What we talk about when we talk about Brownstone Brooklyn

The goal of this post is to begin a common understanding of a locale. To orient and become geographically more specific when we talk about Brownstone Brooklyn which is somewhat of a loose definition and different people have different ideas about what than means.

In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn Suleiman Osman shows a map from the Brooklyn Phoenix Brownstone Guide published in 1980 that defines Brooklyn Brownstone as the following neighborhoods: Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Caroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Garden, Flatbush, Greenpoint to Williamsburg, Flatbush, Sunset Park. It also seems to outline Ditmas Park and Prospect Park South.

Wikipedia defines Brooklyn Brownstones as “Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Gowanus, Windsor Terrace, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Brooklyn Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Sunset Park. Smaller concentrations exist in parts of Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens.”

To start my own definition I started with city records. If we look at class 1 (1, 2 or 3 family homes) as defined by New York City for Brooklyn (zip codes starting with 112) for houses built between 1850-1901. We get the following results.

Graph 1: amount of class 1 residents built between 1850-1901 in Brooklyn per zip code

This will show you the amount of houses, but not necessarily the density of historical homes in a particular neighborhood. The following graph calibrates the results by showing the percentage of class 1 houses built between 1850 and 1901 residents to all class 1 houses. Again the results are separated by zip code.

Graph 2: class 1 residents built between 1850-1901 as a percentage of all class 1 residents

Graphs will get you only so far so let’s map these results. This first map will help us orient, Brooklyn is in the center, Lower Manhattan and New Jersey in the top left and Jamaica Bay in the bottom right. I am only showing building footprints, though streets, parks, waterways are not explicitly represented they do emerge through the urban fabric.

Plan 1: Building footprints in Brooklyn, parts of Queens and Lower Manhattan

The second map is the same but isolates all the buildings in Brooklyn. Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery are still easily distinguishable and so is the Brooklyn waterfront. Note the density of the different neighborhoods and the the way street grids are constantly reoriented.

The third map combines the information from Graph 2 with Map 2 by creating a heat map where the highest density of Brownstones is rendered dark and the lowest density light. You immediately notice the weight of the map shifting to the north west where not surprisingly you will find many of the neighborhoods we typically identify with Brownstone Brooklyn.

Plan 3: Heat map of Brownstone density in Brooklyn

The final map is me zooming in on my definition of Brownstone Brooklyn and the purpose of this article. Prospect Park at the center bottom and Manhattan at the upper left side.

Included are the following zip codes with their percentages and associated neighborhoods:

11201 - 67.6% : Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill

11205 - 74.5% : Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene

11206 - (part) 33.8%: Bed-Stuy, Williamsburg

11215 - 79.7%: Park Slope, Prospect Park, Windsor Terrace

11216 - 63.2%: Bed-Stuy

11217 - 67.2%: Boerum Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope

11221 - 48.2%: Bed-Stuy, Bushwick

11225 - 22.1%: Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens

11226 (part) - 25.8%: Flatbush, Prospect Park South

11231 - 75.4% - Caroll Gardens, Columbia Heights, Red Hook

11232 (part) - 12.7% - Greenwood, Industry City, Sunset Park

11233 (part) - 64.7% - Bed-Stuy, Stuyvesant Heights

11238 - 65.4% - Prospect Heights

Defining Brownstone Brooklyn by neighborhood as is usually done gives the impression of clarity but the boundaries of neighborhoods live in the imagination of people and can shift over time. Many of these neighborhood names were established by people moving into them in the seventies, DUMBO famously adopted its name to keep developers out (now the most exclusive real estate in the city). And when I first moved to Brooklyn, my neighborhood was first Prospect Heights, before it was briefly dubbed ProCro but gentrification soon enough made Crown Heights hip enough to be marketed as such. I had been living in three different neighborhoods and my bed hadn’t even moved!

Zip codes have much better defined boundaries, but they often include neighborhoods that are decidedly brownstone brooklyn and not brownstone brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook, Park Slope and Gowanus, Fort Greene and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

By drawing a map from Brooklyn Heights in the north west to Crown Heights in the east and wanting to include Prospect Park as the southern border, I inevitably include the Navy Yard, Downtown Brooklyn, Red Hook and Gowanus. However the scale of the map allows you to identify the urban fabric and so its limitations are in plane sight. You can identify the donut shaped brownstone blocks in Bedford-Stuyvesant from the high rises downtown or the industrial buildings in Red Hook.

I am not sure if I made the definition of Brownstone Brooklyn any less fuzzy, but at least now you know my fuzzy definition and from here on we can refine a common language on to the next post.

Tag: Brownstone Brooklyn