Street of Dreams: Bay Ridge Place charms with cobblestones and century-old rowhouses

Eye on Real Estate

May 27, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Bay Ridge Place, with its cobblestones and fine rowhouses, is a living slice of Brooklyn's past. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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Ah, the cobblestones of Bay Ridge.

Say what?

Yes. Cobblestones.

There’s a terrific little street called Bay Ridge Place in this southwest Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s paved with Belgian block, like you’d expect to find in a historic district.

Bay Ridge Place is graced with a century-old row of bow-windowed houses and other charming homes plus tall trees creating a leafy canopy. It’s a scene fit to set preservationists’ hearts aflutter — if they’re fortunate enough to discover it.

Residents of the block-long street prize their cobblestones, and are protective of them.

“They’re historic,” one woman said proudly when we stopped by the other day to snap photos.

She recollected that several years ago, people on the block enlisted the help of Community Board 10 to convince the city Department of Transportation not to use asphalt to repair their street.

“The residents organized and came to us and said, ‘We do not want this,’” Josephine Beckmann, CB10’s district manager, told Eye on Real Estate.

When real estate-obsessed Brooklynites think about Bay Ridge, Belgian block paving and bow-fronted rowhouses are not things that first come to mind.

The famous Gingerbread House, that Arts and Crafts-style stone landmark on Narrows Avenue, is what they think about first. The hilltop homes on Shore Road deservedly get mucho attention. So do the old-fashioned mansions sprinkled along Ridge Boulevard and elsewhere in the neighborhood.

We’ve published photographs of these homes before. So we think now it’s time to show off some lesser-known yet thoroughly intriguing Bay Ridge properties.

These include handsome rows of classic brownstone and limestone houses on Ovington Avenue around the corner from Bay Ridge Place, the 6900 block of Ridge Boulevard and other spots to delight brownstone-fixated Brooklynites.

If you’re wondering what it costs to own a house on the cobblestone street we so admire, 23 Bay Ridge Place sold for $785,000 in mid-April. City Finance Department records identify the buyers as spouses Paul Hirsch and Allison Lewis. According to hotpads.com, the asking price had been $749,000.

The seller, Joseph Ritter, had paid $575,000 for it in 2010, Finance Department records indicate.

Also seen in Finance Department records: Last year, Andrew Seestedt and Megan Janke paid $800,000 for 24 Bay Ridge Place. The sellers, Emily and Jose Porro, had purchased it for $585,000 in 2009.

And in 2013, Alison Hirsh and Jonathan Green bought 22 Bay Ridge Place for $820,000. According to Brownstoner.com, the asking price had been $795,000.

The sellers, Michael and Janice Camfield Tate, had purchased the home for $665,000 in 2006.

Bay Ridge Place runs between Bay Ridge Avenue and Ovington Avenue. It is one of numerous single-block-long streets that can be found in the neighborhood — if you know where to look. See related story.

Another one-block Bay Ridge street, Shore Court, is also cobblestone-covered. This quaint cul-de-sac off 89th Street is a private street.

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2014/6/4/famed-gingerbread-house-could-be-made-hollywood-style-compound-celebrity-buyer

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2014/6/4/whats-right-price-gingerbread-house

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2014/6/11/cant-afford-gingerbread-house-other-big-bay-ridge-homes-are-available