Park Slope Memories: Brownstones for $20,000

This week's New York Magazine takes a look back those wacky days of 1968 and lands in "the neighborhood known as Park Slope." There is nothing we can add to this, so we'll just quote a few highlights:

So what’s a penny-pinching Manhattanite to do? It’s time to consider—and don’t laugh just yet—Brooklyn. Specifically, the neighborhood known as Park Slope, the four-block-wide strip along Prospect Park that runs east-west from Flatbush Avenue to about 9th Street. Admittedly, it has none of the jolt of Manhattan living, and it’s way short on shops and places to eat. (Seventh Avenue, the area’s commercial strip, is as sleepy as any suburb after dark.) Once blue-collar and mostly Irish, the area has a mix of poorer residents now, and crime is a worry, especially below Sixth Avenue. In some pockets, vacant lots have been abandoned. Rumor has it that banks are redlining the area.

But here’s the payoff: If you do manage to get a mortgage loan, an entire brownstone full of Victorian details costs as much as a half-floor loft in the Village—about $20,000. There are enough original houses, in fact, that activists are saying Park Slope should become a landmark district like Brooklyn Heights.

Redlining? $20,000? Shoot us now.