Stuyvesant Heights
The Stuyvesant Heights Historic District, an L-shaped area north of Fulton Street, comprises over 430 buildings located on thirteen city blocks, or parts thereof. It lies approximately between Stuyvesant and Tompkins Avenues to the east and west and Macon and Chauncey Streets to the north and south.
Stuyvesant Heights is a residential district that was largely developed between 1870 and 1920. It lies in the north-central part of Brooklyn. The name “Stuyvesant Heights” came into local usage during the first decade of the 20th century and distinguishes it from the larger Bedford-Stuyvesant area in which it lies, and under which name
it was originally heard by the Commission. The name Stuyvesant Heights derives from the fact that Stuyvesant Avenue is the district’s principal thoroughfare.
The district was designated on September 14, 1971.
The Alice and Agate Courts Historic District comprises 36 row houses on two cul-de- sacs, designed by architect Walter M. Coots and constructed in 1888 and 1889 in the Queen Anne style. Located on the north side of Atlantic Avenue between Kingston and Albany Avenues, the district is located at the southern border of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in north central Brooklyn.
The district was designated on February 10, 2009.
Alice & Agate Courts
Bedford Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights
The Bedford-Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District consists of approximately 825 buildings and is located within the area roughly bounded by Tompkins Avenues on the west, Macon and Halsey Streets on the north, Malcolm X Boulevard on the east, and Fulton Street on the south. The boundaries of this proposed district encompass and extend the boundaries of the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District, which was designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1971, and more than doubles the size of the existing historic district. Brooklyn, Bedford, and Bushwick (which included Williamsburg and Greenpoint) became incorporated as the City of Brooklyn in 1854, and although the street grid in Bedford was planned by 1839, most of the streets were not actually cut and paved until after the Civil War. The major period of construction was from around 1895 to 1900, although several buildings were built before or after that time. The district consists mainly of masonry row houses and is more than 85 percent residential. As late as 1886, more than half of the land within the boundaries was vacant. Of the buildings that had been constructed by then, many were located near the area‘s older roads, Fulton Street and Reid Avenue (now called Malcolm X Boulevard).
The Bedford-Stuyvesant/Expanded Stuyvesant Heights Historic District is significant as part of the larger Bedford-Stuyvesant area, which for two-thirds of the 20th century has been one of the nation‘s largest and best-known African-American and Caribbean-American residential communities, with its roots extending back to the period of Dutch colonial settlement in the 17th century. The area was known as Bedford until the late 1930s when it began to be commonly referred to as Bedford-Stuyvesant.
The district was designated on April 16, 2013.
Comprising more than 800 buildings within the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, the Bedford Historic District contains some of Brooklyn’s most distinctive and well-preserved late- 19th-century streetscapes. Constructed almost entirely between 1870 and 1900, the district illustrates the rapid development of row house design in Central Brooklyn during this period, ranging from modest Italianate and Neo-Grec houses built in the 1870s to lavishly ornamented Neo-Grec, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival structures from the 1880s and 1890s that rank among the borough’s most impressive residences. Many of these houses were constructed by leading Brooklyn architects of the time, including George P. Chappell, Rudolphe L. Daus, Parfitt Brothers, and Peter J. Lauritzen, but the district has special significance for its outstanding collection of works by Montrose W. Morris, one of Brooklyn’s most skilled and inventive architects at the end of the 19th century. In addition to its hundreds of distinguished row houses, the district contains dozens of fine flats buildings, as well as two of the city’s most significant school buildings—Girls’ High School (1885-86, with 1912 addition by C. B. J. Snyder) and Boys’ High School (1890-91, with 1911 addition by Snyder), both designed by James W. Naughton. Also included in the district are two notable churches, constructed as the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Reconciliation (Heins & LaFarge, c. 1890) and the Central Presbyterian Church (Acock & Lloyd, 1936-37). Since 1944, the latter building has been home to Siloam Presbyterian Church, one of Brooklyn’s oldest African-American churches and a major contributor to the city’s civil rights movement.
The district was originally part of the old village of Bedford, which was centered close to the present-day intersection of Bedford Avenue and Fulton Street, and extends from Monroe Street on the north to Macon Street and Verona Place on the south, and from just east of Bedford Avenue eastward to Tompkins Avenue. Before its development, the district consisted of portions of four large farms owned by members of the DeBevoise, Lefferts, and Suydam families, which cut long diagonal swaths across the emerging street grid. Horsecar lines were extended to the area starting in the late 1860s, and in 1871, the district’s earliest row houses were constructed at 276 to 284 Monroe Street. These five wood-framed houses were completed by Walter C. Russell and his wife Susanna E. C. Russell, who is one of the district’s most intriguing figures, as she appears to have been among the few women working as architects or builders in late-19th- century Brooklyn. This row was soon followed by other Italianate groups, including 230 to 238 Madison Street, constructed by builder Francis Wood and completed in 1875.
The district was designated on December 8, 2015.
Bedford
*Summaries excerpted from district designation reports.