{"id":862059,"date":"2026-06-12T11:14:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862059\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T11:14:30","slug":"this-weeks-best-nyc-rentals-a-brownstone-with-a-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862059\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week\u2019s Best NYC Rentals: A Brownstone With a Pool!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n 312 East 53rd Street
\n Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Vandenberg\/The Townhouse Experts\n <\/p>\n

Listen, it\u2019s not as though getting an apartment in New York has ever been easy. But one could probably argue it has never been harder than it is right now. The most god-awful studios are regularly renting for thousands and thousands of dollars with lines of interested tenants out the door. Here, we\u2019ll find the actually worth-looking-ats, the actually worth-the-costs, and the surprisingly affordable-for-those-parquet-floors from around the internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Woke up beaming this morning \u2014 what a historic, historic time<\/a> to be alive in New York. In less-pleasing news, rents have climbed so high that people are opting to live with nuns<\/a> for half the market rate. This week, I traveled far and wide \u2014 from Fort Greene to Carnegie Hill to Harlem \u2014 in search of an affordable apartment that doesn\u2019t suck, so that you don\u2019t have to join a convent. My favorite neighborhood this week has to be Central Harlem. It\u2019s hardly cheap these days, but your dollar still seems to stretch further there.<\/p>\n

$6,100, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Okay, this week we\u2019re gonna start with the worst (from a pricing perspective) and decrease the pain register slowly as we go. Hurts that this gorgeous and squat brownstone apartment has the best bone structure I\u2019ve seen in a while.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 246 Cumberland Street
\n Photo: Compass\n <\/p>\n

$4,500, studio:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Funky layout on this one \u2014 I assume they\u2019re labelling it a studio because the basement bedroom has no windows and therefore doesn\u2019t count as a bedroom? You\u2019d have the benefit of sleeping really well down there at least.<\/p>\n

$13,800, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Classic-ish six with a south-facing living room and wood-burning fireplace.<\/p>\n

$11,000, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Sorry to report that this is a bargain for the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 1235 Park Avenue
\n Photo: Douglas Elliman\n <\/p>\n

$8,500, 4-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Entire brownstone with a swimming pool in the backyard. I REPEAT: entire brownstone with a\u00a0 swimming pool in the backyard.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 184 Midwood Street
\n Photo: Location Location Location\n <\/p>\n

$3,295, 2-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Gorgeous prewar with good parquet and a recently remodeled bathroom.<\/p>\n

$3,375, studio:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>A picture-perfect location (I mean, would you look at the view of that charming church??), plus picture-perfect floor-to-ceiling windows.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 20 Sidney Place
\n Photo: Courtesy of the owner\n <\/p>\n

$2,525, studio:<\/strong><\/a> An almost sinister level of optimization at play here \u2014 have never seen such an intriguing accordion-kitchen setup in my life! Murphy bed that doubles as a couch, too.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 118 West 132nd Street
\n Photo: Sovereign Realty NYC\n <\/p>\n

$2,950, 1-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Digging the wood inlay on the mantle and the deep-set windows, but a little less excited about all the exposed brick.<\/p>\n

$3,000, 1-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Almost offensively bad pictures for an apartment with potential! Laundry on-site \u2026<\/p>\n

$9,000, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Have listed this idyllic but stylistically confused triplex before. The antique trunk, 19th-century treadle sewing machine, and the wood-burning stove are all making me feel a little too much like a time-traveling tradwife. (\u201cPioneer Street\u201d not helping.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 120 Pioneer Street
\n Photo: Rove Travel LLC\n <\/p>\n

$6,000, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>Special and beautiful prewar that seems overpriced for how few updates there are. Cheap windows, sadly, too.<\/p>\n

$3,300, 2-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> A stunning junior four in a stunning, bucolic complex! First time I\u2019ve heard that jargon used in a long time (shows how far I live from the suburbs in my head).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 8701 Shore Road
\n Photo: Klevi Tomcini, LREB\n <\/p>\n

$6,250, 3-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Adorable semi-detached house with a two-car garage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 7617 6th Avenue
\n Photo: Corcoran\n <\/p>\n

$2,200, 1-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> Prewar with potential and a black standing dresser that needs to self-immolate asap.<\/p>\n

$4,500, 2-bedroom:<\/strong><\/a> It starts (and ends) with the windows.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 184 8th Street
\n Photo: Corcoran\n <\/p>\n

Okay this isn\u2019t convent-cheap, but it might be the closest you\u2019ll get to feeling like you\u2019re in the countryside without leaving midtown. Built in 1866, this little cottage at 312 East 53rd Street<\/a> has all the charming details \u2014 clapboard fa\u00e7ade, mansard roof, extra-wide floorboards. It\u2019s historically cool too: Lincoln Kirstein lived there before he co-founded the New York City Ballet, and next door the writer Edmund Wilson once put up T.S. Eliot for the night. It\u2019s not yet on any of the real-estate sites, so act fast.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n 312 East 53rd Street
\n Photo: Vandenberg\/The Townhouse Experts\n <\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have $4 million, you might want to head to Kensington, my recent-favorite neighborhood filled with a stunning number of beautifully maintained prewar apartments. Like this one<\/a>, a sturdy one-bedroom coming in at around $500,000, with generous proportions \u2014 nine-foot-high ceilings, a proper kitchen that doesn\u2019t feel like an afterthought, and a bedroom that could fit a few beds (if that\u2019s for some reason of interest to you?). Nicely maintained building with low maintenance. Win-win!<\/p>\n

Which one\u2019s for you?<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Listings Edit<\/p>\n

A weekly roundup of Curbed\u2019s coverage for real-estate obsessives.<\/p>\n

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Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"312 East 53rd Street Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Vandenberg\/The Townhouse Experts Listen, it\u2019s not as though getting an apartment…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":862060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,295319,325386,287555,317095,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,55654,10560,2432,41008,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-862059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-brooklyn-apartments","tag-listings-edit","tag-manhattan-apartments","tag-moving-month","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-on-the-market","tag-rentals","tag-sales","tag-the-real-estate","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116736850584398497","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}