The Ultimate Off-Campus Houses
From college towns to where the city is your campus, these Corcoran listings are worth a study.
by INHABIT EDITORS
There’s simply nowhere like a college town. Whether you enjoy well-stocked bookstores, art house cinemas, an emerging music scene, or deep-seated athletic rivalries, they’re places with something for everyone to enjoy regardless of their enrollment status.
To mark the start of back to school season, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite Corcoran listings near colleges and universities across the regions we serve, from more urban corners to the leafy communities of our Animal House-fueled popular imagination.
Founded in 1831, New York University built its permanent home on Washington Square six years later, and to offset the costs of that investment rented out unused spaces to the community at large. The floor plans of these leftovers weren’t the greatest as apartments, but they made perfect artist studios, which helped attract the creative energy that continues to define the neighborhood today.
This double-wide lies smack in the middle of the overlapping urban campus shared by NYU and Cooper Union. Located inside a c.1888 landmark building, the stunning three-bedroom co-op was devised with a studious eye, eschewing flash for simply impeccable design work. Open the American black walnut front door and be greeted by refined serenity, boasting custom bookshelves, radiant-heated primary bathroom floors, and views across Greenwich Village and NoHo.
Clinton Hill charts an atmosphere somewhere between a low-key urban village and an upstate college town. The latter all but tracks: Pratt Institute, the internationally-renowned art and design school, has called the lush neighborhood home since 1887. Founder Charles Pratt, a Rockefeller associate whose Greenpoint firm helped lead America’s transition from whale oil to petroleum, built his own manse nearby on Clinton Avenue, a standalone Romanesque Revival masterwork that still stands today.
Also under the sprouting trees of Clinton Avenue, you’ll also find this four-story townhouse—an overlap of the stately elegance and adaptable modernity that defines Brooklyn’s contemporary sensibilities. Natural warmth coats the entirety of this home, cascading through an immense skylight, down every step of a solid oak staircase, and filling up rooms to their 12-foot-high ceilings. There are three private outdoor areas, and you even get a parking space.
Arguably Poughkeepsie‘s most famous historic resident, brewery magnate Matthew Vassar founded Vassar College in this Hudson Valley city at the encouragement of his niece, and it opened in 1861 as one of the first women’s universities in the United States. That isn’t Vassar’s only legacy: Thanks to the craft brewing renaissance, the city remains very much a beer town, which naturally makes it an even better place to go to college.
This mid-century modern classic in Poughkeepsie’s Southside Historic District has three bedrooms and two bathrooms laid out on a single floor. With an entire wall of built-in bookshelves and a wood-burning fireplace in the living room, it’s an academic’s dream. The house is dotted with skylights throughout, and the updated kitchen was renovated to match the home’s mid-mod style. It’s a 15-minute bike ride or a 10-minute drive to Vassar, or an 8-minute drive to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park.
As the capital city of Ohio—and its geographic center—it’s only fitting that Columbus is also home to The Ohio State University.
In German Village, this c.1900 barn/carriage house has been transformed into the sweetest residence. The interior has been renovated into an open-plan kitchen/living/dining area on the first floor, and two dormer bedrooms on the second floor, each with an en suite bathroom. The overhaul pays homage to the structure’s historic character while adding modern conveniences, including smart lights and security. It’s a 10-minute drive or a half-hour bike ride to Ohio State’s campus, including the football stadium—O-H-I-O!
Residents often call Coral Gables “The City Beautiful,” a sentiment of allure and grandeur this home flawlessly fits into. One of the older neighborhoods in Miami-Dade, it boasts a handful of cultural attractions, like the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, and a swoon-worthy bunch of notable buildings, none more famous than the Schultze & Weaver-designed Miami Biltmore Hotel. It’s also home to the University of Miami—and that’s why we’re talking about it.
Completed in 2020, this modern stunner captures the timeless Floridian elegance of Coral Gables inside a gated community. Sunlight washes over the whole first floor via a fleet of windows and glass doors, effortlessly complimenting the neutral color palette from floor to coffered ceiling. The primary bedroom occupies an entire wing upstairs, complete with a spa bath, dressing room, and a private balcony. Take things outside where you’ll be among a marvelous greenscape, whether lounging poolside or utilizing the covered patio and outdoor kitchen to dine al fresco.
The Bay Area city of Berkeley is the birthplace of the free speech movement, Amoeba Music, and a 130-year-old college football rivalry. All of those things are owed—directly or indirectly—to the University of California at Berkeley, the founding campus of California’s public university system and the first land-grant university in the state. While subsequent UCs took the names of where they’re located, both Cal and its city were christened concurrently: Frederick Billings, a trustee of the then-private College of California, proposed naming the new campus and its municipality after philosopher George Berkeley, and the rest is history.
Set in the Berkeley Hills, this five-bedroom contemporary home was designed to highlight the location’s breathtaking panoramic views of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Pacific Ocean with oversized windows, glass doors, two expansive decks, and two balconies. In addition to the large living room and formal dining room, the house also boasts a rumpus room, a wine cellar, a wet bar, and a laundry room. The Cal campus, and Telegraph Avenue, is less than a 15-minute drive, or a 35-minute bike ride.
The Vanderbilts might famously be a New York family—their railroads didn’t even touch Tennessee—but it’s in Nashville that you’ll find the university bearing their name. The school’s founder hoped to establish an institution of higher learning to help reunite a divided nation still freshly-scarred by the Civil War, and it just so happened that his wife’s cousin was married to Cornelius Vanderbilt. He successfully fundraised a $1 million endowment from the Commodore, who himself was looking to start a college on his native Staten Island.
This gorgeous 1920s house in Music City U.S.A. has been renovated into a lovely live-work space. The primary residence has three bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, a living room with a fireplace, and a cozy den. There’s also an attached studio space with its own entrance, half-bath, and a mezzanine office space. The studio doubles as a movie theater, with a retractable screen and a loft-mounted projector. It’s just a 25-minute stroll, 10-minute bike ride, or four minute drive to the Vanderbilt University campus.
The University of Georgia was the first state-chartered university in the entire United States, so it’s hard to disassociate it from the city it’s called home since 1785. To put into perspective just how old UGA is, the university’s founding president, Abraham Baldwin, represented Georgia at the Constitutional Convention, and was one of the state’s two signatories on the Constitution itself.
This century-old house is believed to have once been the neighborhood grocery store. It has an unusual layout that can be split into two distinct living spaces, each with its own kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms. In a college town known for its creative endeavors and fabulous impromptu parties, the house’s front room (which probably served in its former incarnation as the store space) can be used as a living room, an art studio, a place for band practice, or an open area for entertaining. The UGA campus is just a half hour walk away, 12 minutes by bike, or a zippy 3 minutes by car. This is a quiet block that’s still very close to downtown.