Writer Richard Grayson sent this "So You’re Thinking of Living in Park Slope" from the New York Times in 1987.

May 17, 1987

JAN HODENFIELD remembers six years ago when a town house in Park
Slope could be bought for less than $200,000 and Seventh Avenue was
mostly bodegas, cobblers and neighborhood bars. Today, brownstones cost
$750,000 and a Benetton clothing store opened on the avenue in October.

”When a Benetton opened on Seventh Avenue, we knew what had
happened,” said Mr. Hodenfield, a freelance magazine writer. ”When I
came to Brooklyn 12 years ago, it was certainly not chic. This is a really hot neighborhood now.”

Park Slope, once a place where middle-class urban pioneers could
find bargains on rowhouses, has become popular and, consequently,
expensive. Its exquisite Victorian town houses, shaded by Norwegian
maples and ginkgos, have in recent years lured droves of New Yorkers
seeking refuge from Manhattan’s frenetic pace, cramped apartments and
soaring rents. They have also helped win it a historic district
designation as a ”vivid illustration of the characterization of Brooklyn as a ‘city of homes and churches.’ ”

The influx has transformed what was largely a working-class
neighborhood into an upper-middle-class enclave of expensively
renovated private homes, co-ops, boutiques and restaurants.

Residents prize the Slope for its proximity to Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Mu-seum, the Brooklyn
Public Library and the Botanic Garden as well as for its hybrid
atmosphere of small-town intimacy and big-city sophistication that the
writer Russell Banks, who lives there, once called ”a sense of
domestic refuge.”

On a recent Sunday, its tranquil streets, bathed in the lambent
green of budding trees, were full of parents with children strolling
calmly toward the park. The sky stretched languidly above, free of the
towers that corral it in Manhattan.

”The place lives,” said Jacqui Miranda, who edits a local
newsletter and has lived in the Slope more than 16 years. ”We can see
the sky here and trees.”

”It’s not quite as oppressive as Manhattan,”
said Rachel Klein, a writer who bought a brownstone in the north end of
the neighborhood in 1980. ”It’s greener, more casual, like a little
town in a way. Everyone knows each other.” The area takes its name
from its geography, lying on the long slope west of Prospect Park above
Fourth Avenue, bounded by Flatbush Avenue to the north and the Prospect
Expressway to the south.

Real-estate agents say the supply of houses has been exhausted and
prices are climbing steadily by more than 20 percent a year. Today,
three-story brownstones range in price from $250,000 in fringe areas
near Fourth Avenue up to $900,000 for properties on Eighth Avenue and
Prospect Park West, the boulevard that runs north and south along the
park. Brownstones near the middle of the Slope average $750,000.
Condominiums and cooperatives are similarly expensive but more
available. One-bedroom apartments run from $90,000 to $180,000;
two-bedroom units range between $120,000 and $200,000; three-bedrooms
cost $300,000 or more. There is still a substantial amount of rental
property available, agents said, ranging from $850 a month for studio
apartments to $1,800 for a duplex.

The escalating values have priced many out of the town-house market.
”For a lot of people, the dream of owning a house is becoming nothing
more than a dream,” said George Cambas, a real-estate agent who has
lived and worked in Park Slope since 1973. ”They are forced to settle
for an apartment.”

The neighborhood’s main commercial artery, Seventh Avenue, is also
showing signs of changes wrought by rising rents. Boutiques and trendy
restaurants have proliferated at a rapid rate along the street, which
for years was a strip of laundries, newsstands, pharmacies, bodegas,
bakeries, hardware stores and a sprinkling of Irish bars. Some of the
notable local eating establishments are Raintree’s, a French restaurant
at 142 Prospect Park West; J.T. McFeely’s, a steak house at 847 Union
Street, and Thai Taste at Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street.

Older businesses are moving to make room for more upscale
establishments. The six cobblers who used to ply their trade on the
avenue have all closed, while a D’Agostino’s supermarket, a hallmark of
affluent neighborhoods, plans a branch at Sixth Street and Seventh
Avenue.

Kevin Mooney, who has run Mooney’s Pub at 99 Seventh Avenue since
1969, said he has been unable to renew his lease, and the unglamorous,
low-key bar will soon move to Flatbush Avenue.

”They don’t want bars on Seventh Avenue anymore,” Mr. Mooney said.
”It was very, very sad, but we have to cope with the times.”

MOST of the new renovations and developments under way are in the
southern section of the Slope, once a working-class neighborhood with
several light industries. Developers have pushed past Ninth Street, the
previous mental boundary of the fashionable Park Slope, and begun
converting old factories and abandoned apartment buildings into co-ops.

The huge Ansonia
Clock Factory at 12th Steet and Seventh Avenue was converted in 1982,
spawning dozens of other projects. Today, more than 10 conversions are
under way or close to completion between 9th and 15th Streets and
Seventh Avenue and Prospect Park West.

Park Slope is ideal for rearing children because of the nearby
park’s ballfields, bicycle trails and zoo, but parents give the public
schools mixed reviews. The local grade school, P.S. 321, is considered
excellent with 84.7 percent of the students scoring at or above their
grade level on tests. But the junior high school, I.S. 88., fared worse
in the most-recent reading tests, with only 56.3 percent of the
students scoring at or above their expected level.

The neighborhood’s high school, John Jay, has been plagued in the
past by disciplinary problems and high dropout rates, but school
officials say it has made a remarkable turnaround in the last three
years. Since 1984, the dropout rate has declined to 9.6 percent, from
24 percent, and the school has started a new program to improve the
academic curriculum for college-bound teen-agers, according to Harold
Genkin, the principal.

The Berkeley
Carroll Street School, which has 540 students in classes from preschool
to 12th grade, is the only private school in Park Slope. Tuitions range
from $5,400 for preschool children to $7,400 for high school seniors.
The neighborhood also boasts several dance studios and the highly
regarded Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, which gives many recitals each year.

One drawback to living in Park Slope, residents said, is the rush-hour commute by subway to Manhattan, since trains are often crowded and delayed because of construction on the Manhattan Bridge.

Park Slope was virtually empty countryside in the 1850’s when Edwin
C. Litchfield, a lawyer and railroad executive, began developing
industry along the Gowanus Canal. After the Civil War, he sold off his
holdings near what is now Prospect Park, and developers built ornate
brownstones as summer homes for Manhattan’s wealthy.

During the first half of the century, the slope was a topographical
social ladder, with the working-class occupying modest rowhouses at the
bottom of the hill near Fourth Avenue and the rich living near the
park. It deteriorated during World War II when speculators bought up
private homes and turned them into rooming houses for workers at the Brooklyn
Navy Yard. In the 1950’s, the remnants of the upper-middle class
migrated to the suburbs and many buildings were left abandoned. Urban
”pioneers” moved in during the 60’s, buying dilapidated brownstones
for as little as $15,000, and they began the renewal that still is in
progress today. GAZETTEER Population: 65,202 (1980 census) Median
family income: $15,974 (1980 census) Rush-hour commutation: 30 minutes
to midtown via the D, M, Q or B trains from Seventh Ave. at Flatbush
Ave., 2 or 3 trains from Grand Army Plaza, or the F train from Seventh
Ave. and Ninth St. 20 minutes by car via Flatbush Ave. to the Manhattan
Bridge or the Gowanus Expressway to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Median
town-house price: $750,000 Median co-op price: $195,000 Median rent:
$1,200. Public-school reading scores: P.S. 321 is 85th out of 613 New York City
grade schools. Councilmen: Abraham G. Gerges (D.-L.), Stephen DiBrienza
(D.). Historic building: The Montauk Club at Eighth Ave. and Lincoln
Pl., a men’s club built in 1891 in the style of a Venetian Gothic
palazzo. Its name is reflected in its varied Indian motifs