Park Slope, Brooklyn
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Park Slope is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, roughly bounded by Fourth Avenue, Prospect Park West (Ninth Avenue), Flatbush Avenue, and Fifteenth Street. It takes its name from being founded on the western slope of neighboring Prospect Park. Park Slope is considered a cultural center of Brooklyn with its many historic buildings, hip restaurants, bars, and retail stores, as well as close access to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and the Brooklyn Museum. The main streets of commerce are Seventh Avenue and Fifth Avenue.
The neighborhood is served by many routes of the New York City Subway: The IND Culver Line at Seventh Ave (F train) and Fourth Ave (F & G trains); The IRT Eastern Parkway Line at Grand Army Plaza (2 & 3 trains); The BMT Fourth Avenue Line at Ninth Street and Union Street (M & R trains).
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History
Early history
The property that today comprises the neighborhood of Park Slope was first inhabited by the Canarsee Indians. The Dutch colonized the area by the 1600s and farmed the region for more than 200 years. During the American Revolutionary War on August 27, 1776, the Park Slope area served as the backdrop for the beginning of the Battle of Long Island, also called the Battle of Brooklyn, the first pitched battle between the British and the Continental Army under the command of George Washington. In this battle, over 10,000 British Redcoats and Hessians routed outnumbered American forces at Battle Pass. What appeared as a major defeat for the colonials was actually the first of many of Washington's tactical retreats. The historical site is now preserved in Prospect Park.
19th century development
In 1814 ferry service from the nearby Brooklyn Terminal linked the Park Slope and South Brooklyn region to Manhattan, a thriving business center at the time.
In the 1850s, a local lawyer and railroad developer named Edwin Clarke Litchfield (1815-1885) purchased large tracts of what was then farmland. Through the American Civil War era, he sold off much of his land to residential developers. During the 1860s, the City of Brooklyn purchased his estate and adjoining property to create the famous 526 acre (2 km˛) park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.
Park Slope’s bucolic period ended soon after. By the late 1870s, with horse-drawn rail carts running to the park bringing many rich New Yorkers in the process, the neighborhood dramatically changed. Many of the large Victorian mansions on Prospect Park West, known as the Gold Coast, were built in the 1880s and 1890s to take advantage of the beautiful park views. Today, many of these buildings are preserved within the 24-block Park Slope Historic District, one of New York's largest landmarked neighborhoods. By 1883, with the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope continued to boom and subsequent brick and brownstone structures pushed the neighborhood's borders farther. In the Southern Slope, by the Gowanus Canal for example, there was a flourishing Italian and Irish community. These immigrants built many modest rowhouses along the waterfront where they worked.
In 1892, President Grover Cleveland presided over the unveiling of The Soldiers and Saliors Arch at Grand Army Plaza, a notable Park Slope landmark.
Blight and gentrification
Through the 1950s, Park Slope saw its decline as a result of suburban sprawl and bearish local industries. But while many of the wealthy and middle-class families were fleeing for the suburban life, "urban pioneers", especially lesbians in the case of Park Slope, faced blight and rising urban crime rates in order to occupy much of South Brooklyn's historic buildings. By the 1960s, an official revitalization movement was in full swing to preserve the neighborhood's historic row houses, stately brownstones, and Queen Anne, Renaissance Revival, and Romanesque mansions. With the historic Park Slope district (around Seventh Ave) seeing a rebirth, so was the popularity to live in the general area.
In the late 1970s, the area around Fifth Avenue in Park Slope was suffering from widespread abandonment and blight, with more than 200 vacant buildings and 150 vacant lots within one mile. As a result of the neighborhood's close proximity to Prospect Park, and the many well-built apartment houses and brownstones, this region also became ripe for gentrification. Through the 1980s, there also was a significant influx of immigrant families into the neighborhood, who occupied many of the one and two-bedroom apartments available.
By the 1990s, partly as a result of inflated Manhattan rents along with the inflated dot-com economy, people who might otherwise have lived in Manhattan began moving to Park Slope in large numbers. The influx was mainly families and young professionals: hipsters tended to move to Williamsburg, while yuppies tended to move to Park Slope and Greenpoint.
During the second major boom for the neighborhood, Park Slope evolved into a racially and economically mixed neighborhood, a place where stock brokers live alongside poor and middle-class working families. But, this phenomenon is far from natural and is the result of much planning and activism by local community organizations, like the Fifth Avenue Committee, that fought to maintain much of the neighborhood's diversity. A 2001 report by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board found that from 1990 to 1999, rents in New York City jumped anywhere from 37 percent to 48 percent, depending on what kind of building the apartment was in. [1] (http://www.fordfound.org/publications/ff_report/view_ff_report_detail.cfm?report_index=394) The explosion of property values inspired real estate agents to be increasingly generous about the borders of Park Slope, not unlike the expansion of Fort Greene into Bedford-Stuyvesant; South Slope, Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, and Boerum Hill all became to some extent part of greater Park Slope.
Notable residents
Many notable people have lived in Park Slope, and many more still continue to call it home. Former resident KRS-ONE was first born Lawrence Parker in Park Slope before running away from home to the Bronx. Colin Quinn was born and rasied here, and Sara Moulton of the Food Network also lives in Park Slope. Chuck Schumer, New York's senior U.S. Senator, lives near Grand Army Plaza overlooking Prospect Park. Even Ol' Dirty Bastard's mother lives in a four-story brownstone in the Slope.
Actors
Artists
Authors
- Paul Auster
- Jon Scieszka
- Mo Willems
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Nicole Kraus
- George Hagen
- David Rees (cartoonist)