House of the Day: Detached on Fenimore
We don’t know the Prospect Lefferts Manor market as well as we should, especially when you move away from talking about brownstones. This free-standing wood frame house on Fenimore between Bedford and Rogers is only a couple of blocks from the park and we’re sure it would make a nice single-family home. Somehow, though, we…
We don’t know the Prospect Lefferts Manor market as well as we should, especially when you move away from talking about brownstones. This free-standing wood frame house on Fenimore between Bedford and Rogers is only a couple of blocks from the park and we’re sure it would make a nice single-family home. Somehow, though, we suspect that the asking price of $1.495 is aggressive for the block. The interior has certainly not been neglected–it looks like a major reno was done at some point recently. Who can clue us in about values on this block?
200 Fenimore Street [Prudential Douglas Elliman] GMAP P*Shark
I think South Park’s.. smug alert might be heading for these parts! Heads up, gass maskes on!
“But if we’re to be honest, we need to acknowledge the caveats: The boom of the past few years has changed the Slope’s character and some of that, not all by any means, is for the worse. ”
True, but, okay… SO WHAT?
This can be said about any popular neighborhood in NYC to varying degrees. There will always be old timers who lament what was, and newcomers who wish the pace of change was even faster. You don’t think the same is true of your own present neighborhood? Do you really think it will remain frozen in time? Do you think your arrival was necessarily welcomed by all? If so, then you’re full of it (and of yourself).
I’ve lived in and around the Slope for the better part of 15 years, and frankly I happen to like most of the changes. I’m glad it’s not the same and I like that people are willing to pay millions for my humble abode (should I decide to sell some day).
To each his own pal.
Well said, Bob (I was park sloper anon 11:38 above). and I would add that I wish PS were as well integrated as PLG and it’s our loss that it isn’t. but to jump from that to knocking the character of a whole neighborhood’s residents — which I guarantee you’d catch holy hell for if you did it to PLG — is facile and baseless.
I agree with Michael when he writes “Prospect Lefferts, as others thankfully have noted, has been an integrated neighborhood for almost a half century. One hopes and prays that the housing boom cools and allows it to stay that way”.
However, as quick as I always am to defend PLG, I’m not comfortable with defending my neighborhood, or any other, by invidious comparisons with Park Slope, or any other neighborhood. I guess the Slope, as the paradigm of neighborhood revival “success” stories, is an easy target, but this just isn’t necessary. As a veteran of the old Brooklyn Brownstone Conference in the ’70s and ’80s, I’m oriented towards a positive view of ALL brownstone neighborhoods.
Oh lay off the Park Slope bashing will yah. Why does every neighborhood discussion seem to spiral into a class/race war, which invariably drags PS into it?
Do some folks represent the stereotype described by Franz? Sure. Do those people annoy me too? Yes. But, how about a little tolerance please. The air must be pretty thin up on that high horse.
These people do not represent an entire neighborhood. There are plenty of regular folk still around, and Park Slope, for all it’s influx of wealthy Manhattanite baggage (which has been happening over the past 40 years), is still a lovely place to live.
kudos to michael. so long as it has come into the discussion, i’ll mention my opinion of the slope!
i left there in 1993. by that time it had already become snore central. i lived on 10th between 4th and 5th, before that on president near the park, a few houses up from the haagen-dazs (is that still there?) at that time it was in the final transition between ‘old’ park slope where my husband grew up (1970’s era) and what it is today. it was sorta lesbian, sorta old-timers in apartments, and a bunch of stroller pushers. i believe that cucina was open, and that little coffee shop pastry joint on 6th ave, and the fast food burrito joint, also on 6th.
i moved to (gasp!) williamsburg. not matter what it is, it’s not yuppie hipster in the slope sense, but that’s surely just around the bend. we’re keeping an eye out for a good house in greenpoint, but north shore staten island looms. if we had kids we’d consider leffert’s, if we were priced out of CH. our businesses are in wburg, so g’point is tempting, but staten island offers more bang for the buck, and the people are anything but hipsterish.
so, i dunno … i left the WV in the early ’80’s, the EV in the late 80’s, moved to the slope and was bored to death, and disgusted with the F train. my husband left the slope in the early ’80’s and has never wavered from his desire to return to the g’point of his (early) youth. to me, a hood is a hood is a hood, and i can be happy most anywhere. that said, i was never so bored with a neighborhood as i was in the park slope of the early ’90’s.
anon 11:07, 10:22 here. You know, I’m glad to agree to disagree with you on Park Slope. Maybe I live in too declasse an area, but my friends and neighbors in the are pretty much unmaterialistic and down-to-earth… as much so as my friends in Fort Greene, Carroll Gardens, Williamburg, Kensington and, yes, PLG. Most drive old cars; no one among us owns a bugaboo; no one’s a trader or hedge fund manager or corporate lawyer. We do like cheese. God help us.
My social circle is concentrated west of 7th Avenue, so I suppose I just encounter the ultra-rich New Park Slope less often–but it’s a big neighborhood, and to me it’s no less friendly or grounded than when I moved here in the early 90s.
But whatever. YMMV. And at least you cited something of your experience rather than tossing it out as an everyone-knows-that objective fact. My point is, tho, this thread wasn’t about comparing PS with PLG at all — UNTIL PLGers brought it up to bash its character as a way of defending living in in PLG. It was like some weird, paranoid pre-emptive strike.
I think people in PLG are nice too, because I actually know some of them. But some of you need to get over your obsession with judging yourself in relation to the Slope.
And yes — to answer the expected response — slopers on this site have described
PLG unfavorably. But so have people from plenty of other nabes — see the recent thread knocking PLG in favor of Sunset Park. And it was PLG — home of the “stop bashing us all the time!” posts — that initiated the bashing here.
Having said all that… PLG is a gorgeous, seemingly tight-knit neighborhood in a nice location and I can totally see the appeal of living there. If I didn’t already have a house, I might even move there and try to corrupt your souls. And frankly, if you can convince any more people to move out of the evil Slope to the Land of Good People across the park, I’ll be thankful for the reduced congestion.
Anonymous at 10:22. Having lived in Park Slope for several years, I am willing to state that I personally stopped enjoying the company and attitudes of most of the people there. Maybe that is smug, but it also happens to be true. I am more concerned with the people my family and I interact with on a daily basis, their attitudes and interests, than the number of services and the shopping. The thing I value most in my life is human interaction, not shopping and services. I’m sure there are lots of people who live in a neighborhood more for the shopping and services than for the people and others who do love the people in park slope. I am just not one of them and I am willing to admit it. In my opinion, the negatives of PLG are the lack of shopping and services (which park slopers bring up on this site all the time) and the negatives of park slope are the people. I think it is a legitimate point, when discussing a neighborhood, to compare it to others and to point out that some people value their neighbors more than the local wine shops.
Ed, but the anon said nothing about Park Slope, nor mentioned being from there, so why use his/her post as a springboard to trash slopers? Why bring up the Slope at all? (In fact, he/she favorably compared Clinton Hill / Fort Greene, so why not slam “selfish, self-centered” CH/FGers?)