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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, April 12, 2016

LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION APPROVES NEW HISTORIC DISTRICT IN BROOKLYN

Park Slope Historic District Extension II Is NYC’s 139th Historic District

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission today unanimously approved the designation of the Park Slope Historic District Extension II.

The Park Slope Historic District Extension II consists of 292 buildings surrounding the northern part of the existing Park Slope Historic District. The extension includes mainly single-family row houses and flats buildings, mostly constructed between the mid-19th century and the early 20th century. The Park Slope neighborhood is located west of Prospect Park and is bounded by Flatbush Avenue to the north, 15th Street to the south, Fourth Avenue to the west, and Prospect Park West to the east. The area was named for its location on land that slopes from Mount Prospect down to the Gowanus Bay, and for its proximity to Prospect Park.

“The new Park Slope Extension is a wonderful complement to the original Park Slope Historic District and shares many of its characteristics.” said Commission Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan. “The area owes its cohesiveness to its tree-lined streets, predominant residential character and its high level of architectural integrity. We are thrilled to add this extension to the number of protected districts in Brooklyn.”

As outlying areas were linked to Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn by better transportation in the 19th century, row house development spread into these areas and builders covered newly opened blocks with rows of houses. The multiple dwellings built in Park Slope during the 19th century were typically three and four-story structures without elevators. Buildings in this district were constructed in popular residential architectural styles of the mid- to late-19th century. The Italianate style and its variants, French Second Empire and Anglo-Italianate, popular from about 1840 through the 1870s, are the most prevalent styles. The two earliest-known houses in the district constructed in this style are the frame houses at 22 Berkeley Place and 85 Sterling Place.

By the mid-1870s, the simpler neo-Grec style replaced the rounded, ornate forms of the Italianate styles. Other styles seen in the district are Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Colonial Revival, and Medieval Revival, which is found in some of the larger 1920s apartment houses.

There are a number of institutional buildings in the extension, including churches, a school, and a club. The largest of these is the St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church Complex. Although the residential development of Park Slope ended for the most part in the early 20th century, important changes continued to occur within the neighborhood. Additional apartment houses were built as a result of transportation improvements in the 1930s. These houses include 25 and 45 Plaza Street West, which were completed in 1941.

Today’s designation brings to 139 the total number of historic districts and extensions in all five boroughs, and to 2,853 the total number of protected buildings in Park Slope, including the 1948 buildings in the Park Slope Historic District and 613 buildings in the Park Slope Historic District Extension.

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The Landmarks Preservation Commission is the mayoral agency responsible for protecting and preserving New York City's architecturally, historically and culturally significant buildings and sites. Since its creation in 1965, LPC has granted landmark status to more than 34,000 buildings and sites, including 1360 individual landmarks, 117 interior landmarks, 10 scenic landmarks, and 139 historic districts and extensions in all five boroughs. Under the City's landmarks law, considered among the most powerful in the nation, the Commission must be comprised of at least three architects, a historian, a realtor, a planner or landscape architect, as well as a representative of each borough.