The Flatbush Malls are a pair of tree-lined

landscaped Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

medians The Medes ( Old Persian: ; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran. Around the 11th century BC, th ...

series along several roads in the

Victorian Flatbush Victorian Flatbush is the western section of the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York, bordering Midwood, that is characterized by Victorian houses. The neighborhoods of Victorian Flatbush were developed in the early twentieth century from fa ...

neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. An architecture critic has written that the malls "give the streets an uncommon spaciousness, if not grandeur". The first series was built in the northern part of the neighborhood along Albemarle Road, and extending one block north on Buckingham Road, in the Prospect Park South development of 1899, east of Coney Island Avenue and west of the BMT Brighton Line. This was modeled by the Scottish landscape architect John Aiken on

Commonwealth Avenue Mall Commonwealth Avenue (colloquially referred to as Comm Ave by locals) is a major street in the cities of Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. It begins at the western edge of the Boston Public Garden, and continues west through the neighborhoods o ...

in Boston, with a design that originally included shrubbery but not trees, and in turn likely inspired the other neighborhood series. The second series, also known as the Midwood Malls, was built in the southern part of the neighborhood along both Glenwood Road, east of Coney Island Avenue and west of Delamere Place, as well as the intersecting East 17th Street, north of the Long Island Railroad cut of the Bay Ridge Branch and south of Foster Avenue, in the

Fiske Terrace Fiske Terrace is a planned community and neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Fiske Terrace is located in south central Brooklyn in the southern edge of the community of Flatbush and north of the community of Midwood. It is bounde ...

-Midwood Park developments of 1905. Part of the malls extending to Flatbush Avenue on Glenwood Road were removed starting in 1932. Both series of malls feature cul-de-sacs on the Brighton Line, with the Glenwood Road series extending to both sides and also having one on the Long Island Railroad cut.

All-way stop An all-way stop – also known as a four-way stop (or three-way stop etc. as appropriate) – is a traffic management system which requires vehicles on all the approaches to a road intersection to stop at the intersection before proceeding throu ...

s are installed on the Glenwood Road series, and another was added to the Albemarle Road series due to traffic safety concerns. There has also been concern about the watering of the malls. Both series of malls are owned by the New York City Department of Transportation but maintained by the

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...

as part of the Greenstreets partnership.

References

{{Coord, 40, 38, 47.2, N, 73, 58, 3.9, W, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title Flatbush, Brooklyn Parks in Brooklyn Streets in Brooklyn Traffic malls in New York City

See also

References