whats it like to live in yonkers, ny
Living in
Park Hill, Yonkers, N.Y.: A 'Secret Neighborhood' Overlooking the Bronx
Adult in the 19th century every bit a retreat for the wealthy, Park Hill is full of contrasts, with a mix of turreted mansions and minor postwar houses.
Park Loma, an upland section of the metropolis of Yonkers whose serpentine roads loop past Victorian gems, is only a few hundred feet from the Bronx, only it can elicit feelings of not being in New York anymore.
The state of Oz? Not quite — although at that place are yellowish bricks peeking out from beneath the cobblestone on Overcliff Street.
"Information technology'southward like stumbling upon some secret neighborhood," said Sandra Cardona, a vice president of a hotel company, who landed at that place in 2014 with her partner, Guillermo Garita, an architect.
Previously, the couple rented a loft in the financial district of Manhattan. But Ms. Cardona, who enjoys painting at dwelling, was feeling cramped in her alive-create state of affairs. Familiar with Yonkers from a brief stint in a rental more than a decade earlier, she thought it might have what she was looking for. And information technology did, in the course of a 1929 scarlet-brick business firm, with four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, hardwood floors and an unusual Georgian-meets-Tudor facade, that cost in the "low $700,000s," she said.
The house, which the couple shares with their rescue dog, Zaha (every bit in the late architect Zaha Hadid), has plenty of room to spare, allowing Ms. Cardona to commandeer a bedroom for that long-sought dedicated space for art.
The surrounding landscape, which crests at more than than 250 anxiety, can as well provide inspiration, as when ice storms go out a glistening sheen on the neighborhood's many mature trees. "You just want to grab a camera and photograph everything," Ms. Cardona said. "It'south actually magical."
If the views from above, which sweep across the Hudson River, are heavenly, the reality below tin be grittier. The blocks beyond Park Hill'south borders are some of the most impoverished in Yonkers, the state's fourth most populous city. The contrasts, between resplendent mansions and ragged multifamily homes, tin can be stark.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Karl Danticat, 43, knew of Yonkers's less-polished side from hip-hop artists similar DMX, who grew up in the "Y-O," equally he raps on "Yonkers Canticle."
Image
And then Mr. Danticat, a business director for a Manhattan public school, was leery most looking for a domicile at that place. "I thought it would be tough, only maybe even scary for children," said Mr. Danticat, who has a son and girl, and a wife, Mia, a instructor in Manhattan.
They were living in a ii-family rowhouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and were eager to movement. Afterward ownership the firm in 2011, the Danticats watched gentrification spread as developers swallowed up virtually every empty lot on their block. The increase in population that followed fueled tension, said Mr. Danticat, who grimly recalled a drawn-out battle with a neighbour over a parking spot. "Brooklyn simply got too small," he said.
Morris Park, in the Bronx, where they kickoff looked, seemed equally crowded. Merely Park Hill offered room to breathe and impressive catamenia homes, like the v-bedroom colonial with crown molding and shutter-lined windows that the Danticats bought for $573,000 in 2018.
Along the way, Mr. Danticat has become more forgiving of grit. "Information technology's the whole nature of city life," he said, to take slap-up blocks and not-then-neat blocks. "New York is like that, too."
What You'll Find
While online maps define Park Hill broadly, many locals — and the Park Colina Residents' Association, which represents some 600 residents in a neighborhood of about i,000 houses — utilize the narrower boundaries of South Broadway, McLean Avenue, the Saw Mill River Parkway and Spruce Street.
Paradigm
Single-family houses, many synthetic betwixt 1890 and 1930, are ascendant, and care seems to accept been taken to make each 1 stand autonomously, with Queen Anne, Mediterranean and Shingle styles alternate. Many structures are angled in distinctive ways toward the street.
Turrets are plentiful, many topped with flattened cones, as at 28 Lewis Parkway. And stone is a mutual flourish, as at 244 Park Hill Artery, where information technology surrounds many of the windows.
Over the years, buildings have burned downwardly and estates accept been carved up, allowing minor ranches and colonials to squeeze in, like those on prized Alta Avenue, helping give Park Colina a socioeconomic mix.
Attempts to create historic districts, which could protect older homes, have gone nowhere, said Mary Hoar, a past president of the Yonkers Historical Club, who lives in the four-bedroom Dutch colonial-style business firm in Park Hill that her parents bought in 1942 for $fifteen,000.
Some homeowners expressed business concern about replacing expensive slate roofs, Ms. Hoar said, adding, "The meetings were full of yelling and screaming and conveying on."
Just in an enclave that resembles a scaled-down Newport, many renovations seem respectful notwithstanding.
Epitome
What You'll Pay
Because many houses in Park Hill stay in families for generations, turnover is limited, and so is inventory. Backdrop listed on the market place earlier this month were fairly typical, brokers said: Twelve houses, from $475,000 to $800,000, were for sale, while x others, from $370,000 to $825,000, were in contract.
Divining trends from a small sample is difficult. Merely prices appear steady, even as those in other parts of Westchester Canton have softened. In 2019, 29 houses sold for an average of $540,000, said Jane McAfee, an associate broker with Houlihan Lawrence, while in 2018, 22 sold for an average of $576,000; in 2017, there were 35 sales, at an average of $534,000.
Also appealing, brokers pointed out, is that holding taxes can be a tertiary of those for comparable homes in places like neighboring Hastings-on-Hudson.
As for rentals, two-bedrooms at 153 Park Loma Avenue, a Tudor-way building that is amid the neighborhood's few large multifamily properties, run about $ane,800 a month.
Image
The Vibe
Apart from the eight.5-acre Leslie Sutherland Park, a cliff-side escape on the grounds of a former hotel, and the 10.3-acre Pelton Park, where in that location are sports fields, densely settled Park Hill is not awash in open up space. But a bridge over the Saw Manufacturing plant River Parkway connects to the 161-acre Tibbetts Brook Park nearby.
The Racquet Club on Park Hill, which dates to 1892, has tennis courts, a bowling alley and a bar. Recent events included trivia nights, yoga lessons and a screening of "Jaws" by the pool.
On the busy only basic retail strips of McLean and Broadway, restaurants are scattered, although Pizza Befouled serves wedges (or what Westchester calls hero sandwiches).
The Schools
Yonkers does not zone for schools, but lets students choose. Iii are in or almost Park Colina: Scholastic University for Academic Excellence, Schoolhouse 23 and School 13, which offer prekindergarten through eighth grade. On last year's state exams, all three performed below the country averages in English and math.
Image
Talented students frequently opt to attend PEARLS Hawthorne School, but due west in the neighborhood of Ludlow, for prekindergarten through eighth course. But access requires an exam.
Yonkers Middle Loftier School, in Park Hill, has nigh ane,800 students and offers an international baccalaureate program. The high schoolhouse'south graduation rate final twelvemonth was 92 percent, higher up the state'southward 83 percent charge per unit. On last yr'southward SATs, students averaged 535 in evidence-based reading and writing, and 530 in math, compared with 531 and 533 statewide.
The Commute
Most Park Hill residents who piece of work in Manhattan seem to bulldoze, taking the Saw Factory River Parkway, at the end of Rumsey Road, and arriving in Midtown in most 20 minutes on clear roads.
Metro-North'south Hudson Line stops near Park Colina, at Ludlow, which offers four trains betwixt six a.chiliad. and eight a.m. on weekdays, with 33- to 37-minute trips. Slightly farther away, in the downtown area, is the Yonkers cease, which has seven trains between 6 a.chiliad. and viii a.yard., with 28- to 39-minute trips. Monthly fares for both are $248.
Paradigm
The History
Despite being a sylvan height, Park Hill actually got its name from Robert Parkhill Getty, a New York executive who owned a 25-acre estate on Southward Broadway. In 1888, Getty sold the state to Andrew S. Brownell, a founder of the American Real Estate Company, which sought to create an A-lister getaway. Trains would behave visitors to a station on what is now known equally Undercliff Street. Passengers would then hop on a funicular railway that would whisk them upward. The funicular'southward ii station buildings have survived: One, a rock-and-stucco structure at 32 Undercliff, contains apartments; the other, at 83 Alta, is a child-care facility.
For weekly email updates on residential real manor news, sign upwards here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/realestate/park-hill-yonkers-ny-a-secret-neighborhood-overlooking-the-bronx.html
0 Response to "whats it like to live in yonkers, ny"
Post a Comment