If You're Thinking of Living In/Fort Greene; Diversity, Culture and Brownstones, Too (original) (raw)
Real Estate|If You're Thinking of Living In/Fort Greene; Diversity, Culture and Brownstones, Too
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- Sept. 1, 2002
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September 1, 2002
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Section 11, Page
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SPIKE LEE has relocated to the Upper East Side and Spike's Joint, his boutique at the corner of South Elliot Place and Lafayette Avenue, is history, but the filmmaker's lens still frames the image of Fort Greene, the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. When he began his career with the 1986 comedy ''She's Gotta Have It,'' he drew upon the world he knew best: the artsy, well-educated, African-American middle class that has thrived in Fort Greene since the mid-19th century.
''I thought the entire neighborhood would look like it came right out of a Spike Lee film,'' said Joanna Gonzales, a 29-year-old television producer from Los Angeles, who recently studied Fort Greene in a graduate journalism seminar at Columbia.
She imagined an affluent black neighborhood where everyone lived in brownstones. Instead, she discovered racial and economic diversity and a ''prevailing sense of racial amity'' that intrigues sociologists and attracts middle-class residents from other parts of the city.
''People move to and remain in Fort Greene because they want to live in a tolerant, relaxed neighborhood, not a homogeneous one that resists strangers,'' Jan Rosenberg, a Long Island University sociology professor, concluded in a 1998 report on policy development for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Fort Greene, named after Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary War general who was in charge of building a fort there, has had its ups and downs, but these days it is a hot real estate market. The neighborhood's diversity, proximity to Manhattan, fine 19th-century town houses, relative affordability and cultural life draw young professionals, black and white, who are more likely to work on Wall Street or in law firms than recite poetry at coffeehouses.
Added into the mix are the French, who have opened bistros, food shops and sidewalk cafes and also come as tourists, guidebooks in hand, after reading items about Fort Greene in the Parisian press. ''It's this season's hottest neighborhood in Paris,'' said the Rev. David Dyson, minister of the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, who heard about the publicity blitz through one of his French parishioners.
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