Deborah Hallen first visited Brooklyn Heights as a member of an amateur chamber music group. A year later, she moved there. A year after that, following a performance on Staten Island, she met Paul O. Zelinsky, an illustrator of children’s books, who, it turned out, also lived in Brooklyn Heights, in his art studio.
“I fell in love at first sight,” said Ms. Hallen, 79, of the man she soon married.
That was back in the 1970s. She and Mr. Zelinsky, 70, are now grandparents, but they still live and work in this historic waterfront community, home to many artists and writers. “Back in the day, rents were affordable,” she said. “Everybody was everybody’s friend.”
Ms. Hallen took a job teaching science at P.S. 8, the local public school on Hicks Street, from which she is now retired. She is vice president of Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Branch Library, which raises money for programs at the handsome new library on Cadman Plaza West. In addition to many book events, the library hosts groups for knitting, chess and other pursuits. Ms. Hallen also sits on the Youth, Education and Cultural Affairs Committee of Community Board 2, an appointed position. Mr. Zelinsky, who won the Caldecott Medal in 1998 and has sold millions of copies of his most popular book, “Wheels on the Bus,” is part of a circle of illustrators who meet regularly in the neighborhood.
In 1998, the couple and their two daughters left their one-bedroom rental and moved into a two-bedroom, two-bath co-op apartment with views of the harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge, a wood-burning fireplace and a roof deck. They paid $320,000. “It’s worth over a million dollars now,” Ms. Hallen said. “We have no desire to leave. It’s beautiful and quiet here.”
She likes to walk on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which overlooks the harbor, and to walk over the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge, or take a subway into Manhattan. “It’s half an hour to a Broadway show,” she said.
Brooklyn Heights has long been known as “New York’s first suburb,” said Gerard Splendore, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Warburg, who has lived in three places in Brooklyn Heights. He remembers “sitting next to Norman Mailer in a Chinese restaurant” in the 1980s, when the writer lived and worked in the neighborhood.
“Brooklyn Heights has an amazing housing stock of postwar and prewar buildings and incredible townhouses,” Mr. Splendore said. And the recently renovated Brooklyn Bridge Park, he added, “is a huge addition to the area on the waterfront, with soccer, swimming, basketball, restaurants and kayaking.”
Among the residents in that area is Doc Dean, 38, a managing director in the corporate investment banking division at Citibank. He and his wife, Amie Dean, 44, a retired executive in the fashion industry, were among the first to move into the Quay condominium in 2020, paying about $3 million for a three-bedroom, three-bath apartment. The couple now have a 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.
“We wanted to be close to my work, and the neighborhood is awesome,” Mr. Dean said. His commute involves riding a ferry from Pier 6, steps from his apartment, for “a couple of minutes” to Lower Manhattan, then walking 15 to 20 minutes. His son plays soccer on Pier 5, and his daughter roller skates on Pier 2, attending P.S. 8 and taking after-school chess and art lessons there, too.
The couple are thrilled to be near a lot of great restaurants, he said: “Charlie Mitchell, the first Black Michelin-starred chef in New York City, has his restaurant, Clover Hill, right behind us. It’s awesome.”
Tom and Kate Gunton, both 33, have been renting on Hicks Street for five years, starting with a one-bedroom and then a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath apartment in the same building, where they now pay about $3,000 a month and live with their 5-month-old daughter and an 85-pound yellow lab.
When they met, Ms. Gunton, who works in health care, was living on the Lower East Side; Mr. Gunton, who works at Salesforce, a software company, had been living abroad. They considered staying on the Lower East Side, but wanted “a bit more space and more amenities,” Mr. Gunton said, like an elevator and laundry in the building. They also wanted to be near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which runs below the Promenade, because Ms. Gunton drives to work, and it provides easy access for visits to his family on Long Island and hers in Pennsylvania.
Ms. Gunton takes their daughter to the Promenade “at least once a day,” she said. “It’s like our backyard.” She is also part of an online neighborhood chat group for new mothers, who give each other tips and “exchange baby things.” Mr. Gunton plays soccer in an intramural league on Pier 5 and takes their dog to a…
Read More: Brooklyn Heights: A Historic Waterfront Community Minutes From Manhattan