article

Flatbush is a community of the Borough of Brooklyn, a part of New York City, consisting of several neighborhoods. It is contained within Kings County, New York State, which is coterminous with Brooklyn Borough. It is located in the far southwestern part of Long Island.

Flatbush is centrally located within the Borough and County. The Flatbush Post Office is assigned postal zone (ZIP Code) 11226, but the area understood as included in Flatbush is rather larger than the postal zone. Well-known institutions within Flatbush include Erasmus Hall High School, the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church, Brooklyn College, and Ebbets Field, the last Brooklyn home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, long since demolished. Flatbush includes the southernmost portion of Prospect Park.

The neighborhoods of Flatbush extend south from the old Brooklyn City Line north of the southern edges of Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Empire Boulevard. The southern border of Flatbush neighborhoods is approximately on the line of the Long Island Rail Road Bay Ridge that runs to the south of Avenue H, the campus of Brooklyn College and "The Junction" where Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues meet at Flatbush Avenue station on the IRT subway.

Neighborhoods within Flatbush include Flatbush itself, the planned communities of Prospect Park South, Ditmas Park and Fiske Terrace. Bordering Flatbush on the north is the community of Crown Heights and the former neighborhood of Pigtown. On the east, within the old town of Flatbush is East Flatbush, on the west is Kensington and Greenfield and on the south by Midwood. Many consider Midwood to be a part of Flatbush, but historically it was part of the neighboring former towns of New Utrecht, Gravesend and Flatlands.

The Flatbush communities have a diverse populations, including large communities of ethnic Irish and Italians, African-Americans, as well as Jews and more recently, immigrants from the Caribbean.

The name Flatbush is an Anglicization of the Dutch language Vladbos (approximately wooded land).

History

Flatbush was originally chartered as the Dutch Nieuw Nederland colony town of Midwout in 1651. Both names were used in the Dutch era and Midwood was an alternative name for Flatbush into the early 20th century. Midwood now describes the area immediately south of Brooklyn College. Midwood is a primarily white neighborhood, a mix of Orthodox Jews, Irish and Italians.

Flatbush and the other towns of what was to become Kings County were surrendered to the English in 1664. The influence of Dutch merchant and farming families remained strong in the area until after consolidation into the City of Greater New York in 1898, after which the development of Flatbush as a suburb, and then an integral part of the larger city, proceeded apace.

Before it was incorporated into Brooklyn City in 1894, Flatbush described both the Town of Flatbush, incorporating a large swath of central Kings County extending east to the Queens County border, and the Village of Flatbush, formerly the heart of the current community. Many of the remaining early Dutch structures are in the Flatlands and Marine Park neighborhoods.

Brooklyn neighborhoods | Orthodox Jewish communities | 1651 establishments

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Flatbush, Brooklyn".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world