Spencer Place Bed & Breakfast: A Taste of Un-Gentrified Brooklyn

Unless you’ve been a hermit for the past couple decades, you’re probably aware that the cost of living in Manhattan has risen to dizzying heights, sustained even during the down economy.  In fact, the average price for a modest apartment is now well over $2000 per month.  So where do all the working stiffs live…cubicle dwellers, police officers, teachers?  They’ve long since migrated out to the other boroughs and now the prices there are sky high!  New frontiers like Newark, Jersey City, and Yonkers await.  Gentrification is the catchword describing the effects of this continual exodus and many neighborhoods in Brooklyn haven’t escaped it.

Spencer Place Bed and Breakfast...the Quintessential Brooklyn Brownstone

But not so fast in Bedford-Stuyvesant.  Get off at the Franklin St. C line station, walk down Fulton Street a half block with Crown Fried Chicken & Pizza on your left and take a left onto Spencer Place.  To your right at # 15 is Spencer Place Bed & Breakfast, a meticulously renovated 1870s brownstone, offering three guest rooms sporting original historic detail.  10 foot high scrolled ceilings, ornate wooden floors, and generous pre-energy saving windows let the sunlight stream in.  Bathrooms are shared and owners Nancye Good and Paul DiMartino leave out an organic continental breakfast of coffee, juice, cereal, muffins, and fresh fruit. 

Here you don’t feel as though you’re a pampered guest as much a having your own Brooklyn flat.  The blocks around here are unvarnished and gritty.  But don’t worry, the culture is authentic and your wallet will thank you.  Cheap ethnic eats and funky local music joints abound including Bistro Lafayette, Sistas Place and Bush Baby Café.