Let’s skip back three days.
It was Labor Day and your Westchester friends had invited you to a cookout. Your tots ran gleefully around their backyard. Your hosts showed off their fourth bedroom, the basement, attic, garage and power tools. They told you how good the schools were and how safe they felt. At one point they ran out of ketchup, and as you volunteered to hike two miles to the nearest store and walked past all the manicured lawns and picket fences, a thought occurred to you:
“I could live here — too bad that ship has sailed.”
New Yorkers might think they have to make a choice between the suburbs and the city, but we’re here to tell you it’s a false choice.
There are plenty of neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs where the houses are enormous, the garages are attached, the corner stores are scarce and the schooling is rigorous.
In honor of the fleeting days of summer, here are three of our favorite suburbs in the city.
Victorian Flatbush, Brooklyn
Deep in the heart of Brooklyn — well beyond the cool hangouts of Williamsburg, the historic townhouses of Brooklyn Heights and the endless strollers of Park Slope — is a neighborhood that has big houses and big yards to go with them.
We’re talking about Victorian Flatbush.
Many people have heard of this neighborhood, just south of Prospect Park, but they might not know it’s home to some of the city’s prettiest, roomiest Victorians (and some seriously nice Colonials), with expansive porches, on streets with wide lawns and towering trees that wouldn’t look out of place in Scarsdale.
Specifically, we’re talking about the areas of Flatbush like Ditmas Park, Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces, Beverly Square, Fiske Terrace and South and West Midwood. (Midwood and East Midwood are their own separate neighborhoods.)
In Ditmas Park, the real estate has shot up wildly in the last few years. “Now homes are going from $1.5 to $2 million,” says Alexandra Reddish of Mary Kay Gallagher Real Estate. With only 175 houses or so in this historic district, any available house is pounced upon. Reddish recently went to contract on a two-family house on East 16th Street just two weeks after it was put on the market — just under its asking price of $1.55 million. She also just closed on a $2 million Center Colonial on Westminister Road, consisting of six bedrooms and 3 1/2 bathrooms on a huge, 8,000-square-foot lot.
Houses get more affordable when you cross Ocean Avenue and step into South Midwood, because you’re a little farther from the Q train. But, according to Reddish, “You can still get very affordable homes for under $1 million in that area . . . It’s all tree-lined streets and beautiful homes.” Reddish currently has a 1915 six-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom house on East 24th Street priced at $980,000. She notes, “If I moved that house across Ocean Avenue, it would probably be in the $1.4 million range.”
Forest Hills Gardens, Queens
New Yorkers who are obsessed with landscape architecture will likely perk up when they hear about a neighborhood that was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park and Prospect Park.
Forest Hills Gardens — the nation’s first planned community, established just over 100 years ago by the Russell Sage Foundation — was indeed designed by Frederick Law Olmsted . . .Jr.
Still, that doesn’t make this 142-acre enclave made to look like an English village — with its leafy streets and period lampposts and array of Tudor and Georgian architecture — any less charming.
And it’s pretty hot, real-estate-wise. “Our sales are up 20 percent this year,” says Susanna Hof of Terrace Sotheby’s Realty. “Every time when prices weakened, prices in the Gardens held strong.”
Prices start at around $899,000 for a modest two-story, three-bedroom, fully attached townhouse and go up into the $4 million range for something truly sprawling. (Hof has a contract out for a seven-bedroom, 5 1/2-bathroom mansion clocking in at 5,800 square feet that she’s selling for just under $4.5 million, which will be a record.)
“This year as of this date we have 32 houses that are either in contract or sold — that’s probably double the normal amount,” says Hof.
And while suburban denizens need to have a car to get to the grocery store or the mall, Forest Hills Gardens residents have that covered. Just a few blocks from the landscaped gardens of their micro-neighborhood is Austin Street, Forest Hills’ main commercial drag, which resembles a quaint outdoor mall: Gap, Barnes & Noble and Victoria’s Secret are all here. (If you really want to feel suburban, stop by the West Side Tennis Club and play some doubles.)
Fieldston, The Bronx
Fieldston is perhaps the prettiest neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood in The Bronx. The 257 houses of Fieldston, which takes up about a fifth of a mile, were landmarked, and with good reason. Fieldston houses are a mix of Colonials, Tudors, Mediterranean-style and Medieval-revival style set on their own parcels of hilly, wooded land.
“It’s one of New York’s hidden gems from a residential perspective,” says Brad Trebach of Trebach Realty. “Fieldston starts at about $1.5 million and goes up to $3.5 million, as a general matter. If they’re priced right, they find a buyer in a matter of weeks.”
Of course, once one falls in love with Fieldston, it is difficult to ever conceive of anything else. “Fieldston houses tend to move generationally,” says Trebach.
But Fieldston also has that other big suburban lure: some of the very best schools in the city.
Of course, we can’t say that these are public schools — you’ll have to pay a pretty penny. But the list is impressive: Riverdale Country School, Horace Mann, Fieldston (which, ironically enough, is not in Fieldston, but just outside the boundary, in Riverdale).