” and then walking for 15 to 20 minutes. His son plays football at Pier 5, and his daughter roller skates at Pier 2, attends PS 8 and also takes after-school chess and art classes there.

The couple loves being near many great restaurants, he said: “Charlie Mitchell, the first black Michelin-starred chef in New York City, has his restaurant, Clover Hill, right behind us. It is awesome.”

Tom and Kate Gunton, both 33, have been renting on Hicks Street for five years, starting with a one-bedroom apartment and then a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment in the same building, where they now pay about $3,000 a month and live together with their five-month-old daughter and an 85-pound yellow lab.

When they met, Ms. Gunton, who works in health care, lived on the Lower East Side; Mr Gunton, who works at Salesforce, a software company, was living abroad. They considered staying on the Lower East Side but wanted “a little more space and more amenities,” Mr. Gunton said, such as an elevator and laundry in the building. They also wanted to be near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which runs under the Promenade, because Ms. Gunton drives to work and provides easy access for visits to his family on Long Island and hers in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Gunton takes their daughter to the Promenade “at least once a day,” she said. “It’s like our backyard.” She is also part of an online neighborhood chat group for new mothers, who give each other tips and “exchange baby supplies.” Mr. Gunton plays football in an intramural league at Pier 5 and takes his dog to a dog park near Pier 6 or another at Cadman Plaza Park.

“This is not a temporary neighborhood,” he says. “People want to stay forever.”

What you will find

Robert A. Levine, a developer who used his initials as the name for his company, RAL, remembers driving for years past the deteriorating piers and sheds along the Brooklyn Heights waterfront. “They were yelling at me,” he said, but no one had managed to develop what he saw as “a hidden gem.”

Around 2003, he said, “things were percolating,” and he began working with the city and state to build or remodel a few new residential buildings — mostly upscale, but some affordable — that would provide a part of the funds would contribute to the transformation of the world. piers that have turned Brooklyn Bridge Park into a vibrant recreational area. Construction of the park began in 2008, and the nonprofit Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy now organizes the area’s extensive programs.

The new construction represents a small part of the total space of the district. The northern boundary of the community is Old Fulton Street; the southern border is Atlantic Avenue. To the east, Cadman Plaza West curves, before Court Street takes over for a short distance. Overlooking the park and the East River, to the west, is the Promenade, a beloved public space that defines the Heights portion of the neighborhood’s name. Dumbo is to the north, Cobble Hill to the south and Downtown Brooklyn to the east. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway runs under the Promenade. (The freeway’s cantilevered structure has become a cause for concern in recent years, with proposals for short- and long-term repairs remaining unresolved.)

Many streets are lined with leafy trees, handsome mansions, beautiful churches and other stately buildings, thanks to a 1965 historic designation for almost the entire neighborhood—New York City’s first designation. The 1987 film “Moonstruck” and several others were filmed there. Many houses were built in the 19th century and most buildings are low-rise.

“Some people see this as a middle ground between the suburbs and New York City,” said Ravi Kantha, an associate broker at Leslie J. Garfield.

Montague Street is the main commercial centre.

What you pay

The average price of the 221 homes sold this year through September was $1.19 million, said John Walkup, founder of UrbanDigs, a real estate data analytics company. That was close to the average sales price of $1.2 million during the same period in 2020, when about the same number of homes were sold.

But during the first few years of the pandemic, when people wanted more space than Manhattan had to offer, “we were off to the races,” Mr. Walkup said. In 2021, sales more than doubled to 485, with an average price of $1.45 million; in 2022 there were 408 sales at an average price of $1.3 million.

Since then, the market has slowed, partly due to higher interest rates. As of mid-November, there were 126 homes for sale on StreetEasy, from a one-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op on the third floor of a 1950s elevator building at 100 Remsen Street, listed at $370,000, to a three-family home. brownstone built in 1899 at 126 Pierrepont Street, listed for $15 million. About 130 rentals were available, from a studio in an apartment building on State Street, priced at $2,195 per month, to a five-bedroom, five-and-a-half bath townhouse on Remsen Street, which was listed for $27,500 per month.

The atmosphere

“Community members care deeply about their history,” said Lara Birnback, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association. “But at the same time, this is a very vibrant and ambitious community.”

She added: “People are excited that our high street, Montague, has a new energy,” with new restaurants, bakeries and other shops – some of which, such as Books Are Magic bookstore and L’Appartement 4F bakery, were convinced by the association to open in Montague Street. The group also played a role in attracting Poppy’s, a cafe on Henry Street, and Inga’s Bar, a May 2022 NYT Critic’s Pick.

The schools

PS 8 The Emily Warren Roebling School, at 37 Hicks Street, is the only public school in Brooklyn Heights. It serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and had 575 enrollments in the 2021-2022 school year. In 2018-2019 (the last year for which assessments are available due to the pandemic), when it was known as the Robert Fulton School and included seventh and eighth grades, 76 percent of students met state standards on the English test, compared to 47 percent of the students. percent citywide, and 71 percent met state standards in math, compared to 46 percent citywide.

In the fall of 2019, sixth through eighth grade students were transferred to a school in downtown Brooklyn called Bridges MS 915.

Brooklyn Heights is also home to several highly ranked private schools, including St. Ann’s School, the Packer Collegiate Institute, and the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School.

The commute

Metro lines 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C and R all run through the district. Ferries take people to Manhattan, and many cycle (or walk) across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The history

The Brooklyn Heights Association, founded in 1910, is the city’s oldest neighborhood association, according to its website. In 1935, the group’s advocacy led to the creation of Cadman Plaza Park on the site where the city had demolished the elevated tracks and transit station at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1945, the association opposed a proposed route for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that would run through the middle of the borough; instead, a triple cantilever was built on the edge of Brooklyn Heights topped by the now popular Brooklyn Heights Promenade. In 1960, the association was once again on the front lines, helping to defeat Robert Moses’ urban renewal plan to build one-bedroom luxury rental housing on Cadman Plaza. In their place were narrower buildings and affordable family co-ops.

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