October 11, 2008
More profiles of New York City neighborhoods
Brooklyn Heights: City Living amid historic charm
During the epic battle of Long Island in August 1776, George Washington hoodwinked the British by ferrying his troops to Manhattan from what was then called the Town of Brooklyn, leaving an empty campsite behind. Since then, escapism has moved in the opposite direction, with Manhattanites seeking respite in the city's original suburb --Brooklyn Heights.
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn: City Living among old and new
As the F or G train transitions to the elevated tracks after leaving the Carroll Street station, the first thing many straphangers notice are the unusually expansive gardens sprawling out in front of the surrounding brownstones.
Pelham Bay, Bronx: City Living among family
Most New Yorkers are familiar with the unpredictable housing market and the neighborhood gentrification raging across the city. But as tumultuous as those changes have gotten, a small area in the Northeast Bronx has managed to weather the worst of it so far.
Red Hook, Brooklyn: City Living on the edge?
The cobblestone streets, turn-of-the-century row houses, and industrial buildings that characterize Red Hook, which has been shaped by years of relative isolation from the rest of Brooklyn, often surprise first-time visitors.
TriBeCa: New York's neighborhood with star power
Take a quiet lower Manhattan neighborhood, mix in big salaries and star power, and you get TriBeCa, a haven for high-earning professionals, families, and celebrities. With its spacious lofts, the presence of the TriBeCa Film Festival and proximity to Wall Street, it's not surprising the "triangle below Canal Street" is one of the most expensive zip codes in the city. In fact, Forbes calls it the most overpriced in the nation. (Click here for up-close photos of the TriBeCa neighborhood)
New York real estate: Great Kills, Staten Island
No one really uses the word "love" when they describe their feelings toward Great Kills, Staten Island. In fact, most residents speak with a blend of reservation and cautious optimism that it's almost disarming at first. It's not a dangerous place or a ghost town, but then again, it's no Shangri-La, they say. It's middle-class, medium sized, centrally located and even-keeled, through and through. What you see is what you get in Great Kills and the people that live here like it just fine.
New York Real Estate: Midwood, Brooklyn
-Click here for 16 photos of the Midwood, Brooklyn neighborhood
New York Real Estate: Roosevelt Island
To Native Americans, it was Minnehanak. To the Dutch, it was Varckens (Hog's) Island. For 20 years it was Manning's Island, for 235 years it was Blackwell's Island, and until 1973 it was Welfare Island. Only then was the island sandwiched between Long Island City and Manhattan's Upper East Side given its current name.
New York Real Estate: Morningside Heights
Dubbed New York's "Academic Acropolis" because of the many schools that call the area home, Morningside Heights boasts a vibrancy and diversity infused with the spirit of higher education.
New York real estate: Chelsea
It's hard to believe that less than 70 years ago, steam locomotives barreled down 10th Avenue flagged by cowboys on horseback. The West Side Cowboys, as they were called, galloped bravely in front of the train to warn pedestrians of imminent danger, waving red flags by day and red lanterns by night.
Williamsburg: Not just for hipsters
Forget everything you've read. Williamsburg really is more than a hipster habitat.
New York real estate: Howard Beach
For better and for worse, Howard Beach, Queens, has long been a neighborhood on the periphery and an area defined by sharp contrasts. It's where tradition is confronted by modernism, and old and new stand side by side on the borough's border with Brooklyn.
New York real estate: Newark, NJ
Though often ignored by many, except those traveling through Newark Liberty International Airport, the city of Newark is staging a comeback. Once known as one of the most dangerous places in the U.S., Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, has seen a dramatic drop in crime in recent years.
Mill Basin: Waterside living, Brooklyn style
Until the early 20th century, the inlet that constitutes Mill Basin was largely swampland. Avenue U, now a residential and commercial thoroughfare separating Mill Basin from its northern neighbor, Old Mill Basin, was a small stream.
Finding space and quiet in SI's Westerleigh
Anthony Wolk, 91, moved to Westerleigh in 1971 after he was carjacked in his neighborhood of East Flatbush.
Floral Park: A suburban outpost on city's edge
There seems to be some confusion about Floral Park. Is it in Nassau County or New York City? Is it a suburb or is it an urban center? Well, the answer to both of these questions is yes.
City Living
New York real estate: Flatbush
Good luck trying to get a straight answer on where Flatbush is. Encompassing 11 neighborhood associations, all of which can claim some stake in this emerging community, the boundaries are amorphous--something in which local civic leaders seem to take pride, given the great diversity that exists here.
City Living
New York real estate: Carnegie Hill
Given the swanky townhouses, proximity to Museum Mile, proliferation of uniformed schoolgirls and lovingly manicured greenery, it's difficult to believe that Carnegie Hill, which occupies the northeast corner of the Upper East Side, wasn't always considered the luxurious enclave that it is today.
City Living
New York real estate: Fresh Meadows
The sprawling, tree-lined boulevards and quaint colonial cottages that color Fresh Meadows' landscape easily recall images of the picturesque, suburban American Dream.
City Living
New York real estate: New Dorp, Staten Island
Wander off Hylan Boulevard onto any of New Dorp's smaller streets, and the vibe is much more small-town hamlet than big-city living. With small boutiques, long-standing mom-and-pop eateries, big trees and old-fashioned street lamps, much of New Dorp has retained its old-world charm.
City Living
New York real estate: Bedford Park, Bronx
The residents of Bedford Park don't necessarily want people to know about their neighborhood. It's not for lack of pride; quite the opposite. They just want to keep this quiet, working-class enclave all to themselves.
City Living
New York real estate: Lower East Side
Like the neighborhood Whole Foods that was perpetually "coming soon," the transformation of the Lower East Side has been a long time coming. Once the first stop after Ellis Island for newcomers, the enclave has probably played host to more immigrant populations than any other New York neighborhood.
City Living
New York real estate: South Slope
Most people don't differentiate between the two areas straddling Ninth Street; to them it's all Park Slope, with its trendy restaurants, abundant stoop sales, prominent gay community and proliferation of young families.
CITY LIVING
New York real estate: Crown Heights
As the heart of Brooklyn's Caribbean and Hasidic Jewish communities, Crown Heights deserves its reputation as a cultural touchstone. It is home to the annual West Indian Carnival Parade as well as the international headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
CITY LIVING
New York real estate: Chinatown
Steeped in tradition, Chinatown is one of the city's few neighborhoods to fend off gentrification, keeping its cultural fabric intact through a constant infusion of immigrants who keep the neighborhood true to its roots.
New York City real estate: St. Albans, Queens
St. Albans is a quiet middle-class neighborhood in eastern Queens, but just beneath lies a level of culture, politics and heritage that not all New York neighborhoods can boast.
City Living: Wakefield, Bronx
Ride the No. 2 train all the way to the last stop, step off and you've found Wakefield, a small suburban enclave that's New York City's northernmost neighborhood.
City Living: Jersey City
One of the best views of Manhattan can be found across the Hudson River, in what many consider to be the sixth borough, Jersey City. In fact, those who earn their wage in Manhattan would find Jersey City's less-expensive housing and proximity to NYC a very appealing alternative to the other boroughs.
City Living: White Plains
Despite its current reputation around Westchester as the county's shopping center, White Plains was once home to a Native American tribe and later, the site of a Revolutionary War battle.
City Living: Little Neck, Queens
Most residents think of Little Neck as the best of both worlds, where they can enjoy the serenity of the suburbs and the commerce of the city without ever having to leave New York. Tucked away in the northeast corner of Queens, yet only a 45-minute commute to downtown Manhattan, this bustling peninsula on Little Neck Bay has managed to evolve with the rest of the city while retaining much of its original character.
City Living: Midtown South
The area the city defines as Midtown South is many things, but it's definitely not this: slow. People bustle to their jobs in the towering office buildings. Tourists flock to the ample shopping and historical sites. And now more than ever, people are calling the area's many neighborhoods home.
NEW YORK CITY REAL ESTATE
City Living: Prospect Park South
Deep in the belly of Flatbush lies an enclave of colossal freestanding houses, characterized by turrets, oriel windows, grand entrances flanked by columns and expansive wraparound porches.
NEW YORK CITY REAL ESTATE
City Living: Port Richmond, Staten Island
Once the "Fifth Avenue" of Staten Island, the formerly bustling Port Richmond Avenue was a major center of transportation and industry in the 19th century. The area was first incorporated collectively as Port Richmond in 1866, after the Staten Island Railway constructed their first North Shore Branch stop on the avenue.
NEW YORK CITY REAL ESTATE
City Living: Hell's Kitchen
They've tried calling it Clinton. They've tried calling it Midtown West, or even Times Square West. They've tried to call it something other than Hell's Kitchen, but it's never stuck.
City Living: Yonkers
Sitting a mere 30 minutes from midtown by train and offering expansive views of the Hudson, Yonkers in southern Westchester County is in the middle of several large-scale development projects, mainly on the waterfront, that are helping to revitalize the city's long-neglected core.
City Living: Columbia St. Waterfront, Brooklyn
The Dutch dubbed it Red Mills, old timers call it Red Hook, real estate brokers describe it as "Carroll Gardens West," and newcomers have given it the clunky designation, "Columbia Street Waterfront District." Whatever you call it, this little (literal) slice of South Brooklyn can't quite be thrown in with its neighbors to the south or east.
City Living: West Harlem
Twenty-five years ago, no one was rushing to settle down in West Harlem.
City Living: Maspeth
Venturing from Manhattan to the quaint Queens neighborhood of Masbeth is like stepping into a time warp. There is an old-fashioned and traditional feel about the place that stands in contrast to other Queens neighborhoods struggling with population growth, traffic, and gentrification.
City Living: Greenwich Village
Longtime Greenwich Village residents lament the neighborhood's transformation from bohemian to bourgeois, but the '50s and '60s were far from the Village's grittiest era: Before there was Sing Sing, in the heart of Greenwich Village was Newgate Prison. Legend has it, condemned prisoners were hanged from a certain elm in Washington Square Park, although naysayers claim evidence is scant.
City Living: Tottenville
Tottenville is not only the southernmost tip of Staten Island -- it's also the southernmost point in New York state, a novelty that attracts a surprising number of curious urban explorers.
City Living: Bedford-Stuy
"I've been stranded in the combat zone/I walked through Bedford-Stuy alone." If Billy Joel's words were prescient in his 1980 song "You May Be Right," they're downright amusing now. Because even though pockets of this vast central Brooklyn neighborhood are afflicted by the crime and poverty that ravaged it in the '80s and '90s, it also has something else that's in huge demand: historic brownstones.
City Living: Hoboken
Long-time Hoboken residents relish the opportunity to rattle off a list of their hometown's firsts: the city's lore includes the first baseball game, the first ice cream cone, the first zipper, the country's first brewery and the world's first ferry service.
City Living: Queens Village
Blink and you might miss it, but just a 30-minute commuter train ride from Manhattan is Queens Village, a thriving, community-focused, family-oriented residential haven.
City Living: Ozone Park, Queens
In 1880, when Benjamin W. Hitchcock and Charles C. Denton first began slicing up Ozone Park, they chose the community's name to remind potential buyers of the salty breezes blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean.
City Living: Corona, Queens
More than 150 years ago, residents of what is now Corona were hunting grouse, harvesting pumpkins and raising cattle. Then the advent of the Flushing Railroad in 1853 transformed the farmland -- branded West Flushing to appeal to developers -- into a thriving urban center.
City Living: Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
If Prospect Heights was ever in the shadow of Park Slope, its ritzy neighbor across Flatbush Avenue, those days are long past.
City Living: Astoria, Queens
It was only a few years ago that Astoria was largely synonymous with Greece in the minds of many New Yorkers. But the word is spreading: Just across the river from midtown Manhattan, the neighborhood is -- for now -- still as affordable as it is diverse.
City Living: Woodhaven, Queens
Nearly 200 years ago, Woodhaven was "Woodville" -- the name was later changed to distinguish the area from its upstate New York counterpart -- and home to two racetracks, drawing in tens of thousands of onlookers.
City Living: Greenpoint
Mowimy po polsku. Walk around Greenpoint enough, and you'll become familiar with this sign -- which means "we speak Polish" -- and is often placed in businesses lining Manhattan or Nassau avenues.
City Living: Rockaways
Named after a Native American moniker for the area, Reckowacky, the Rockaway Peninsula was sold to the Dutch by the Mohegans in 1639.
City Living: Manhattanville
As fast as the pace of change is in New York, perhaps no other part of the city is seeing transformation as rapidly as Manhattanville, a post-industrial neighborhood sandwiched between Columbia University and the upper reaches of Harlem's west side. Once a busy Hudson River port, today the old warehouses and rusted viaducts are being replaced by apartments, restaurants and -- most significantly -- Columbia University's planned 17-acre expansion.
City Living: Brooklyn Heights
Find it Brooklyn Heights runs from Fulton Street and the Brooklyn Bridge to the north; Atlantic Avenue to the south; the East River to the west; and from the river to Court Street and Cadman Plaza.
City Living: Bushwick
Once New York's beer capital -- there were 14 breweries spread across 14 blocks in the late 1800s -- Bushwick was home to wealthy professionals and industrial magnates who lived in the mansions lining Bushwick Avenue.
City Living: Clinton Hill
Find it Clinton Hill is bounded by Franklin Avenue to the east, Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street to the south, Vanderbilt Avenue to the west and Myrtle Avenue to the north.
City Living: Whitestone
For waterfront access, there's no better city neighborhood than Whitestone, the sleepy residential area between the Throgs Neck and the Bronx Whitestone bridges in Queens.
City Living
City Living: Little Italy
Little Italy harks back to a time when grandma lived upstairs, the mozzarella was fresh and the local butcher knew customers on a first-name basis.
City Living: Jamaica Estates
At the last stop on the F train in Queens, you can head south into the sprawling, bustling urban enclave of Jamaica. Head north uphill though, and you'll find yourself in a suburban neighborhood where it seems there are more squirrels than people plying the sidewalks.
City Living: Bay Ridge
Originally christened Yellow Hook by Dutch settlers due to its rich yellow soil, Bay Ridge got its present name only after a yellow fever epidemic made the original moniker a tad unsavory.
City Living: Hudson Heights
It's a story as familiar to real estate as security deposits and credit checks. Brokers, eager to capture the attention of buyers, invent a new name for a neighborhood, hoping to separate it from a lesser-thought-of area or glom onto a hipper one nearby.
Sunnyside landmark status divides nabe
A bid to landmark Sunnyside Gardens is bitterly dividing the historic Queens community, once envisioned as a utopian oasis of green spaces and neighborly cooperation.
City Living
College Point
To live in College Point, Queens, you've got to deal with some pretty noisy neighbors.
City Living
Glendale
In the last 400 years, the area now known as Glendale has morphed from freshwater swamp to vibrant German farming community to saloon-filled "playground," and finally to an attractive multicultural enclave bounded by graveyards and lush parks.
City Living
Rego Park
Before it was the setting for scenes in Art Spiegelman's Maus or dubbed "Regostan" by The New York Times due to its prominent Central Asian community, Rego Park was occupied by Dutch farmers.
City Living
Murray Hill
In many ways, Murray Hill is like anywhere in Manhattan. Townhouses, tenements and brownstones compete for space along streets by turns both busy, pocket parks such as St. Vartan's provide a small respite from the hub bub, and dry cleaners, delis, markets and salons fill in the cogs of commerce of a thriving neighborhood.
City Living
Park Slope
On a sunny spring day in Park Slope, Seventh and Fifth avenues are the very picture of vibrant street life, teeming with busy sidewalk cafes and people riding bikes, pushing strollers or walking dogs.
City Living
Bayside
Although you'll never see a subway car in this northeast Queens burg, you can find just about everything else you might want. A mall full of chain stores? Check. A quaint strip of mom-and-pop stores within easy walking distance? Check. History? A Civil War-era fort is right around the corner.
City Living
Tribeca
Tribeca's transformation from the butter and eggs district to sought-after downtown destination has been going on for decades, but a recent boom in development has some worried that what drew them to the neighborhood are at risk.
City Living
Brighton Beach
It's not uncommon to approach a shop clerk in Brighton Beach and be greeted, before anything else, in Russian.
City Living
Southwest Harlem
The revival of Harlem is well known. But the area of Manhattan that was once the Dutch village of Nieuw Haarlem is a vast one, stretching from the Hudson River to the East Side.
City Living
Kensington
Brooklyn's Kensington neighborhood is only just being discovered. A small, quiet community sandwiched between more popular neighborhoods of Windsor Terrace and Prospect Heights, Kensington is one of the most diverse corners of New York.
City Living
Middle Village
Middle Village's location between Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Jamaica Turnpike no longer has as much relevance as it did at its founding in the early 19th century. But with three large cemeteries surrounding it and only one subway line, the Queens community can certainly hold onto its "village" designation.
City Living
Kingsbridge
With a growing central commercial area chock-a-block with big chain stores, restaurants and shops, Kingsbridge has become a noisy, bustling neighborhood.
City Living
Upper West Side
"Quintessential New York" is often a phrase used to describe the Upper West Side.
City Living
Battery Park City
Right after 9/11, residents had no choice but to abandon Battery Park City, which stood in the Twin Towers' shadow. Retirees moved elsewhere, families relocated and the flow of Manhattanites into this peaceful oasis abruptly ended.
City Living
Far West Side
Wander down Eighth or Ninth avenues in the 40s and 50s and you're surrounded by classic midtown Manhattan -- new office towers, restaurants, night clubs and theaters. Then there are 10th and 11th avenues.
City Living
Gowanus
Standing on one of the four bridges that straddle the Gowanus Canal, it's downright impossible to imagine that this was once a creek that British soldiers crossed during the American Revolution.
City Living
South Street Seaport
With the smell of the ocean, cobblestone streets, low brick buildings, and the looming sails of historic ships, South Street Seaport doesn't seem to have changed much in the past 200 years when its waterfront was the hub of the city's economy.