page_title: Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn / History / Founding / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Brownstones of Stuyvesant Heights
context_page_description: Bedford–Stuyvesant, colloquially known as Bed–Stuy, is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Bedford–Stuyvesant is bordered by Flushing Avenue to the north, Classon Avenue to the west, Broadway to the east, and Atlantic Avenue to the south. The main shopping street, Fulton Street runs east–west the length of the neighborhood and intersects high-traffic north–south streets including Bedford Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, and Stuyvesant Avenue. Bedford–Stuyvesant contains four smaller neighborhoods: Bedford, Stuyvesant Heights, Ocean Hill, and Weeksville. Part of Clinton Hill was once considered part of Bedford–Stuyvesant.
  Bedford–Stuyvesant has the largest collection of intact and largely untouched Victorian architecture in the country, with roughly 8,800 buildings built before 1900. Its building stock includes many historic brownstones. These homes were developed for the expanding upper-middle class from the 1890s to the late 1910s. These homes contain highly ornamental detailing throughout their interiors and have classical architectural elements, such as brackets, quoins, fluting, finials, and elaborate frieze and cornice banding.
context_section_description: In 1800, Bedford was designated one of the seven districts of the Town of Brooklyn, and, in 1834, it became part of the seventh and ninth wards of the newly incorporated City of Brooklyn. With the building of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad in 1833, along Atlantic Avenue, Bedford was established as a railroad station near the intersection of current Atlantic Avenue and Franklin Avenues. In 1836, the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad was taken over by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which in 1878 would gain a connection to the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway's northern terminal. The Weeksville subsection, founded in 1838, was recognized as one of the first, free African-American communities in the United States.
  The present street grid was laid out in 1835, as shown by the Street Commissioners map of 1839, and the blocks were divided into lots The new street grid led to the abandonment of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Turnpike in favor of a continuation of Brooklyn's Fulton Street, though the lands for the street grid were not sold to the City of Brooklyn until 1852. When Charles C. Betts purchased Maria Lott's tract of land the same year, this marked the end of two centuries of Dutch patrimonial holdings. Most of the streets were not opened until the 1860s, at which point Bedford–Stuyvesant's streets were named after prominent figures in American history. The Dripps Map of 1869 shows that the area was still largely rural with a few freestanding houses mostly on MacDonough Street. The real development of the district began slowly at first, accelerating between 1885 and 1900, and gradually tapering off during the first two decades of the 20th century.
  Construction of masonry row houses in the 1870s began to transform the rural district into an urban area. The first row of masonry houses in Stuyvesant Heights was built in 1872 on MacDonough Street for developer Curtis L. North. In the 1880s and 1890s, more rows were added, most of the Stuyvesant Heights north of Decatur Street looked much as it does today. Stuyvesant Heights was emerging as a neighborhood entity with its own distinctive characteristics. The houses had large rooms, high ceilings and large windows, and were built primarily by German immigrants. The people who bought these houses were generally upper-middle-class families, mostly lawyers, shopkeepers, and merchants of German and Irish descent, with a sprinkling of English people; there were also a few professionals. A contemporary description calls it a very well kept residential neighborhood, typical of the general description of Brooklyn as "a town of homes and churches."
  Built in 1863, the Capitoline Grounds were the home of the Brooklyn Atlantics baseball team. The grounds were bordered by Nostrand Avenue, Halsey Street, Marcy Avenue, and Putnam Avenue. During the winters, the operators would flood the area and open an ice-skating arena. The grounds were demolished in 1880.
  In 1890, the city of Brooklyn founded another subsection Ocean Hill, a working-class predominantly Italian enclave. In the last decades of the 19th century, with the advent of electric trolleys and the Fulton Street Elevated, Bedford–Stuyvesant became a working-class and middle-class bedroom community for those working in downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City. At that time, most of the pre-existing wooden homes were destroyed and replaced with brownstone rowhouses.
caption: Along Stuyvesant Avenue
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