Agent starts new Bronx web site

 
Vivian Ducat has combined her passions for real estate and media production by creating a Web site dedicated to the South Bronx and its residents. The site, TheBronxIsBeautiful.com, contains a collection of photographs and short essays about Bronx residents along with historical facts about different cooperatives and cultural attractions in the area.

“I wanted to try a little experiment where if you photograph [the South Bronx] in an artsy way, and write about it with the same snottiness as the [New York] Times — whether or not people would come,” said Ducat, who launched the site on Tuesday. She took out a loan to cover the cost of developing the site.

Ducat, who is a real estate agent at Upper West Side-based Ariela Heilman Real Estate and creates Web sites and digital films for museums with her production company, DucatMedia, said that she wanted to bring the “aesthetics of the museum world” to real estate. “I’m always struck by how tacky real estate developers’ Web sites are,” she said.  

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Ducat lives in Washington Heights and has an investment apartment in the South Bronx, a borough she has come to love. TheBronxIsBeautiful.com calls the Bronx “a new cosmopolitan place to live.”

The project is just beginning, Ducat said. In the coming months, new people will be profiled, more co-ops will be added to the map, and new photographs of architectural highlights will be posted.