The rap on Tribeca has always been that while the whole triangle is a cultural hotspot, it’s the southern part below North Moore where the celebrities and high-end Manhattan condos are. The northern part is grittier and more bohemian, and until recently, more dangerous. But just over the past few years Developers are converting the old, gritty looking buildings for which Northern Tribeca is infamous into luxury condos. And they’re doing it so extensively that prices in Northern Tribeca are higher now than they are down south. The Wall Street Journal found that the median price for a high-end condo in the north is $3.3 million, compared to $2.8 million in the south. So while northern Tribeca still has the look and feel of a Bohemian neighborhood, its residents are actually living in converted condos as nice as any luxury condo for sale in the Financial District or SoHo.

is a microcosm of this phenomenon. Built in 1906, this building was initially a factory, but developers have turned it into a residential site filled with 111 luxury condos that come complete with soaring ceilings and oversized windows. And inside the building, there’s a 61-foot indoor pool. The result is, as one developer put it, that building’s residents will get “a sense that they're roughing it by pioneering a new section of town,” without being subjected to the housing pains that made northern Tribeca such a gritty neighborhood a decade ago.

The transformation of northern Tribeca began in 2008, when developers converted a 19th century warehouse into a condo building called One York, and the units sold despite fears about the area’s crime rate. One York’s success story sent developers jumping to convert Tribeca pre-wars into condos of their own. In the three years that have followed, the development has scattered the crime. Now its residents describe it as quiet, and the fact that they’re living in old industrial buildings gives them the same feeling that made the place so attractive to artists in the past. That’s what we at New Construction Manhattan call the best of both worlds.