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Safety of Prospect Heights Area - Page 2 — Brooklynian

Safety of Prospect Heights Area

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  • carnivore
    carnivore
    It's interesting, because the historical documents are pretty unclear. The neighborhood clearly existed as far back as 1919, as evidenced by this marker in Prospect Park:
    image

    However, the 1939 WPA guide to New York City (still in many ways the definitive guide) made no reference to the neighborhood at all.

    Sadly, I don't own this book, but I previously went to the library and looked it up and posted this:
    Carnivore wrote: In the WPA guide to New York City, originally published in 1939, there is no mention of a neighborhood called "Prospect Heights". The area is included in the map of "Middle Brooklyn" which includes Park Slope. The neighborhood of Crown Heights is listed in the section "East Brooklyn", which defines Nostrand Avenue as its eastern border in the text (although on the map, the legend for "Crown Heights" clearly spills over this border to near Bedford Avenue). Interestingly, on the maps in this book, Stuyvesant Heights occupies pretty much the entire area now considered Bed-Stuy, while Bedford is kind of where we now call Clinton Hill. The area of Prospect Heights has no legend at all on the map, although the library, the museum and the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial are all listed in the "Middle Brooklyn" section which includes Park Slope.
  • moominpapa
    moominpapa
    sillybilly wrote: What's interesting here is that the few blocks I am trying to identify (the area bounded by Atlantic, Eastern Parkway, Washington and Franklin) is left out of the definitions of both neighborhoods.
    Makes sense, actually. The character of Crown Heights really shows as you go past Franklin going East (brownstones, tree-shaded streets, very lovely in a lot of places), and I definitely start to get a sense of Prospect Heights when I get West of Washington up in my neck of the woods (North of Park Place). The area I actually live in seems like a sort of no-man's-land, claimed by neither area and left to fall into disrepair.

    It's a very marginal (in many senses of the word) part of Brooklyn, and of course people struggle most with definition of the margins. I'm sure even the "historical documents" will only give us more mystery than clarity, but it's an interesting discussion, nonetheless.
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