The Cicada Apocalypse!: or 5 Ways Brooklyn Has Changed In the Last 17 Years
Uh, so. Brooklyn real estate has gone crazy in the last 17 years. But you already knew that, didn’t you? I mean, here on www.bkmag.com, we’ve written extensively about how insane Brooklyn real estate has been in the last few months. But what was interesting to me was looking at articles that showed how, even though things have definitely changed, the same much-talked about neighborhoods of 2013 were also being talked about in 1996. For example, Red Hook. Red Hook has been perpetually on the list of hot new places, but in 1996, the Times published an extensive piece about all the great things that were happening there. And this was years and years before Fairway or IKEA. The Times really WAS on it back then.
In an article from August, 1996, titled “Blossoms from Rust in Red Hook,” the Times talks to several people who were making their homes in the area, which the Times calls, “a little ghost town, now on the verge of being rediscovered.” It sounds quite idyllic back then, what with the neighborhood possessing “the kind of down-at-the-heels beauty, rich with the layers of a declining civilization, that gentrification would not abide.” And what about Red Hook prices back then? Well, the Times spoke with a couple who “bought a 19th-century, four-story brick building — a former haberdashery — on Van Brunt Street for $2,500, under a city program for artists.” Today, I found a listing for a townhouse on Van Brunt St for $1,400,000. So.