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REAL
ESTATE DESK
If You're Thinking of Living In/Woodlawn; A Bronx Enclave With a
Suburban Feel
By CLAIRE WILSON
Published: February 16, 2003, Sunday
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ARTICLE TOOLS
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WHEN Josefa Losada moved into a Bronx apartment with her
husband, Manuel, and their children, the residence was meant to be only
temporary. They wanted to buy a house in the borough and were willing to
wait for something with four bedrooms at a price they could afford.
Riverdale beckoned, but nothing clicked.
After looking at almost 80 houses over two or three disappointing years
of searching, the couple found a spacious, 2,200-square-foot center-hall
colonial in Woodlawn, just at the Yonkers border, for $438,000. With four
bedrooms, three baths, a den and what Mrs. Losada calls a ''divine''
kitchen finished with granite countertops, there is room for six children
and visiting family. Further, she added, the Bronx neighborhood of Woodlawn
is an unexpected pleasure.
''It's a highly family-oriented community, where the people really know
each other,'' said Mrs. Losada, who is originally from Ecuador and whose
husband, a translator at the United Nations, is from Spain. ''You don't
even feel like you're in New York.''
Bordered by Van Cortlandt Park on the west, Woodlawn Cemetery on the
south, the Bronx River Parkway and the tracks of the Metro-North Railroad
on the east and the Westchester County line on the north, Woodlawn is a
leafy little enclave of neat numbered streets lined with one- and
two-family homes at its heart, with rental apartments, co-ops and condos on
the fringes, often with lovely park or cemetery views.
A majority of the houses are brick or wood-frame colonials and date to
the early part of the 20th century. Most parcels are small, some measuring
only 30 by 100 feet, and few houses have driveways or garages.
Woodlawn feels somewhat isolated, surrounded as it is by open land on
which nothing can ever be built. There is little land left to develop
within the community and some charming older homes have been knocked down
to make way for new attached houses.
Residents love the convenience to Manhattan, which is accessible either
by Metro-North trains, the subway or Liberty Lines express buses, which
cost $3.
''It's more like Westchester than the Bronx,'' said Quin Ciufetelli,
owner of Quin C. Realty, whose offices are on McLean Avenue, a Yonkers
commercial street that serves Woodlawn. ''You have suburban living with the
convenience of the city.''
The 28-minute train ride to Manhattan is a short commute, but it is the
overwhelmingly family-oriented small-town atmosphere and high rate of
community involvement that residents cite as its most appealing quality.
Attendance is high at New Horizons, an organization for seniors, and the
Moms and Tots play group. Woodlawn residents staff local schools like P.S.
19 and St. Barnabas, and a community sports program, Wood-Lean, keeps
children from age 4 to the first year of high school busy at softball,
basketball and track.
''It's a friendly place where everybody looks out for everybody else,''
said Eileen Duhig, a longtime Woodlawn resident, who is cafeteria manager
at St. Barnabas High School. ''When people come to visit us from Ireland,
they can't believe we know our neighbors better than they know theirs.''
Visitors from Ireland are hardly a rarity in Woodlawn, where the
population is increasingly from a mix of ethnic groups but a majority is
Irish-American or recent immigrants from Ireland, like Mrs. Duhig, who is
from County Laoighis. Her husband, Greg, a carpenter, is from Limerick.
Irish businesses dot McLean Avenue, where you can get Guinness stout on
tap at Rory Dolan's, a popular Irish pub. On Sunday mornings, after a crowded
Mass at St. Barnabas, many head to Eileen's Country Kitchen. On Katonah
Avenue, which cuts north-south through Woodlawn, the Prime Cuts butcher
sells Irish specialties, like a sausage called black and white pudding, as
does Sean's deli.
Many residents work in the building trades or as nurses at Montefiore
Medical Center or Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center across the Bronx River
Parkway. There are also teachers, school principals, accountants and people
who work in finance.
Once settled in Woodlawn, families are inclined to stay. The turnover of
houses is slow, and properties often change hands within families or
through friends of friends without officially going on the market. Lots of
real estate deals are said to be struck on the basketball court at St.
Barnabas or the playing fields of Van Cortlandt Park.
THE dearth of available houses and surfeit of demand have pushed prices
up. The average price of a single-family detached house is about $350,000,
according to Lazer Cukaj, owner of C. Lazer Real Estate. A two-family
detached house he sold five years ago for $290,000 is probably worth
$525,000 today, he said.
''Whoever bought two or three years ago can now get 30 percent more if
they sell,'' said Mr. Cukaj, whose son, Albert, recently bought an all-brick
semiattached two-family with parking in Woodlawn for $340,000. ''It was a
really good investment, '' his father observed.
Indeed, bargains in Woodlawn are a thing of the past, according to Mr.
Ciufetelli, a 30-year veteran of the local real estate scene. ''That
$90,000 fixer-upper that you could put $40,000 into then sell for $200,000,
well, that just doesn't happen any more,'' he said.
Prices on co-ops have increased sharply in the past five years, in some
cases doubling, Mr. Ciufetelli said. A two-bedroom unit he sold for $70,000
in 1997 recently sold again for $150,000. One-bedroom co-ops average about
$100,000 but can go higher, depending on amenities and modernization.
A constant stream of young immigrants from Ireland has kept the rental
market brisk, according to Bernadette McAuliffe, sales agent with Mario J.
Rossi & Sons of Yonkers. Having three or four young people sharing a
$1,600 monthly rent in a three-bedroom apartment makes it affordable for
each of them and allows landlords to raise rents aggressively, she
explained. ''It's artificially inflated by singles,'' she noted.
Apartments are available in two-family houses or apartment buildings
constructed in the 1940's to the 1970's. Some three-bedroom units are as
much as $1,700 a month, while two-bedroom apartments average about $1,200
to $1,400. One-bedroom apartments might go for $800 to $1,100.
Taxes in Woodlawn are reasonable, even at a quirky row of houses on the
north side of 242nd Street whose owners pay taxes in two municipalities
because their front yards are in the Bronx and their back yards are in
Westchester County. Woodlawn taxes average about $1,550 per year, with
Mayor Bloomberg's recent increases, and are much less than similar houses
on identical looking streets in Yonkers, right on the other side of McLean
Avenue. ''Woodlawn taxes are 60 percent lower than what people pay in
Yonkers,'' Mr. Cukaj said.
The elementary schools in the area -- Public School 19 and St. Barnabas
Roman Catholic school -- win praise from parents. Some 52 percent of P.S.
19 students read at or above grade level and 48.1 percent perform at or
above grade levels in math. According to the principal, Michael Schurek,
there are 36 adult volunteers called Learning Leaders who come to the
school to help out in classrooms.
''The school is really what keeps me here,'' said Christina Pedone,
co-president of the P.S. 19 Parent-Teachers Association. ''It's first
rate.''
The area high schools for Woodlawn residents are DeWitt Clinton on West
Mosholu Parkway or Evander Childs on East Gun Hill Road. Evander Childs,
which has 3,000 students, offers seven advanced placement courses. Its
students' average score on the verbal portion of the SAT reasoning tests
was 375 and the math was 383.
At DeWitt Clinton, with 3,900 students, there are 12 advanced placement
classes. Its students averaged 431 on the verbal portion of the SAT and 434
on the math.
The prestigious Bronx High School of Science, where admission is by
highly competitive exam, is a short bus ride away on 205th Street. The
school's average on the verbal test was 625 and on math, 666.
St. Barnabas Church's grade school on East 241st Street, offering
prekindergarten through eighth grade, is co-ed and it charges a tuition of
about $1,900 per child. The school building is host to a wide complement of
after-school activities for children.
Girls who graduate from the school usually move on to the four-year St.
Barnabas Girls High School on 240th Street, where almost all graduating
seniors go on to college. According to the principal, Joseph Mercora, the
student-to-teacher ratio is 15 to 1 at the school, where tuition is $4,800.
Among the options for those who want to continue in Catholic schools are
Fordham Prep, a brief Metro-North commute from Woodlawn; Mount St.
Michael's Academy on Murdoch Avenue; and Archbishop Stepinac High School in
White Plains.
The development of Woodlawn, sometimes known as Woodlawn Heights, began
with the construction of the Harlem Railroad in 1832, according to Lloyd
Ultan, the Bronx borough historian. The area remained primarily farmland
until the 400-acre Woodlawn Cemetery was created in 1863. Its establishment
spawned an influx of workers, monument vendors, stonecutters and florists
and development of hotels, restaurants and bars to serve the grieving who
came from Manhattan to bury their dead.
Around 1890, according to a guide produced by the Woodlawn Heights
Taxpayer and Community Association, the area's population rose further as
laborers, mostly Irish, arrived to work on the second aqueduct across Van
Cortlandt Park from the Croton reservoir.
With its own library branch, fire station, churches, schools and, in Van
Cortlandt Park, recreational facilities, Woodlawn is a self-sufficient
community. Residents shop on Katonah Avenue or McLean Avenue, where there
is a C-Town supermarket that delivers. For those venturing out of the
neighborhood, there is a larger supermarket 10 minutes away by car in
Westchester, and the Cross County Shopping Center has department stores and
movie theaters.
Serving as a backyard of sorts for the entire community, the 1,122-acre
Van Cortlandt Park is a dense green refuge alive with activity year-round.
The Van Cortlandt Golf Course, one of two in the park, was the nation's
first municipal golf course. There are fields for boccie, baseball, cricket
and tennis and paths for cycling. The park also has a bird sanctuary,
nature walkways, a bridle path and cross-country courses used for many
important meets.
Published: 02 - 16 - 2003 , Late Edition - Final , Section 11 , Column 2
, Page 5
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