If you are a creative type, Manhattan lover with 1.5M to spend to move outside of the city, where would it be?
I saw the latest nytimes article about renting outside of NY mentioning Scarsdale, Yonkers and Rowayton CT.
Are these good spots? Any other places worth mentioning?
The neighborhoods and housing stock I've seen in NJ has been dull and charmless.
Looking for a real atmosphere I guess.
Btw. optimally not more than 50-60 minutes away.

Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Hobken, Fort Lee and Long Island City.

What about outside of NYC?

Port Washington...live with all the other Manhattanites who got kicked out of the city via a second kid or a two income family with a spouse who threw in the towel.
Hoboken/Jersey City...at least you could see the city from your new place.
Fort Lee/Edgewater for the same reason.

Have you looked at Sleepy Hollow?

Piermont NY

Nothing compares to Manhattan....hence the label. Once you're out you are a suburbanite, or if you live in Queens, Brooklyn, S.I., or the Bronx you can still say city person. Why I chose to keep trying to stay in Manhattan for how long who knows!

Start with route maps for Metro North, New Jersey Transit, and the LIRR. Mark the stations beyond which the rail-time commute is more than your limit.

Google-map the towns, starting with the furthest out. That can tell you a lot, e.g. the walkability of prettily-treed neighborhoods to downtown and the station.

Once you've identified some prospects, start googling the towns. They'll turn up on city-data.com, etc., and help you weed things out. Then you can dig further and weigh prices/taxes/schools, etc.

Westfield is pretty good, of those I've wandered around in.

Montclair,NJ is pretty cool, arts,restaurant's and train in town. don't laugh, but I have heard it described as the Upper West Side of New Jersey.like someone else said nothing compares to Manhattan. Nyack is pretty cool as well.

Many people who leave Manhattan find they like the Hudson valley.

^ You took the words right outta my mouth, Riversider.

you could move to woodstock and hang with the X-Man.stoner hippies. It's kinda nice and artistic, not to mention naturally beautiful. For 1.5M you would live well and you're just a 2 hour stones throw from the Island.

Montclair, N.J. is a great choice

A good number of ex-Yorkville residents relocated to Swastika, New York.

Woodside has a internatioal flavor
Interesting way to put it.

Take a look at South Norwalk (SoNo). Though it can be gritty, that seems the most "Manhattan-y" to me. Also consider the arts-y towns that Keith mentioned and maybe throw in Dobbs Ferry (which likes to call itself "Berkeley on the Hudson") and Cold Spring.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Your first step is to accept it will not be Manhattan. Then, it becomes a very individual choice based on commute/friends/family/kids or not.

If you work in Manhattan and have a short commute, you will have the best of two worlds. You will love coming in every morning and leaving every afternoon. If you drive, it might actually be the most relaxing time of the day...

Thanks everyone, exactly the kind of input I was hoping for.

I did see that no one mentioned anything in Connecticut.
Nothing there with a good vibe?

Stepford.

All residents vibrate in unison.

There are suburbs that have a towny feeling where you can pretty much walk to everything- train, grocery shopping, etc and there are those where you need to get in your car and drive 15 minutes for anything. Do you want to be on the water? By the beach? Acres of property?

For CT beside Greenwich/Cos Cob I think Westport is very nice. Long Island - Five Towns (walk to everything), Cold Spring Harbor (near nice beaches and has a town of Huntington with lots of shops), Roslyn (has a quaint old village built around a pond/park), Brookville or Old Westbury (lots of property)

SoNo is in Connecticut.

Yes, I didn't realize that until now.

I guess the important thing for me would be easy access to the city with Train, a good size house (preferably with some kind of history), property size wouldn't be super important but a plus.
Most importantly, I want to feel like I have something in common with the other people in the area.
It feels like a lot of these suburban places attract the same demographic, which happens to not be mine.
Whereas in Manhattan I find it easier to find people I am on the same wave length with. So I'm trying to figure out where these people go when they for some reason leave NYC.

What exactly is YOUR "demographic"?

Maybe start asking around in your circle & then start heading out to different places for the weekend. Even just an overnight can be a nice getaway & give you a feel for a place.

i bought around the corner from Westfield, NJ downtown. doing a gut now. found people from bklyn and queens surround me. takes 50 min on bus or train, both stop in the same location. had less headaches/delays when i stayed there for a month traveling to manhattan than b train from brooklyn.

Too bad you can't consider locations farther away. In that case I would suggest Santa Fe, & Portland and Seattle.

I think New Yorkers probably go off in many directions, but I would echo that Montclair NJ might best describe what you have in mind in terms of urban mentality, a train to NY and houses with historical interest.

Also, I would check out Croton-on-Hudson in Northern Westchester county. Lots of people in the arts, a 40 minute rush hour commute and some interesting housing stock.