Prospect-Lefferts Gardens
Brooklyn community offers assortment of architecture and lively residents
Friday, August 17th 2007, 12:20 PM
Longtime Prospect-Lefferts Garden resident Milton Benjamin.
Kids go fishing in Prospect Park.
The Prospect Park subway station is a stop for both the B and Q trains.
The community is known for its historic homes (above and below)
When a community has its own blog, several vocal block associations, and Web sites devoted to its history and architecture, you know residents take their real estate seriously.
And you can bet they know the value of their own home.
In Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, that's important because the housing stock is as wildly diverse as the pricing. From one street to another, the types of homes, the size of homes, the care given to homes, and the safety factor outside those homes can be as different as Iowa City is from New York City.
There are streets full of wooden A-frame Tudor townhouses off Flatbush Ave., where young adults shoot dice one block from farmhouses with white shutters down the street from low-income housing complexes. Two blocks over is Lefferts Manor, a historic district characterized by limestone townhouses set back 14 feet from the street, and brick single-family homes reminiscent of colonial Virginia.
Off Flatbush Ave. near the B and Q subway stop, there's a Western Beef, Church's Fried Chicken, two gas stations and enough Caribbean flavors to make you think you've landed in the West Indies. Some young families and hipsters have arrived, trying to re-create their own version of Park Slope, but the neighborhood faithful of African-American professionals and hard-working, middle-class New Yorkers still have presence.
And it's that very presence that gives this neighborhood between Crown Heights and Prospect Park its life.
* The Houses: Just walking the streets is a historical house tour. On Winthrop St. between Flatbush and Bedford Ave., I passed a housing project and a brick co-op building in the middle of the block before running into a string of stand-alone colonials dating back to the early 1900s.
The middle red one, 92 Winthrop St., was built in 1907. It has a front yard, backyard, sun porch and a string of flowers leading up to its front door.
"I have no intention of ever moving," says Anguila-born Milton Benjamin, who has lived there with his wife since 1982. "Even with all the younger folks coming from Park Slope pushing up prices, it's still a good neighborhood that after all these years is finally getting better."
Around the corner on Hawthorne St., a light blue Victorian home flanked by linden trees has a "For sale" sign in front of a big porch behind a fence. Amber West, a poet in NYU's Graduate School of Creative Writing, was reading a book on a porch couch. She rents the bottom floor of the house for $1,050 a month.
From Northern California, West has never lived in New York before. She looked all over the city for a month before she found this house on craigslist.com. The house is on the market for $750,000, reduced from $850,000.
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"I hope I can stay here if it sells," says West. "I heard some gunshots last week, but nothing dangerous has ever happened to me and I have living space, a backyard, Prospect Park up the street and a half-hipster coffee shop on Lincoln Road with free wireless."
While we're talking, a car slows down as it drives by. "How much for the house?," yells Andrea Williams, the driver. "These things don't come on the market very often. I live around here, I know. I've always wanted a house."
* Rentals: Most rental units in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens are in the brick buildings lining Lefferts Ave. and Flatbush Ave. According to Ian Narine, a Guyana-born real estate agent with Apple Real Estate Enterprises who came to Brooklyn for the "action and the money," 500 square-foot onebedrooms rent for $1,100 and 1,200-square-foot three-bedrooms rent for around $1,700.
The occasional ground-floor apartment in a historic townhouse are slightly more expensive, renting at $1,900 for two-bedrooms with a garden.
* The People: John Wilcher, a retired buyer with Bloomingdale's, was polishing his front doorknob when I walked by. His daughters grew up here, a limestone townhouse on Maple St. Wilcher, now divorced, has been there 45 years. The doorknob, he explains, is the original fitting from when the house was built in 1905. Every year, he makes sure to weatherize his front door.
"People aren't as friendly as the original people when I moved in," says Wilcher, explaining that he says "hello" twice before stopping because of no wave back. "Some people put their garbage out on Saturday for a Monday pickup. That's not right. But it's a neighborhood for kids, and that's nice."
Still, everyone who passes says "hello" to Wilcher, and he them. Most walk dogs, others push baby carriages.
Sally Jones, 91, was a nurse at Brooklyn State Hospital. Her father was a coal miner in Pennsylvania before coming to New York to build the subway system. Her granddaughter is a state corrections officer. A great-great grandmother, Jones has had her brownstone on Fenimore St. since the early 1960s. It's across the street from a church. She sits on the stoop block-watching every day.
"Everyone who left here when it became dangerous, now wants to come back," she says. "Now it's too expensive for them."
Jones' house is probably worth $1.2 million today. She paid less than $50,000 when she bought it.
* The Stores: The coffee shop K-Dog and Dunebuggy opened on Lincoln Road near the subway and the entrance to Prospect Park. It has pastries and cakes, free wireless, inside tables and an outside bench.
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The bulletin board by the entrance advertises local carpenters, baby-sitters, Italian lessons and guitar teachers. Three neighborhood mothers sat outside excited about a pregnant friend whose water had broke.
Next door at Enduro, a Mexican restaurant doubling as a local bar, the crowd gathered at 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday.
While those two shops comprise the neighborhood's hipster enclave, Caribbean retail and big stores dominate Flatbush Ave. Restaurants serving oxtail and beef patties saddle up next to sneaker stores, Carib-beat record shops and driving schools.
* The History: A portion of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens received landmark status from the city in 1979. Lefferts Manor, as the neighborhood historic district was once called, got its name from James Lefferts, a merchant who broke his farm up into more than 600 lots in 1893 to build houses for middle-class New Yorkers.
To keep the homes respectable, Lefferts used deed restrictions to ensure each lot contain single-family homes built of brick or stone and be higher than two stories. The result is a picturesque neighborhood of stately homes for people in the upper class. The same deed restriction still applies today.
Lefferts' original home is now a museum in Prospect Park. A home inside the historic district can cost $200,000 more than one outside, according to real-estate agent Narine.
* The Vitals: King's County Hospital is due east of the neighborhood in Crown Heights. Midwood High School and the Leon Goldstein School of Science, two of Brooklyn's best public high schools, are nearby; P.S. 92 on Parkside Ave., has 933 students. Test scores are average, but school critics applaud the school for being well-run and disciplined.
* Getting There: The B and Q stop at the Prospect Park station at Lincoln Road. The B train from W. Fourth St. took 21 minutes to the Prospect Park stop. The No. 2 and 5 trains are accessible at Sterling St. and Winthrop St. A trip to Wall St. on the No. 2 takes 30 minutes. Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Library are just west up Flatbush Ave.
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