The neighborhoods of Victorian Flatbush were developed in the early twentieth century from farmland in the former village of Flatbush, in response to the construction of the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit line to
Coney Island, and are some of the earliest suburbs. Developers including
Dean Alvord,
Lewis Pounds and particularly
Thomas Benton Ackerson sold the new developments as country living, under the name "The Village in the City". Utilities and the subway were buried underground, and the area was carefully laid out with tree-lined avenues, including the Flatbush Malls, and country clubs. The detached houses, many of them large and all distinct, were designed in fashionable styles including "Victorian,
Queen Anne, shingle style, colonial revival, neo-Tudor, Spanish Mission and Georgian", with porches and columns, and the area resembles other parts of the US more than it does the rest of New York. It is one of the largest collections of Victorian houses in the country. Victorian Flatbush is in the western part of Flatbush, bounded approximately by
Prospect Park (Brooklyn) or Church Avenue in the north and Avenue H in the south, and by
Flatbush Avenue in the east and
Coney Island Avenue in the west. It includes a dozen neighborhoods or enclaves: •
Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces, designated a New York City historic district in July 1978 • The
Beverley Squares, Beverley Square East and Beverley Square West, major focuses of Ackerson's building • South Midwood, bordering the
Brooklyn College campus to the north These homes were bought and razed to build apartment buildings in the 1920s. The only remnants left of it are the eponymous street, and the
Knickerbocker Field Club. Many parts of Victorian Flatbush, particularly those centered on
Cortelyou Road—Ditmas Park West and the Beverley Squares—are now considered part of Ditmas Park. It has also been identified with Midwood. The Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church on 19th Street in the Ditmas Park Historic District, at which
Conrad Tillard is since 2018 the Senior Minister, is often used for community meetings. Victorian Flatbush now includes five New York City historic districts,
Malls The
Flatbush Malls are tree-lined
landscaped medians series along several roads in Victorian Flatbush. The first series was built in the northern part of the neighborhood along Albemarle Road, and extending one block north on Buckingham Road, in the
Prospect Park South development of 1899, east of
Coney Island Avenue and west of the
BMT Brighton Line. This was modeled by the Scottish landscape architect John Aiken on
Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston, with a design that originally included
shrubbery but not trees, and in turn likely inspired the other neighborhood series. Part of the malls extending to
Flatbush Avenue on Glenwood Road were removed starting in 1932. Both series of malls feature
cul-de-sacs on the Brighton Line, with the Glenwood Road series extending to both sides and also having one on the Long Island Railroad cut.
All-way stops are installed on the Glenwood Road series, and another was added to the Albemarle Road series due to traffic safety concerns. There has also been concern about the watering of the malls. Both series of malls are owned by the
New York City Department of Transportation but maintained by the
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as part of the Greenstreets partnership. ==References==