House of the Day: 219 Washington Avenue
The owner of 219 Washington Avenue in Clinton Hill has been trying to sell for over a year now, tweaking the price a number of times in the process to no avail. It started at $2,275,000 at the beginning of May 2007, getting bumped to $2,375,000 and then $2,395,000 within the first week; by the…
The owner of 219 Washington Avenue in Clinton Hill has been trying to sell for over a year now, tweaking the price a number of times in the process to no avail. It started at $2,275,000 at the beginning of May 2007, getting bumped to $2,375,000 and then $2,395,000 within the first week; by the end of the month, the listing had been pulled, according to StreetEasy. It reemerged with Corcoran again in February at a pie-in-the-sky $2,835,000 in February of this year, before getting knocked back down to $2,495,000 in March. Later in the spring, it was pulled again. Brown Harris Stevens brought it back to market last week at $2,495,000. Seems to us that you gotta have a fifth story to get this price on Washington Avenue in this market, but we could be wrong.
219 Washington Avenue [Brown Harris Stevens] GMAP
Open House Picks 4/4/08 [Brownstoner] P*Shark
I used to live in this building before the reno when I went to Pratt. It’s a great building. The did a really nice job of fixing it up. There is no parking spot, that’s the house next door. Which the previous owners took (why is beyond me it’s a gross building). Don’t know if it’s worth 2.4 in this market, it’s a good block but close to Myrtle Ave.
Also one of my roomates lost his pet snake in there years ago, we never found it.
Yay! Fellow G train defenders. I also am a fairly quick walk to the C at Clinton/Washington but have found that taking the G to Hoyt is a faster way of getting to the A/C line. What cracks me up is that people spend time on blogs insulting train lines.
I live in CH and commute to downtown now. I’m on the C train (get it at Clinton Washington). With my walk and wait, door to door in maybe 25 minutes. Midtown takes a good 40 minutes. If you’re closer to the G, it’s two stops to Hoyt where you can pick up the A. Commuting is fine for me, llike Schultz, especially if you’re working in downtown Manhattan. In fact, unless you live close to downtown Manhattan, commuting is generally faster from where I am in Clinton Hill than it is for most of my colleagues in Manhattan.
As a long time CH resident with many of those years as a Manhattan-centric commuter, taking the G to the L, or the G to the A or the G to the F are all really workable combinations. Then there is the A at Clinton/Washington, which just zips you right up to the UWS in minutes. I know that to those that have not experienced the commute on a day to day basis that it seems formidable, and I will always remember the intense relief I felt on my first day of commuting to work from CH, but believe me, in the whole scheme of things, it is very workable.
You would be very foolish to dismiss a neighborhood based on the fact that its on the G train. As I said, the length of my day in day out commute is very favorable compared to the same commute from other neighborhoods. The G train does in fact not go to Manhattan but it connects many of Brooklyns best neighborhoods together and it enables me to get to my office from either direction (G to Hoyt, change to A or G the other way to Metropolitan and change to the L). But to each his own. It works well for me and that is what matters for me.
I think I already did, Mister Cooper. It was a stretch already, and we almost didn’t even go in because of its location. Maybe it was the roving bands of marauding teens that turned us off of poor little Washington Avenue. Kidding, kidding.
We are looking in Fort Greene proper and the North Slope. (Well, I’m not sure how seriously we’re looking anymore given the current state of the market and given we must actually sell our place first).
Nothing “whispered in confidence” to share really.
And frankly, the house on second is not our pie in sky either because it too is a wee bit far from the subways. That and my husband isn’t crazy about Park Slope. And it is over priced by a fair bit. Opinion only, of course.
Gary–
For many, subway access to Manhattan is key. Unless you’re going to work at 6 am and returning at a similar ungodly hour, it’s faster, plain and simple.
And I agree with Nokilissa on the pesky problem of no powder room on the parlor floor. Based on the floorplan, it’s also hard to imagine a place to put one. As it looks now, you’d have to direct guests to the master bath, which is a total drag.
Noklissa,
Be honest, you loved the house, it had the toil-in kitchen your heart desires, why didn’t you buy it? …really?
as I recall, the Gatsby reference was made in connection with the much more expensive house, a mansion really, in Park Slope. Was that the place you really want but can’t afford?
Why is poor little Washington Avenue so not in keeping with your druthers? You can tell us.
We’ve looked at this house, and there is no parking. There is also the pesky problem of no powder room on the parlor floor and the fact that the garden and deck overlook a rather unattractive & tall housing development a block or two behind it. We also weren’t crazy about the block and the distance to a Manhattan-bound subway.
That said, we called this the “happy house”. We visited on a particularly sunny day and it was really cheery and lovely inside. The children’s bedrooms were bright and adorable with a massive closet/play space in between, which had beautifully constructed built-in storage. The master bedroom, though long and seemingly narrow, didn’t feel that way. It felt spacious and private and indulgent. The views of Manhattan that they carved into the Northwest walls were to die for.
Though this block and neighborhood are probably not for us and go beyond our “druthers” in terms of being beyond our maximum walk to the subways and stores, this house is quite nice.
And again, the idea that anyone buying in this price point fits some modern day version of the Gatsby’s – i.e. kitchen’s being unimportant due to their being the purview of the help alone, and subway access being unimportant because, hell, such people would have a driver on hand, or at the very least would take cabs everywhere – is simply incorrect.
Honest.