|
Spacious rooms, ecologically forward-thinking, post-war apartment. Location: Cloister Park.
Cloister Park? Is that in Brooklyn? New Jersey? Pennsylvania?
Nope. It’s in Manhattan. At the crux of Washington Heights and Inwood, to be exact.
The apartment building at 37 Nagle Avenue was recently advertised by Stein-Perry Real Estate as resting in the ‘Cloister Park’ neighborhood.
According to Matthew Bizzarro of Stein-Perry Real Estate, ‘Cloister Park’ sits at the foot of the Cloisters, stretching north from the intersection of Bennett Avenue and Broadway, west of Bogardus Place and south of Dyckman Street.
“The popularity of the neighborhood has exploded in the last five years,” said Bizzarro. “We wanted to put a name to it that sticks out and fits with the neighborhood.”
Bizzarro says units in ‘Cloister Park’ have experienced a 500- to 600-percent increase in real estate prices over the past five years. Nonetheless, first time homebuyers will still pay $50,000 to $100,000 less for an apartment there than they would for a similar home up the hill on Fort Washington Avenue.
A Stein-Perry one-bedroom apartment at 14 Bogardus Place a block off Nagle Avenue has an asking price of $299,000. The apartment comes completely renovated and is environmentally-friendly. The renovations were done with recycled materials, and are toxic-free.
Bizzarro said a lot of people come to look at this particular building because it is green and forward-thinking.
Indeed, the courtyard behind 37 Nagle Avenue suggests a connection in vegetation and greenery with the nearby Fort Tryon Park, where the Cloisters sits high above the neighborhood below.
Bizzarro said that the need for a name arose because the area is neither part of Hudson Heights nor part of Inwood. Bizzarro defined Hudson Heights as stretching from Fort Washington Park to Fort Tryon Park, or from 175th Street to Bennett Avenue and Broadway. Inwood, as Bizzarro defines it, runs from Dyckman to W. 218th Streets.
The boundaries and definitions of neighborhoods have been fluid over the years, and often the boundaries and names are not entirely agreed upon by everyone.
Some say Inwood extends from Nagle and Broadway to W. 218th Street.
Some call the neighborhood surrounding Dyckman Street, ‘Dyckman City.’ Some lump all of Inwood and Washington Heights together, calling it simply the Heights.
“During the late 80s and early 90s, Washington Heights was being associated with every single crime north of 96th Street,” said Gus Perry, Stein-Perry Real Estate’s principal broker. Community groups started calling the area from W. 175th to W. 190th Streets Fort Washington. It has now been dubbed Hudson Heights by some.
It is uncertain where the name Hudson Heights came from – which group or individual first came up with it. It may have first spread with the founding of the Hudson Heights Owner’s Coalition. According to Perry, this was the point that brokers began using the name.
“Part of it is to be trendy and for the mystique of it, part of it is to be able to identify and section different areas,” said Bizzarro. “It’s important for areas that are up and coming to have a name and identification.”
Bizzarro said that the area is still extremely undiscovered, and that there are still many hidden gems in the neighborhood.
The building’s board has most recently polished the gem of 37 Nagle Avenue by replacing the windows. The newer, energy-saving bay windows have reduced yearly heating and oil bills by 40 percent. In addition, all air conditioners installed are energy efficient.
Be it Cloister Park, Inwood or Washington Heights, the building’s board plans to continue to make decisions with the environment in mind, including the possibility of adding a green roof in the future, according to Bizzarro.
“You don’t always have a lot of choice in social responsibility in buying,” said Bizzarro.
|
