A Greenpoint Condo With a Private Outdoor Pool

Photo: Interiors by Kat

Very rarely are New York City pools attached to a single one-story apartment. So rarely, in fact, that Jacob Henderson, who has been selling homes in Brooklyn for ten years, had never seen such a combination until he got the listing for the ground-floor apartment at 78 Freeman Street.

The two-bedroom condo on the first floor of a new build went up in 2019 on a quiet street in Greenpoint. It doesn’t feel especially fancy — it’s a two-bedroom with a living area–slash–kitchen that looks out on a private yard. But then there’s the yard: a green lawn framed by hydrangeas, lilies, and hostas that droop over a ten-by-20-foot in-ground swimming pool.

Corcoran agent Jacob Henderson had never seen a pool for a two-bedroom condo in his decade selling homes in Brooklyn. The pool is serviced by Mill Bergen Pools, which also built it, and maintenance runs between $2,000 to $3,000 annually. Photo: Interiors by Kat

“It was not something I was looking for,” said Karl Frankenfield, a film producer who was hoping for a condo in 2019 that would be convenient for the studios he worked at: Silvercup, over the bridge, and Broadway Stages across McGuinness Boulevard. He wasn’t sure why there was a pool attached to the apartment in the first place. (He guessed the developers had thought of it as an “interesting sales point.”) But he relished the space. He has two dogs who love to swim and a green thumb (he planted the flowers). Then there was his timing: He moved in just before the pandemic as other New Yorkers were fleeing to vacation homes.

“We don’t have to worry about traveling ever for weekend vacations because we have a vacation spot in our own yard,” Frankenfield said. But now he and his wife have a baby on the way, and they are trading up for more space. He said he’ll miss the Freeman Street apartment, though: “It was really like having our own quiet oasis space.”