Carroll Gardens: Best of the old and new

If you want to live in Carroll Gardens, you'd better hurry. This Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood is filling up fast.

Broker David Taylor reports that "Listings in Carroll Gardens don't stay on the market long. With great new cafes, restaurants and a beautiful park, it's a big draw. People come to walk around on a weekend and I get a call on Monday asking me to find them an apartment there."

What's so special about Carroll Gardens?

Jen Schwartz, who moved there two years ago from Manhattan, thinks it's the feeling you get of being in a "protected little gem outside the big city limits," while Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6, thinks it's "the refreshing honesty, the 'no-hidden-agenda' aspect of the public discourse in the neighborhood."

Chris DiChiaro, who owns a maternity and kids clothing store, is convinced it's the "good reputation of the nearby public schools."

The neighborhood has its own two-block historic district between President and Carroll, Smith and Hoyt streets.

These blocks are lined with much-coveted Neo-Grec and Italianate townhouses built in the 1860s and 1880s with distinctive 30-foot front gardens.

Carroll Gardens is a neighborhood steeped in history with a network of outspoken community groups who value its past and vigilantly oversee its present.

A walk down Court or Smith streets tells the story: a shoemaker's shop with a dusty window display of umbrellas stuffed into an old wooden lard container sitting next to Seersucker, an uber-trendy cafe serving a sandwich of house-made pimento cheese with country ham on multigrain bread.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the neighborhood was populated mainly by the families of Italian immigrants (and some Irish) who came to New York to work as longshoremen on the nearby waterfront. Many of these families still remain.

"Back when these families first arrived, neighbor to neighbor communication was mostly over the backyard clothes lines," explains Hammerman.

"From there it went stoop to stoop and now it's in the neighborhood cafes."

***

-- 158 W. 9th St., three-unit row-house with a duplex for the owner, garden, $1,300,000.

-- 333 Carroll St., not yet completed condos coming on the market later this year in a converted copper warehouse. One-, two- and three-bedroom loft spaces with roof deck. Plan is to sell at about $800 per square foot.

-- 321 Smith St., floor through three-bedroom with two fireplaces, 12-foot ceilings, $2,950.

-- 114 Fourth Pl., $1,050,000 for a two bedroom with terrace, glass walled and open-concept design, 1096 square feet, $5,975.

Looking for a home in Carroll Gardens? DSA Realty, dsarealty.com and Brownstone Real Estate, brownstonelistings.com

The possible closure of Long Island College Hospital: Just about anyone born in Carroll Gardens was born at LICH, in Cobble Hill. The hospital employs up to 2,000 people and is the base for medical care for much of Brownstone Brooklyn. Besides loss of medical services, residents worry about the economic impact of a closure and the future of the vacated properties.

***
Q and A with Joan D'Amico
Joanie D'Amico married into the D'Amico family 20 years ago and now helps run D'Amico's Foods, a business founded by her husband Frank's grandfather Emanuel in 1948. The store is a microcosm of the world of Carroll Gardens--an old business with a modern twist. Although the deli in the front and the cafe tables in the back of the store have a mid-century look, the on-line mail order and wholesale coffee business that Joanie runs out of the back of the space is up to date and thriving.