The Definitive Guide to
Clinton Hill Office Lofts.

Most neighborhoods make you work out what a building is made of before you know what you are looking at. Clinton Hill is simpler, and stranger: the question is which side of Myrtle Avenue you are standing on.

South of Myrtle is the neighborhood everyone pictures. The mansions on Clinton Avenue, the rowhouse blocks, Pratt Institute, and a historic district the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated in 1981. It is one of the most intact nineteenth-century residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and it has almost no commercial loft space at all.

North of Myrtle is Wallabout — what the city once called the Navy Yard District, and for decades one of Brooklyn's busiest industrial areas. Brick loft buildings from roughly 1890 to 1940, put up to serve the Navy Yard and the factories around it. That is where the floors are.

Two blocks apart, and effectively two different searches. Almost every wasted afternoon in this neighborhood comes from not knowing that.

The hill was rural until the 1840s, then filled with suburban villas on the high ground above Wallabout Bay. In 1874 the oil man Charles Pratt built a mansion at 232 Clinton Avenue, then houses for his sons nearby, and encouraged his Standard Oil colleagues to follow. Within a decade Clinton Avenue was one of the wealthiest streets in the city.

In 1887 Pratt founded an institute on Ryerson Street to teach the technical trades at low cost. It is still here, still the anchor, and it is a large part of why the tenancy in this neighborhood leans toward design and making rather than finance.

Meanwhile, downhill and north of Myrtle, an entirely different place was taking shape. The blocks toward the water filled with factories supplying the Navy Yard — Rockwood and Company made chocolate there — built in Romanesque Revival brick with bluestone and terra cotta detail. Those are the buildings a tenant tours today.

The two halves stayed separate through everything that followed. The Navy Yard ran around the clock through the Second World War and the co-operative apartments went up for war workers. Robert Moses cleared five blocks south of Pratt in 1954. The brownstones came back through the 1970s. And the two districts were recognised nearly thirty years apart, by two entirely different authorities — which is the single most useful thing to understand before you tour anything here.

Clinton Hill has two historic districts, and they are not the same kind of thing. Tenants conflate them constantly, in both directions.

The residential district, south of Myrtle, was designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1981. That is a city designation with teeth: exterior alterations go through review before a building permit can issue. Windows, storefronts, signage and rooftop equipment are all in scope. Interior work is unaffected.

The Wallabout Industrial Historic District, north of Myrtle, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. That is a federal listing, and for a privately owned building it is largely honorific — it does not restrict what an owner does to the building.

So the practical position is close to the opposite of what people assume. Tenants in the industrial blocks frequently expect landmark friction that is not there, and occasionally a tenant looking at something on the residential side gets a surprise they should have seen coming. Ask which district a specific building sits in, and ask which kind of designation it carries. Those are two different questions.

The Wallabout blocks. Waverly, Hall and Ryerson, and the upper stretches of Clinton, Washington, Park and Grand. Brick industrial buildings, three to six storeys, small to mid-size floors, genuine character, and freight that varies enormously from building to building. Tenancy is design studios, recording and audio, art fabrication, small production companies and architecture practices — a great deal of it connected to Pratt one way or another.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard. Not Clinton Hill strictly speaking, but functionally the neighborhood's industrial back yard and impossible to discuss honestly without it. A managed campus with real power, real loading, protected industrial land and professional management. It is where anything genuinely loud or heavy belongs, and it is close enough that plenty of people keep a studio in Wallabout and their noisy operation a few minutes north.

The Myrtle and Fulton corridors. Small commercial floors above ground-floor retail. Offices, practices, services and one-room studios. The cheapest way into the neighborhood and the smallest space in it — and almost none of it is listed anywhere.

“Which side of Myrtle Avenue should I be looking on?” North, almost always. South of Myrtle is the landmarked residential neighborhood — mansions, rowhouses and Pratt Institute — with very little commercial space and tight constraints on what is there. North of Myrtle is Wallabout, the old Navy Yard District, and that is where the brick loft buildings are. It is the rare neighborhood where the first question is which street you are on rather than what the building is made of.

“What do the two historic districts actually mean for me?” They are different in kind, not just in location. The residential district south of Myrtle is city-designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, so exterior work goes through review before a permit issues. The Wallabout industrial district north of Myrtle is a National Register listing, which is federal and does not restrict what a private owner does to the building. Tenants routinely assume friction in Wallabout that isn't there. Ask which district and which kind.

“Can I do studio work or light production?” Photo, audio, design and light fabrication, generally yes — the Wallabout stock was built for it and much of it still has the freight and the floor loads. Anything genuinely loud, heavy or requiring venting runs into the fact that homes begin two streets south. The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a walk away, purpose-built for that, and the honest answer for that tenant.

“What's the catch with Clinton Hill space?” There isn't much of it. The commercial stock is essentially one strip of blocks, so if you need a large contiguous floor or a real choice of buildings, East Williamsburg and Sunset Park will serve you better. And because homes start two streets away, hours, noise and loading are all more constrained than they would be three miles east. What you get in exchange is character space in a genuinely pleasant neighborhood at rents well below the waterfront.