Victorian Flatbush is the western section of the Flatbush section 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, bordering

Midwood Midwood is a neighborhood in the south-central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded on the north by the Bay Ridge Branch tracks just above Avenue I and by the Brooklyn College campus of the City University of New York, a ...

, that is characterized by

Victorian house In Great Britain and former British colonies, a Victorian house generally means any house built during the reign of Queen Victoria. During the Industrial Revolution, successive housing booms resulted in the building of many millions of Victorian ...

s. The neighborhoods of Victorian Flatbush were developed in the early twentieth century from farmland in the former village of Flatbush, in response to the construction of the

Brooklyn Rapid Transit The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) was a public transit holding company formed in 1896 to acquire and consolidate railway lines in Brooklyn and Queens, New York City, United States. It was a prominent corporation and industry leader using ...

line to Coney Island, and were some of the earliest suburbs.Evan Lerner
"Peaked Roofs, Crossed Fingers"
The City, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', March 16, 2008. Developers including Dean Alvord, Lewis Pounds and particularly Thomas Benton Ackerson sold the new developments as country living, under the name "The Village in the City". Utilities and the subway were buried underground, and the area was carefully laid out with tree-lined avenues, including the

Flatbush Malls The Flatbush Malls are a pair of tree-lined Landscape design, landscaped median strip, medians series along several roads in the Victorian Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. An architecture critic has written that the malls "give t ...

, and country clubs. The detached houses, many of them large and no two alike, were designed in fashionable styles including "Victorian, Queen Anne, shingle style, colonial revival, neo-Tudor, Spanish Mission and Georgian",Claire Wilson
"If You're Thinking of Living In / Ditmas Park and Ditmas Park West; Spirited Enclaves With Grand Homes"
Real Estate, ''The New York Times'', November 2, 2003. with porches and columns, and in many cases bay windows, turrets, and stained glass, and the area resembles other parts of the US more than it does the rest of New York. It is one of the largest collections of Victorian houses in the country. There has been rezoning to guard against oversize buildings near

Coney Island Avenue Coney Island Avenue is a road in the New York City borough of Brooklyn that runs north-south for a distance of roughly five miles, almost parallel to Ocean Parkway and Ocean Avenue. It begins at Brighton Beach Avenue in Coney Island and goes nort ...

.Jake Mooney
"Moved for the Space; Stayed for the Food", Living In , Ditmas Park, Brooklyn
Real Estate, ''The New York Times'', November 13, 2009. Victorian Flatbush is in the western part of Flatbush, bounded approximately by

Prospect Park (Brooklyn) Prospect Park is an urban park in Brooklyn, New York City. The park is situated between the neighborhoods of Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, and Windsor Terrace, and is adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum, Gr ...

or Church Avenue in the north and Avenue H in the south, and by

Flatbush Avenue Flatbush Avenue is a major avenue in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the R ...

in the east and

in the west.Victorian Flatbush House Tour

Flatbush Development Corporation Flatbush may refer to: * Flatbush, Brooklyn Flatbush is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood consists of several subsections in central Brooklyn and is generally bounded by Prospect Park to the north, East ...

, retrieved January 17, 2013. It includes a dozen neighborhoods or enclaves: * Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces, designated a New York City historic district in July 1978"Brooklyn—Landmarks," Historic Districts Council, retrieved January 17, 2013. * The Beverley Squares, Beverley Square East and Beverley Square West, major focuses of Ackerson's building * Caton Park, sometimes called NoProPaSo (North of

Prospect Park South Prospect Park South is a small neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York City, located south of Prospect Park. It is included within the Prospect Park South Historic District, which was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation ...

) * Ditmas Park, Ditmas Park Historic District designated a historic district in July 1981 * Ditmas Park West * Fiske Terrace, designated a historic district in March 2008 with Midwood Park * Midwood Park, designated a historic district in March 2008 with Fiske Terrace * Newkirk *

, designated a historic district in 1979 * South Midwood, bordering the Brooklyn College campus to the north * West Midwood, with a large number of houses designed by Ackerson The earliest development in Victorian Flatbush was the Tennis Court development, planned by Richard Ficken in the 1880s. These homes no longer exist, was they were bought and razed to build apartment buildings in the 1920s. The only remnants left of it are the eponymous street, and the

Knickerbocker Field Club Knickerbocker Field Club is a historic tennis association located in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, New York. It was founded in 1889, and continues to operate to this day. Its historic tennis clubhouse was built in 1892 and was the sole surviving ...

. Many parts of Victorian Flatbush, particularly those centered on Cortelyou Road—Ditmas Park West and the Beverley Squares—are now usually thought of as part of Ditmas Park. It has also been identified with Midwood. The Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church on 19th Street in the Ditmas Park Historic District, at which

Conrad Tillard Conrad Bennette Tillard (born September 15, 1964) is an American Baptist minister, radio host, activist, politician, and author. Tillard was in his early years a prominent minister of the black nationalist organization the Nation of Islam (NOI) ...

is since 2018 the Senior Minister, is often used for community meetings. Victorian Flatbush now includes five New York City historic districts, and residents of the sections that have not yet been designated city historic districts are working with the

and the Historic Districts Council to win designation."Six to Celebrate 2012," Historic Districts Council, retrieved January 17, 2013.

References

External links

Victorian Flatbush
history site {{Coord, 40.640449, -73.960801, display=title Flatbush, Brooklyn Neighborhoods in Brooklyn Victorian architecture in New York City

References

Further reading

External links